Police Misconduct

On Friday, charges were officially dismissed against Christopher Long, the Critical Mass cyclist who was slammed to the ground by NYPD Officer Patrick Pogan in July. After he was knocked off his bike, Long was charged with attempted assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Words fail when watching this clip of an NYPD officer forcibly knocking a Critical Mass rider to the pavement last Friday. The assault was caught on video by a bystander in Times Square. Compounding the injustice, reports Gothamist, is what happened next:

The Reverend Al Sharpton, the family of Sean Bell, and an all-star cast of civil liberties advocates joined cyclists in Union Square last Friday for one of the more anticipated Critical Mass rides in recent memory. The gathering, which filled up the south end of the park, came three weeks after the Reverend led hundreds of supporters in an attempt to shut down major bridges and tunnels, protesting the acquittal of the officers who shot and killed Bell.

The Daily News today has the sickening story of an off-duty NYPD officer beating an NYPD traffic agent for ticketing his girlfriend's illegally parked car in the Bronx. The capper: the agent was reportedly cuffed and taken to the precinct, while the cop he says assaulted him has not been charged with a felony, though the state just adopted a law stiffening penalties for attacks on traffic agents.

As the City Council takes up legislation to lift NYPD rules against public assembly, cyclists and advocates will hold a rally and press conference before tonight's Critical Mass ride.

A cyclist is ticketed during Critical Mass last spring

A Streetsblog reader named Jessica sends along yet another story of the NYPD's failure to treat bike commuters as full-fledged citizens of the City of New York: 

Even before the NYPD identified a hooded cyclist as the this morning's likely Times Square bomber, two reports of bike commuters being ticketed and harassed by the police have already hit the Streetsblog inbox. Perhaps it's just that the weather's getting nicer and more people happen to be out on bikes but at least one cyclist says an officer told him that the police are gearing up yet another organized "crack down" on cyclists.

A commenter on Uncivilservants.org noticed that Mayor Bloomberg's attempt to reign in parking permit abuse is already being met with some good old-fashioned NYPD blowback: