On Thursday, Jan. 12, New York police stalked, arrested, and brutalized a young person associated with Refuse Fascism. She and a friend were walking through Greenwich Village, on their way to a publicly announced Refuse Fascism event. She was carrying Refuse Fascism posters tucked under her arm. When her friend went into a store to pick up some food, a woman walking behind her read her sign aloud: “Stop Trump/Pence”.
Seconds later this woman – an NYPD cop in plain clothes – and two other cops, also not in full police uniform, grabbed the young woman and began manhandling her. Several police cars arrived, and the assembled NYPD force pushed her up against a car, and shoved her face against the trunk. Many passersby were outraged. Two of them stood in front of her friend when it seemed the police were about to go after her. When the woman being arrested asked “why”, a cop yelled “because you put a sticker on a pole, that’s why.”
The police subjected this woman to hours of abuse—political, physical, sexual, and psychological. One of them fondled her in the car as they took her to the local precinct.
At no point did the police read this young woman what are supposed to be her Constitutional rights. But they repeatedly threatened to send her to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric evaluation, even though she refused to consent to this outrage. They told her she had the mind of “a child”.
In the jail the cops handcuffed her, then pushed and dragged her through the halls. The arresting cop said he was going to “break her fucking arms”, and then dragged her up a flight of stairs. They threatened to throw her in solitary, then threw her to the ground, face down, while one of the pigs sat on her. When they did force her to go to Bellevue Hospital, they put her, still handcuffed, in a wheelchair for hours. She was told by a cop she had “zero rights”. Several of the cops made a point of announcing their support for the fascist, Donald Trump. She was brought before the court and charged with graffiti and resisting arrest!
The hours of abuse this woman was subjected to by police amount to torture. They are outrageous, and all charges against her must be dropped, immediately! What makes it even more outrageous is the overtly political nature of these charges, and the clear political bias these cops displayed. This kind of outrage must be denounced and opposed.