How I Was Kidnapped by the NYPD

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

18 September 12

unbuttoned my jeans in the bright, foul-smelling jail cell at NYPD's 7th precinct, using the metal button to scratch a message into the beige paint on the wall. This one said,

"CG WAS HERE: THE CONSTITUTION WAS NOT #OWS 9-15-12"

The sun had just set on an early fall Saturday night in New York City, and the air was getting cold. The sidewalk was full of Occupiers and NYPD, and up ahead there was chaos and confusion. I could see camera flashes and rapid movements, and heard nothing but commands from the police and shouts of anti-police profanity from Occupiers watching their friends get snatched and grabbed at random. I linked arms with several Occupiers around me and shouted, "March! March!" and we drew close to the police lines. One white-shirted NYPD lieutenant got in my face as I looked around a wall of cops to see who it was that had just been knocked to the ground and handcuffed.

"Move back, or you're next. I promise you that," he said.

Suddenly, the crowd was on top of us, and police were violently and aggressively shoving several journalists snapping photos to the ground. I felt like I was in a mosh pit at a concert, where my body was simply being moved around by the crowd, not of my own volition.

Then, I felt two strong hands on my backpack, yanking me into the chaos. My first thought was that I was about to be in jail for the remainder of the weekend, missing all of the events I had planned on attending.

"Grab my arms!" I shouted frantically, stretching my arms out to Mark. As I was pulled away, he said I looked like a victim in a horror movie who could not be saved from his fate. Mark still says that he'll never be able to get the image of my terror-stricken face out of his memory. (You can see the exact moment of my arrest at the 1hr 36min mark of this stream and in this photo.)

"Get on the ground!" an overzealous NYPD sergeant shouted. My pants were falling down around my hips, and I tried to get on my knees before he shoved me to my face.

"Get your ass on the fucking ground now!" he yelled at me, as I hit the concrete face-first. I felt a knee on my face as my arms were pulled tight behind my back, and felt the bite of the plastic cuffs eating into my flesh. I was then hustled to my feet and pushed into an NYPD van, which was full of six others, five of whom were journalists. We were whisked away to the 7th precinct, and spent three hours in a cell before being given a court summons and the rest of our stuff, and being sent on our way. That night, the jail was 99% full of political prisoners. Mark's cell, next to mine, was full of OWS graffiti that other political prisoners who came before us had scribed into the walls.

The behavior of the NYPD, acting under the orders of Mayor Bloomberg, who has said the police force is his "own army ... the seventh largest army in the world," was unacceptable. I learned that a private citizen can be violently arrested and jailed for walking on a sidewalk, and that cops have free reign to trample basic human rights guaranteed by our founding documents. Bloomberg is the general in the 1%'s class war, determined to absolutely crush any public opposition to his banker friends' greed and corruption - freedoms of speech, press and assembly be damned.

The NYPD learned from last year that kettling and mass-arresting 700 people on the Brooklyn Bridge only adds fuel to the populist fire of the movement. They've now resorted to random snatch-and-grab tactics, meant to disrupt group solidarity, stir up confusion and fear, and minimize media exposure. And given that thousands of Occupiers from across the country are in New York this weekend to celebrate the movement's 1-year anniversary, the snatch-and-grabs of September 15th, mainly targeted at journalists and originators of chants, are meant to do little other than intimidate the group and discourage others from marching on the 17th.

The moment we get too scared to march, Bloomberg and the NYPD win. The moment we allow them to silence our dissent through intimidation, our freedoms have ended. Americans must wake up and realize what's happening to their country and resist the creeping fascist police state, or everything our nation was founded on will be lost in the next year.

Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. You can contact Carl at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and listen to his online radio talk show, Swag The Dog, at blogtalkradio.com/swag-the-dog.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.