NYPD: Eight arrested in NYC after vandalism during protests
Police extinguish a trash bin fire set by demonstrators Friday in Manhattan. Credit: Sipa USA via AP/Gabriele Holtermann
Demonstrators marched in Manhattan on Friday night demanding “#AmnestyForAll protesters,” and the NYPD said eight people, including a young woman from Great Neck, were arrested for rioting after windows were broken and graffiti spray-painted.
The arrests happened about 8:15 p.m., when “a large contingency of protesters were present” near East 24th Street and Madison Avenue and East 22nd Street and Fifth Avenue, according to NYPD spokeswoman Det. Sophia Mason in an email.
Among the charges: riot for all eight; three for possession of graffiti instrument, and one for possession of a weapon, according to Mason.
Those arrested were the Great Neck woman, 20; three people from Manhattan; three from Brooklyn; and someone from Portland, Oregon, according to Mason. Ages of those arrested, she said, range from 19 to 30.
Chelsea, Flatiron, Chinatown and near Washington Square Park were among the neighborhoods where demonstrators vandalized property.
Mason wrote that windows were broken at 157 Lafayette St., along with 45 W. Fourth St., 158 W. 14th St., and 4 W. 21st St. Three locations on Seventh Avenue also had windows broken: 77, 127 and 169 Seventh Ave., where an ATM also was damaged.
A Sixth Avenue address, 670, also had its windows broken and was graffitied.
Graffiti was also spray-painted at 136 W. 21st St., 162 Fifth Ave., and 4 W. 22nd St., Mason said.
The Twitter account of activist @AshAgony posted photos at 9:09 p.m. of a banner reading “FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS,” a Chase bank window graffitied with “ABOLITION,” and the shattered, graffitied plate glass of a Bank of America lobby.
Photos on Twitter also showed damage at Starbucks, Wells Fargo and other places.
“Fierce march took over the streets of NYC earlier tonite demanding #AmnestyForAll protesters arrested during the uprisings. Corporate property got redecorated with abolitionist messages. NYPD tried to follow, but protesters kept them away with barricades,” according to the tweet thread from @AshAgony.
@AshAgony tweeted that protesters “demanded #AmnestyForAll protesters arrested during the uprising.”
More than 2,000 people were arrested in New York City during unrest in late spring triggered by the bystander-recorded police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
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