New Videos Contradict NYPD Account of Lead-Up to Times Square Attack on Cops

[Nevilledog]

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Scott Hechinger
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Feb 9, 2024
@ScottHech
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For weeks now, Republicans & Democrats have been raising alarm about an "unprovoked attack" against NYPD in Times Square. NYPD only released a highly edited 45 second video. Now new videos contradict them.

Show police illegally harassing & attacking. https://thecity.nyc/2024/02/08/times-square-migrants-arrests-body-camera-footage-contradicts-nypd-account/
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Scott Hechinger
@ScottHech
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The police version of events never made any sense. Unprovoked "attacks" on police happen near-never. Colleagues and I have been talking for weeks about "what must have happened" before but we weren't seeing.

Police harassing and attacking migrants was top of the list.
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7:45 AM · Feb 9, 2024

https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/02/08/times-square-migrants-arrests-body-camera-footage-contradicts-nypd-account/

Prosecutors released new footage of a viral attack on two police officers that appears to conflict with police accounts of their initial interaction with a group of migrants that quickly escalated into a melee that triggered nationwide outrage.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office released the footage three hours after a press conference on Thursday where he announced six new indictments in the Jan. 27 attack. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny had said the attack began when officers asked a group of men blocking the sidewalk outside a West 42nd Street migrants shelter to disperse.

“Everybody disperses except for Mr. Brito,” Kenny said, referring to 24-year-old Yohenry Brito, who was indicted earlier in the week and is being held on Rikers Island on $15,000 bail. “He turned around and got confrontational with the police officers. He refused a lawful order.”

But the newly released video footage appears to directly conflict with that account.

Officer body camera videos and surveillance footage show Brito was originally standing with the other men around a concrete traffic bollard at the edge of the sidewalk outside of a migrant shelter as people walked by them unhindered.

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