Exclusive: NYPD ride-along shows how cops handle protests in the city
FORT GREENE, Brooklyn (WABC) -- An exclusive ride-along reveals the measures an NYPD group takes to handle civil unrest in New York City.
"I would like to think that we did deter it by seeing we're out in full force tonight," NYPD Deputy Chief John D'Adamo.
D'Adamo is a deputy chief who runs the NYPD strategic response group, comprised of hundreds of cops specially trained in handling civil unrest.
Such as the mayhem that played out in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, which involved a protest against a police shooting in Philadelphia, ginned up, cops say, by outside agitators who turned violent.
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"Once bottles, bricks, frying pans, batteries start being thrown at my officers and any cop, that's when we have to ratchet things up unfortunately," D'Adamo said.
Tuesday night it was a car, whose driver refused to stop and nearly mowed down a group of D'Adamo's bike cops.
Six officers were hurt, as they dove out of the way.
In the end, police made 30 arrests.
"The last thing we'd like to do is to make an arrest at a demonstration," D'Adamo said. "The best type of protest is 10, 20, 1000 people yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs to get their point across and everyone goes their separate ways and there's no incidents to report."
But police fear it may be just a taste of what's to come with the election less than a week away.
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The strategic response group has been training hard for months at its headquarters in the Bronx.
"After what happened last night, you don't want that to happen again," D'Adamo said. "No we don't want that to happen anymore, it's not fair to the residents of the city to let that happen again."
On Wednesday night, after word spread of another protest, linked to the same group as Tuesday night, the strategic response group flooded a Brooklyn park. But protesters never showed.
Police insist they aren't trying to disrupt peaceful protest, and are glad that nothing materialized Wednesday night.
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