Dozens of protestors arrested in the Bronx were abruptly shipped to Queens 

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Demonstrators gathered for a peaceful protest in Astoria Park Tuesday. Eagle photo by Christina Santucci

Demonstrators gathered for a peaceful protest in Astoria Park Tuesday. Eagle photo by Christina Santucci

By David Brand and Rachel Vick 

About 60 people arrested while protesting police violence in the Bronx were stuffed into Department of Correction buses and transported to Queens Central Booking Thursday night, as the police continued to crackdown on post-curfew demonstrations throughout the city. 

Overall, the NYPD said, 270 demonstrators were arrested across the city during the eighth night of demonstrations and civil unrest following the police killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man in Minnesota.  An 8 p.m. curfew imposed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to curb looting has allowed NYPD officers to cast a wide net — with cops at times cuffing delivery workers and members of the press.

A spokesperson for the Office of Court Administration said Queens Central Booking — located inside the criminal courthouse — was used to detain arrestees after the NYPD shut down the Mass Arrest Processing Center at police headquarters in Manhattan because of “protest activity in Lower Manhattan.”

Protestors arrested in the Bronx and Queens, including roughly 60 people Thursday, were taken to Queens Central Booking, while individuals arrested in Manhattan and Brooklyn were moved to central booking inside the Brooklyn Criminal Court building, the OCA spokesperson added. 

The unannounced decision to transport dozens of Bronx protestors to Queens Central Booking left family, friends and activists confused for hours about the whereabouts of protestors. While people awaited information about their locked-up loved ones, a group of activists gathered outside the Queens Criminal Courthouse to provide medical attention and pass out food and water Friday morning.  

By about 10 a.m., one woman said she had been waiting for her friends for six hours. Another woman sitting outside the courthouse said she wasn’t sure her friends would be released by the afternoon or if she would have to wait until the evening. She said she did not actually know if they were being held in Queens or elsewhere.

Cell phone videos and reports of the NYPD using aggressive force against Bronx demonstrators fueled concern among the people gathered outside the courthouse in Queens. 

“Got maced, beaten with a baton, had my hands ziptied, and got sent in a boiling hot paddywagon to a crowded Queens Central Booking cell for participating in a 100% peaceful protest in the Bronx tonight,” tweeted one protestor, shortly after his release at 12:43 a.m.

The confusion also permeated the Queens courthouse. Two court officials said they heard that “approximately 100” people were taken from the Bronx to Queens after the NYPD corralled demonstrators using a controversial tactic known as kettling. Another staffer in the clerk’s office said they had not heard of anyone being transported from other boroughs to Queens Central Booking, which is run by the NYPD. 

Councilmember Donovan Richards, chair of the Committee on Public Safety, said the decision to transport people from the Bronx to Queens was part of an strategy by de Blasio and the NYPD to suppress demonstration.

“They’re trying to make protest as uncomfortable as possible and quell the demonstrations,” Richards said. “But there’s no curfew that can stop people from marching and cut justice from being pursued.”

“The more gasoline they pour on the fire, the more these protests are gong to swell and the more people are going to continue to be on the streets because these injustices have gone on for a very long time ,” he continued.

Unlike demonstrations in the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn, protests in Queens have encountered a relatively mild response from NYPD officers over the past eight days. One man was arrested after jumping onto a police vehicle in Ridgewood at around 10 p.m. Wednesday night, but officers allowed marchers to continue a winding path through Ridgewood and Bushwick.  

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said Friday that officers had done a “phenomenal job” controlling demonstrations in New York City in recent nights.

Ahead of the South Bronx protests, he said, the NYPD received “information regarding the intent to destroy property, to injure cops, to cause mayhem.”

“We had a plan which was executed nearly flawlessly in the Bronx,” Shea added. “This wasn't, again, about protests. This was about tearing down society.”