Overlord II

The raft of lawsuits against the New York Police Department, filed by protesters at the time of the Republican National Convention here, is providing quite an encouraging glimpse at how the department leadership handled the challenge of enforcing the law and protecting the right of a national party to assemble for its convention here. It's long been known that the police operations began months in advance of the Republican convention. What is new is documentary evidence, some of which was unearthed yesterday by our Joseph Goldstein, suggesting that the decision to arrest protesters suspected of breaking the law, rather than merely issue them tickets, was made months in advance.

The plaintiffs in the case — who are unhappy with the arrests that the protesters provoked, in many cases intentionally — will no doubt try to cast that as a scandal. But it will strike most New Yorkers as further evidence, were any needed, that the Finest were at their finest. The thing to remember about the events of August 2004 is that at the core what was involved was the right of a political party to exercise its First Amendment right to assemble peaceably in our city. From the moment the Republicans picked New York as their convention site, plans were hatched to disrupt it.

Disruption was not the goal of all the protesters — not even most, one can guess — but it was clearly the intention of some, and it was the duty of the NYPD to be prepared for the worst, particularly in a city that only three years previously had been directly attacked in the events of September 11, 2001. The idea that in this context the NYPD was supposed to refrain from arresting those who broke the law and, instead, merely ticket them, well, this idea will strike most New Yorkers as humorous. Merely issuing summonses would have been an invitation to a great deal more trouble.

It is true that some of the protesters were held behind bars for three days, and many later had the charges dropped. A lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union, Christopher Dunn, is quoted by our Mr. Goldstein as saying there is "no question that the no summons policy was central in creating huge delays in the release of demonstrators." Mr. Dunn's cavil is almost the height of chutzpah, like the proverbial lad who murdered his parents and asked for mercy from the court on grounds that he was an orphan.

The "delays" in processing those who were arrested were a result not of any default by the police but of the fact that so many protesters broke the law and that so many were encouraged to do so in violation of the rights of the Republican party to assembly peaceably in America's most important city. That the convention came off without a hitch is something the commissioner of police, Raymond Kelly, and the thousands of officers of the NYPD and other services can be proud.