Sexual Assault Against Peaceful Protestors, Essay Example

Abstract

The social injustice that will be addressed in this essay is the tactics that are applied by the New York Police Department in dispersing the Occupy Wall Street Protestors.   The strategy of dispersing the protestors who are exercising their rights under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution with regards to the right of assembly and freedom of speech has been to target the female protestors. The tactic involves directing attention at the females who are not resisting arrest and to provoke resistance by sexually assault them.   The perspectives of Cecily McMillan Defense Team (2012) and Graber (2012) were accessed in the composition of this essay.

Social Injustice

The event to which I was an indirect witness involved a female friend of mine who had been involved in the six month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This acquaintance was a teacher who had her arm in a cast. Her name was Mary. Mary was interviewed with respect to what had happened and asked why she had her arm in a cast. Mary related the story. Mary told me that when she was in Liberty Park on St. Patrick’s Day in 2012, an unidentified police officer pulled at her breast in an attempt to motivate her into leaving Liberty Park (Graber 2012).

Mary told me that she had been peacefully involved in a reunion in the park and one of the police officers fondled her breasts while standing behind her. Mary responded with a complaint with regards to why she was being sexually assaulted. As she complained, the police officer said that she was resisting arrest. She was dragged behind the police security lines and while she was being dragged, she dropped her eyeglasses. As she requested to pick up her eyeglasses, the officer continued to drag her. Consequently, her hand became snared on the sewer drainage grating.   Mary told me that she heard her wrist snap (Graber 2012).

The police officer had not been cognizant of Mary’s injury and proceeded to place her on the bus that was destined for the precinct. The officer tied her hands with plastic handcuffs.   Mary complained about the tightness of the plastic cuffs and the fact that her writs had been broken. The other detainees who were on the New York Police department bus looked at Mary’s situation and the fact that she was in pain due to a broken wrist. All of the detainees requested that the plastic handcuffs on Mary’s wrist be loosened. The members of the New York Police Department ignored Mary’s pleas until she had been fingerprinted and processed for resisting arrest (Graber 2012).

Mary’s circumstance was not unique.   On March 17^th, 2012, there had been hundreds of people who had been exercising their First Amendment right of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly (Cecily McMillan Defense Team, 2012).   In response, the city government that had been headed by Mayor Bloomberg, who is acknowledged the 11^th richest industrialist in the United States, began to close the park (Graber 2012). The closing of the park at Union Square at night had not been performed in more than a century. Mayor Bloomberg had been acknowledged as inferring that the New York Police Department served as his private militia in order to enforce the will of the dominant commercial class (Graber 2012).

There had been other people who had been exercising their right to Freedom of speech in the park who had been manhandled by the New York Police Department. One of the citizens who had been peacefully meeting was carried away and his cranium was used in order to break a window (Graber 2012). There had also been a female social worker whose breasts had been fondled. When the social worker was fondled from behind, she instinctively raised her elbow and caused the police officer who had been engaged to suffer a black eye.   Assaulting a police officer cannot be condoned. The woman who had been assaulted started to experience seizures and went into convulsions. The woman was charged with assaulting an officer. Due to her lack of a criminal record and status as a graduate student, the presiding judge demonstrated leniency. She was given a sentence of sixty days in the Riker’s Island Penal facility and five years of probation (Cecily McMillan Defense Team, 2012).

Conclusion

The people who were gathering in the New York City parks on St. Patrick’s Day in 2012 were simply exercising their authority of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly as manifested by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. What I would have done is to film the event and to become one of the detainees. However, since that was not possible, wouldn’t writing about the events be considered as the next best course of action? Notwithstanding, the female intellectuals were criminalized and abused. The social injustice that took place demonstrates the authority that the members of the commercial class have with regards to manufacturing reasons to evacuate people from a public place.   The infringement of the authority of one citizen is an infringement upon the authorities of all citizens. The United States Constitution must be applied to all members of the society under all situations without exception.

References

Graber, D. (4 May 2012). New police strategy in New York- Sexual assault against peaceful protestors. Truth Out Naked Capitalism.

Cecily McMillan Defense Team (2012). Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan may face up to seven years for being assaulted by the NYPD. Occupy Wall Street