Complaint #200408532,
August 31, 2004

Summary

On August 31, 2004, [redacted] and [redacted] were visiting New York City. The Republican National Convention (RNC) was taking place that day, although they were not in New York City for this event. [redacted] and [redacted] went to the World Trade Center (WTC) in order to take photographs of the monument. While they were there, at approximately 4:00 p.m., a group of protestors demonstrating against the war in Iraq left the WTC site at Church Street and marched eastbound on Fulton Street, heading towards Broadway. The protestors were marching on the north sidewalk of Fulton Street. [redacted] and [redacted] thought that it would be fun to take photographs of the protestors so they too walked up the northern Fulton Street sidewalk. When the front of the march was about halfway down the Fulton Street sidewalk, but before they reached Broadway, Deputy Chief Terence Monahan ordered the marchers to stop and, within seconds, ordered the officers to arrest the marchers (Allegation A). An orange net was put up, cordoning off approximately half of the northern Fulton Street sidewalk reaching from Church Street towards Broadway. [redacted] and [redacted] did not want to get arrested. They told Lt. Joseph Sitro that they were just tourists and were not part of the march. [redacted] and [redacted] voluntarily showed Lt. Sitro digital photographs of other tourist attractions they had recently visited in New York and their tickets to a Broadway play that evening. Lt. Sitro told PO Thomas Spitzfaden to write stop and frisk reports for [redacted] and [redacted] and to release them. [redacted] and [redacted] were released without being arrested or summonsed. While DC Monahan had reasonable suspicion to stop the entirety of the group on the Fulton Street sidewalk, it is unclear whether he had the requisite probable cause to arrest the entirety of the group. However, DC Monahan delegated to his subordinates the discretion to release individual members of the group. Lt. Sitro exercised this discretion when he released [redacted]... Read report for details.