Wimps, by comparison

Joseph Goldstein has an article in The New York Times about the NYPD:

When members of the loose protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street began a march from the financial district to Union Square recently, the participants seemed relatively harmless, even as they were breaking the law by marching in the street without a permit. Even as the loose protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street seems unorganized, it poses a challenge to the police.
But to the New York Police Department, the protesters represented something else: a visible example of lawlessness akin to that which had resulted in destruction and violence at other anti-capitalist demonstrations, like the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in London in 2009 and the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999.
The NYPD’s concerns came up against a perhaps milder reality when their efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated: protesters were corralled by police officers who put up orange mesh netting; the police forcibly arrested some participants; and a deputy inspector used pepper spray on four women who were on the sidewalk, behind the orange netting.
The actions of the police suggested the flip side of a force trained to fight terrorism, in a city whose police commissioner acknowledges the ownership of a gun big enough to take down a plane, but that may appear less nimble in dealing with the likes of the Wall Street protesters. So, even as the members of Occupy Wall Street seem unorganized and, at times, uninformed, their continued presence creates a vexing problem for the Police Department.
In recent weeks, police commanders have been discussing the riots in London this summer, and strategizing how they would stop a similar situation in New York, said Roy Richter, the president of the union in New York that represents officers of captain and higher rank. And, since August, investigators with the Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have monitored the online efforts of activists to bring demonstrations to Wall Street.
The NYPD conducts an internal review of its response to every large-scale demonstration, and the protest appeared to have resulted in the largest number of arrests since the demonstrations surrounding the Republican National Convention in 2004. The events are certain to be examined, especially since so many protesters were recording the events with cameras; videos of the pepper spray episode, for example, offered views from several angles.
Paul J. Browne, the Department’s chief spokesman, defended the use of pepper spray as appropriate and added that it was “used sparingly.”
But Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, said that in the video clips he had seen, the use of pepper spray “didn’t look good,” although Vallone cautioned that he wanted to know if any interactions had occurred between the officers and the women in the minutes before pepper spray was used. “If no prior verbal command was given and disobeyed, then the use of spray in that instance is completely inappropriate,” Vallone said. Several websites identified the supervising officer who used the pepper spray as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, a longtime commander in Manhattan. Like a number of other officers, Inspector Bologna is a defendant in lawsuits claiming wrongful arrests at protests staged during the Republican National Convention in 2004..
A police official who had spoken to Inspector Bologna following the incident confirmed that the inspector had used the spray. “He did his job, and now he’s concerned for the safety of his family,” said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to confirm the inspector’s name.
According to the Department’s patrol guide, officers may use pepper spray under certain conditions, including “when a member reasonably believes it is necessary to effect an arrest of a resisting suspect.” The guide also advises that the spray should “not be used in situations that do not require the use of physical force.”
The Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct, received 328 complaints in 2010 relating to the use of pepper spray, accounting for about five percent of the total number of complaints citing improper use of force. In the past week, the review board has received more than a dozen complaints relating to officers’ interactions with protesters, said a spokeswoman for the board, Linda Sachs.
Although the NYPD has closely monitored the encampment of protesters in the Financial District and stationed officers there, there appears to have been little discussion between the police and the protesters. Browne, the police spokesman, said that the protesters never sought a permit for the march. The lack of communication between the two sides may have set the stage for the confrontation near Union Square.
When groups have permits, “the department is pretty accommodating when it comes to street marches,” said Christopher T. Dunn, associate legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union. He added that some groups had perfectly good reasons for not wanting to engage with the police, and “that’s certainly their prerogative.”
In interviews, police officials described the lack of a permit, and the fact that protesters were obstructing traffic as key factors in the arrests and the department’s decision to end the march.
“If you have a permit, the police will accommodate for things like diverting traffic,” Browne said. “If you take a street for a parade or protest without a permit, you are subject to arrest.”
Richter, of the police union, said that, from the perspective of the protesters, the Department’s decision to suddenly end the demonstration might have appeared arbitrary. “I can see it from a demonstrator’s view, asking: ‘What changed?’” Richter said. “But there comes a point when the command staff makes a decision that the crowd is too big, and we’re at a breaking point, and we have to take back the street.”

Rico says that these demonstrators may not have been an al-Qaeda-level threat, but they're gonna get busted if they don't play by the rules...