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This is our favorite video down at the station, we are thinking of making itpart of our training This story is no suprise, we like to torture Americans, it helps the bonds of brotherhood.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A video clip of a high-ranking NYPD commander attempting to arrest a protester during a 2003 demonstration in lower Manhattan — part of a federal civil lawsuit charging excessive force — is making waves on the Internet and in the department.
The 32-year veteran facing the allegations is Assistant Chief Bruce Smolka, head of Patrol Borough Manhattan South, who is retiring soon even as the case approaches trial in federal court in Manhattan.
In a deposition Smolka gave as part of the lawsuit, he suggests that the demonstrator, Cynthia Greenberg, got hurt when her head somehow made contact with his knee during the confrontation at 26 Federal Plaza.
“I saw her head strike my knee,” Smolka says in the deposition, referring to Greenberg, the plaintiff in the lawsuit. “I was moving. She perhaps rocked and that is how her knee, my knee, came in contact with her head.”
When contacted for comment, Smolka had a subordinate tell Newsday he wouldn’t discuss the lawsuit. The NYPD press office also had no comment.
Greenberg contends that the video of the May 5, 2003 altercation, shot by an independent freelance journalist, shows otherwise.
The video, viewed recently by Newsday, shows Smolka’s left knee hitting Greenberg’s head as he bends over her, trying to separate her from another protester with whom she had locked arms. Greenberg immediately grabs her head, clearly in pain.
Though only seconds long, it looks bad. And now it is on the Internet for all to see and decide for themselves.
Greenberg maintains the video doesn’t capture the entire incident. Smolka, she says, kicked her at least twice in the head and a number of times about the body, with some blows inflicted while she was sitting and the rest after she had been sent sprawling onto her stomach.
Each kick, she says, was accompanied by graphic verbal invective — an obscenity, combined with a scatological reference, followed by Smolka’s assertion that Greenberg was resisting.
“You — – ,” Greenberg recalls Smolka yelling. “‘You’re resisting, you — – !’ I kept telling him, ‘I’m not resisting. You’re hitting me.’ His rage was intense.”
Smolka, 54, was shown the video by one of Greenberg’s lawyers when he was deposed in December 2005. He acknowledges his image on the video — “It looked like it” — according to his deposition. He says that he didn’t try to hurt Greenberg and that, had he intentionally struck her, that action would have been unreasonable and excessive. He also says in the deposition that he did not repeatedly kick Greenberg, as she charges, and denies cursing at her.
Toward the end of his deposition, Smolka says he had no immediate recollection of the incident when Greenberg filed the suit on Oct. 30, 2003. Greenberg, a consultant who lives in Williamsburg, alleges she suffered a concussion and had to seek medical treatment.
The protest at 26 Federal Plaza, and the police response to it, got little attention at the time.
The confrontation took place at a small rally by about 50 activists protesting both the war in Iraq and the U.S. government’s treatment of immigrants. It has been overshadowed since by much larger demonstrations — and allegations of improper police behavior — during the 2004 Republican National Convention and the monthly Critical Mass bicycle gatherings.
Greenberg, now 37, is determined to hold Smolka accountable.
“It sends a very clear message to lower-ranking officers that that kind of behavior is permissible, acceptable and correct,” said Greenberg. “It’s one thing when a young officer makes a mistake. It’s another when someone so high-ranking does it.”
Smolka — who over his career has commanded the Midtown North precinct, the 17th Precinct in Midtown and the Emergency Services Unit — is one of the NYPD’s most visible and controversial figures. He was thrust into the headlines when the unarmed Amadou Diallo was killed in the Bronx in 1999 by four officers who worked for Smolka in the Street Crime Unit. Smolka eventually was transferred and the unit disbanded, but his star rose again.
As head of Patrol Borough Manhattan South since April 2004, Smolka has been front and center at virtually every major city event in the last several years, most notably the various protests during the RNC and the Critical Mass rallies.
As such, he has won the enmity of many a protester who says he is too quick to address civil disobedience with physical force. At the same time, his direct, forceful manner has won him the admiration of many within the department, though there are others who don’t like his unyielding personality.
Regardless, he won’t be a commanding officer in the NYPD much longer.
Smolka has filed his retirement papers and is expected to leave the department soon for a security job with Revlon, police sources say.
The timing may or may not be coincidental, but one thing is sure: He’ll likely have to take time off to testify. Smolka also is named in several other pending suits, including cases involving the RNC and Critical Mass