UNCONSTITUTIONAL POLICIES AND PRACTICES

158. The CITY OF NEW YORK and the NYPD maintain the policy, practice and/or custom of abusing state authority to disturb and disrupt targeted civil political assembly and mass demonstrations.

159. The CITY OF NEW YORK and the NYPD maintain a policy, practice and/or custom of engaging in mass false arrests of protesters in the absence of probable cause.

160. The CITY OF NEW YORK and the NYPD maintain a policy, practice and/or custom of engaging in mass group arrests without having probable cause to arrest the group as a group; and without having individualized or particularized probable cause to arrest each person within the mass group to be arrested.

161. The CITY OF NEW YORK and the NYPD maintain a policy, practice and/or custom of engaging in indiscriminate or dragnet-style arrests of protesters in the absence of individualized probable cause, a practice typified by the NYPD’s use of orange netting to capture and arrest masses of people without regard to whether there exists probable cause to arrest the individuals trapped in such sweeping seizures.

162. The CITY OF NEW YORK and the NYPD maintain a policy, practice and/or custom of engaging in mass group arrests of protesters without regard, or with disregard, as to whether the target group contains persons for whom there is no probable cause to arrest.

163. The CITY OF NEW YORK and the NYPD maintain a policy, practice and/or custom of engaging in mass group arrests of protesters without giving the group fair notice, warnings or order to disperse (or to comply with lawful police directives), and without giving a meaningful and reasonable opportunity to comply.

164. The CITY OF NEW YORK and the NYPD maintain a policy, practice and/or custom of tolerating and failing to discipline unlawful police conduct against protesters including specifically, false arrest.

165. The CITY OF NEW YORK and the NYPD maintain a policy, practice and/or custom of causing or justifying arrests for parading without a permit as a strict liability violation in the absence of knowledge or mens rea. This policy caused or is used by the Defendants to justify the arrest of the plaintiff class.

166. The mass false arrest of the plaintiff class, was ordered or approved or ratified by command staff and by NYPD policy makers with sufficient authority as to constitute agency policy makers.

167. The named defendants have been deliberately indifferent to the violation of plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

168. The named defendants have failed to adequately train or instruct the NYPD and its officers so as to prevent the foreseeable violation of the clearly established rights of protesters to be able to engage in peaceable assembly and free speech without being subject to false arrest.

169. Named defendants have failed to properly train officers regarding: the constitutional requirements to give fair notice prior to the initiation of mass protest arrests, including in particular when the target arrest group includes individuals for whom there is not probable cause to arrest; the constitutional prohibitions against indiscriminate or dragnet-style arrests in the absence of individualized probable cause when using police lines or netting to arrest groups of protesters; the constitutional requirement of mens rea and knowledge or fair notice before causing or justifying arrests for parading without a permit or disorderly conduct; the constitutional requirements to provide fair notice where, having permitted a march to proceed in the absence of an advance written permit, the police seek to impose restrictions on the manner of conduct of the march or to revoke permission for the march; the constitutional prohibition against arresting marchers absent fair notice for proceeding where police have granted actual or apparent permission for a march to so proceed; the constitutional requirements that fair notice be heard/received by all persons subject to potential arrest regardless of the noise that demonstration groups may be making and/or the distance over which the targeted group or march may be spread; and in the constitutional impropriety of applying “disorder control” tactics against non-violent First Amendment protected assembly.

170. The above-referenced policies, practices and/or customs, and also the failure to properly train NYPD officers, constitute deliberate indifference on the part of the policymakers of the CITY OF NEW YORK and of the NYPD, and by the named defendants, to the constitutional rights of protesters as well as all those who would associate with such protesters.