NEW YORK – For all the batons, riot helmets and plastic handcuffs, one of the most effective weapons in the New York police arsenal this week was seemingly the most innocuous: rolls of orange plastic netting.

The NYPD managed to short-circuit ambitious plans to disrupt the Republican National Convention simply by unspooling the webbing to cut off and enclose entire blocks of protesters before they knew what had snagged them.

The nets neatly symbolize the department’s aggressive strategy – one that is working so far – to pre-empt major disruptions to the convention or its delegations. But they also have helped set off a rancorous debate over whether the NYPD has smothered citizens’ right to voice opposition to their government.

By Wednesday evening, more than 1,700 people had been arrested around Manhattan in convention-related protests. To put that number in perspective: 641 arrests were made during the entire 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, which was notorious for unrest.

Veterans of the ‘68 convention joined other activists Wednesday to make that point outside the processing center set up to handle the arrests from the Republican National Convention.

“We no longer have the spectacle of police officers beating down protesters in front of the cameras,” said Leonard Weinglass, who helped represent the “Chicago Seven” defendants. “But you do have more subtle forms of repression, as represented by this building.”

Demonstrators have dubbed the center, located in a converted bus garage on the west edge of Manhattan, “Guantanamo on the Hudson.” A number of those released from the center said the police working there were pleasant, but they decried the conditions of the chain-link pens inside the facility, which they said had grime-covered concrete floors.

Some of those arrested developed rashes from sleeping on the floor of the pens during excessively long detentions, according to their lawyers.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly dismissed the criticism, saying at a news conference this week that eight hours was the longest any person had been detained while awaiting transfer to central booking.

“There have been some exaggerated claims and outright falsehoods about conditions at our post-arrest screening site,” Kelly said.

The commissioner also defended the aggressive, pre-emptive tactics of his police force, noting that many of those arrested were from out of town and were veterans of demonstrations in cities with much smaller police departments.

“In the past, a few get arrested and most get away after breaking laws,” he said. “Here, they are being surprised by the fact that the opposite holds true: Most of the law-breakers will be apprehended, and only the law-abiding get away.”

But activists and legal observers contended the means of arrest, particularly the use of the nets, didn’t make such a distinction.

“Nets are not to be used to capture human beings,” Tanya Mayo, an antiwar activist who spoke at a rally Wednesday outside Pier 57, site of the NYPD’s temporary holding center.

“It is inappropriate,” Mayo said. “It is unconstitutional.”

As she spoke, another police busload of chanting protesters pulled out of the screening center en route to central booking to be arraigned, most on disorderly conduct charges.

William Dobbs, spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, which organized a massive but peaceful march on Sunday, called the nets “a chilling tactic” because they allow police “to make wholesale arrests of people who are simply on the sidewalk.”

In fact, the use of the netting swept up many people who said they had no intention of performing civil disobedience.

Joan Cavanagh, 50, an archivist from New Haven, Conn., said she had hoped to participate in a march from Ground Zero to the convention site at Madison Square Garden, then be home by 9 p.m. to take care of her elderly mother.

Instead, she was caught with about 200 other people in the orange webbing. “I originally thought the net was just a way to keep people in line and off the streets,” Cavanagh said. “It slowly dawned on us – my God, they’re fencing us in and are going to arrest us for simply standing on the sidewalk.”

Twenty-one hours later, she stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the criminal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, having pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct charges.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

“I’m not going to pay a fine. I’m not going to do community service. I’m going to do everything I can to make them accountable for what they did,” Cavanagh said. “I was acting as a free-thinking citizen protesting the Bush agenda, and I’ve just spent 20-plus hours facing the Bush agenda. We cannot let these erosions of our civil liberties go unchallenged.”

The NYPD’s nets also nabbed the occasional tourist.

“I was in with a father from Canada who was separated from his 14-year-old son,” said Brandon Chace, a 20-year-old Manhattan resident, arrested at the start of the march from Ground Zero. Chace said the Canadian told him that he and his son were just visiting the city, not protesting.

Despite the criticism, Kelly praised the work of his officers.

“I want to commend the members of the New York City police department who have showed great restraint,” he said, “often in the face of relentless provocation.”



Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.