Report Finds NYPD's Response To George Floyd Protests Was Deeply Flawed,

GOTHAMIST

BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ

Scenes from the June 4, 2020 demonstration in the Bronx C.S. MUNCY / GOTHAMIST

Senior NYPD officials committed a number of serious errors in their response to this summer’s protests against racist police violence, including deploying officers without proper training, and relying on faulty intelligence that undermined the rights of New Yorkers to peacefully assemble, according to an independent report from the city’s Department of Investigation.

The report calls on the NYPD to clarify and expand on its protest policing guidelines by reevaluating the role of the notorious Strategic Response Group, while consolidating existing police oversight into a single agency. It stops short of faulting specific police leaders, including Commissioner Dermot Shea, for any role in the documented “deficiencies.”

The investigation, commissioned by Mayor Bill de Blasio in May, found that the NYPD lacked a clearly defined strategy for handling the mass demonstrations that roiled New York City in the days after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. Instead, the department defaulted to a haphazard application of “disorder control,” the report concluded, leading to “excessive enforcement that contributed to heightened tensions.”

Such tactics included mass arrests, baton and pepper spray use, and “kettling” — a controversial practice of encircling and trapping demonstrators, which top NYPD leaders repeatedly denied using, despite clear evidence that contradicted their claims.

In a pre-recorded statement, Mayor de Blasio said that he had read and agreed with the report.

"Its a season of reflection right now. That's what the holidays are. I'm reflecting on what happened in May and June and I look back with remorse. I wish I had done better, I want everyone to understand that," the mayor said, without specifically stating what he was apologizing for, or how he would hold the NYPD and himself accountable for those mistakes. "And I'm sorry I didn't do better and I've learned a lot of valuable lessons and I want our police department to do better, and I'm gonna insist upon that."

In one of the most striking uses of police power during the demonstrations, NYPD officers trapped more than 250 protesters who were peacefully marching in Mott Haven, brutalizing them with batons and pepper spray minutes after de Blasio’s curfew, without giving them a chance to disperse. Multiple people were hospitalized and more than 60 were injured in the attack, according to Human Rights Watch, which described the response as a clear and unprovoked violation of international human rights law in their own report.

The DOI also singled out the Mott Haven response, noting that while the NYPD may have had specific intelligence to warrant heightened concerns, “its mass arrest of protesters for curfew violations, in the absence of evidence of actual violence, was disproportionate to the circumstances.”

Mayor de Blasio had previously defended the department’s actions in Mott Haven, later noting that he would reserve judgement until the release of the DOI report.

Asked at a press conference if any of the NYPD's leadership would be reprimanded, disciplined, reassigned, or fired, Mayor de Blasio responded, "We're definitely gonna look at the actions of the individual commanders down to the precinct level. But I think it's fair to say that what's being pointed out here is not so much time for retribution honestly, but time for change."

The report also found that the NYPD’s Community Affairs Bureau, which de Blasio has long touted as a centerpiece of his policing approach, was not involved in the department’s response to the Floyd protests. An executive for the bureau told investigators that he was not contacted by police officials.

In interviews with investigators, NYPD leadership said that they “did not believe officers engaged in widespread excessive force during the protests.” Department leaders also stated that the detention of identified legal observers and street medics was authorized, and claimed that they did not witness a single instance of officers covering their badges — a claim that “strains credulity,” according to the report.

“Aspects of the NYPD’s response to Floyd protests undermine trust and their own legitimacy,” DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett said during a press conference on Friday. “The problems went beyond poor judgment or misconduct of individual officers.”

The DOI investigators spoke to Shea, Chief of Department Terence Monahan, and several other police officials for the report, but do not appear to have interviewed any protesters.

Gideon Oliver, a civil rights attorney representing a number of protesters arrested by police, whose work is cited in the DOI report, said the investigation had only gotten to the tip of the iceberg of police misconduct, and failed to offer actual solutions to the problems of over-policing.

“Municipal navel-gazing isn’t going to lead to meaningful changes or increased confidence,” he said. “That can only come from real transparency and community control — this report is neither.”

Laura Pitter, deputy director of the US program at Human Rights Watch, which issued its own report showing how the NYPD committed human rights violations in Mott Haven, agreed that the DOI’s recommendations “fall short of what is required.”

“The protesters, observers, medics and others who were beaten, pepper sprayed, and arbitrarily detained for exercising their First Amendment rights continue to be denied justice,” Pitter said. “We urge Mayor de Blasio to take urgent action to appropriately discipline those most responsible. If he fails to do so, he too should be held to account.”

In a statement, Commissioner Shea said he had reviewed the report, and planned to accept its recommendations.

“In general terms the report captured the difficult period that took place in May/June of 2020 and presents 20 logical and thoughtful recommendations that I intend to incorporate into our future policy and training,” he said.

Why The Majority Of NYPD Misconduct Complaints End Up “Unsubstantiated”

 

GOTHAMIST

BY DAVID CRUZ

AUG. 18, 2020 10:38 A.M.

 

Police officers graduating at a ceremony at the Barclays Center in 2013. ANDREW GOMBERT/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Randell Simon had just returned home after dropping his son off at school on January 9th, 2019, when he saw three plainclothes NYPD officers blocking the way to his building’s front door.

The officers were there to serve a warrant in a neighboring building. Simon, 34, said one of them, Captain William Diab, quickly became discourteous and told him, “I’ll smack the ‘F’ out of you.”

Simon said Diab, then a lieutenant, issued a threat that’s burned into his memory. “This is his exact word: ‘I'm not from this district. I don't police in this district. You'll never see me again. I'll kill you.’”

Video recovered from a security camera shows Diab, in a backwards Yankees hat, using his entire body to back Simon into a corner. Moments later, Diab grabs Simon by his coat and slams him against a stone wall, as Simon puts his hands up. Simon was arrested and charged with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.

Five months later, Simon filed a complaint against Captain Diab with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the body that investigates police misconduct.

Simon’s case languished for a year and a half, as investigators tracked down the other two officers involved in the scuffle. He took personal days off from his job as an employee with the city’s Department of Youth & Community Development so he could provide information to the CCRB.

Despite the security camera video, sworn testimony from Simon, and the fact that Simon’s charges were ultimately dismissed, the CCRB deemed Simon’s complaint “unsubstantiated” in an official determination in June. The ruling means that investigators could not produce sufficient evidence to recommend disciplinary charges against an officer to the NYPD commissioner.

The CCRB did not give Simon a reason explaining their decision.

“My heart felt broke,” said Simon. “I just feel everything was clear cut from the video, from the affidavit, from the officer, and you could see the wrongdoings, and I don't understand. What is the CCRB looking for?"

The case, one of thousands investigated by the CCRB every year, underscores the difficulty in substantiating police misconduct.

The CCRB has a relatively small staff and budget—$19 million compared to the police department’s $5 billion budget—which was recently cut even further. Some CCRB investigators are left with handling upwards of 30 cases simultaneously. Delivering the burden of proof is arduous for the complainant, who must testify in person; if no video evidence exists, their word is pitted against that of an NYPD officer.

And the NYPD has routinely stonewalled CCRB investigations, often withholding critical evidence that can advance a case, according to an investigation by ProPublica. In some instances, the NYPD redacts or withholds names of potential witnesses on records found on warrants, arrests records, documents listing who was in station house calls, and injury officer reports, said the report. More recently, the NYPD has not complied with requests to obtain body-worn cameras from uniformed officers, with hundreds of requests to obtain videos for investigations still pending.

From 2010 through 2019, the CCRB reached conclusions in 17,325 complaints, with 8,775 of those complaints deemed unsubstantiated, according to figures provided by the agency, making it the most common determination. This contrasts with 2,933 cases deemed substantiated over that same time period.

Also within that same period, there were also 1,525 cases listed as unfounded, meaning there was enough evidence to show the allegation made against an officer didn’t happen, and 2,939 cases where the officer was exonerated, where the actions committed by the officer were lawful. The remainder of the cases, 1,153, were deemed “MOS Unidentified,” in which an officer alleged to have committed misconduct was not properly identified to proceed with a disciplinary action.

The time and effort required to pursue a case often cause complainants to just give up. In the latest CCRB annual report, 49 percent of all cases filed in the first half of 2019 were “truncated,” meaning someone does not follow through on their complaint, decides to withdraw their case, or cannot be tracked down by investigators.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who has pushed for increasing the CCRB’s powers, filed a CCRB complaint in 2011 after he and activist Kirsten John Foy were arrested at the West Indian Day Parade.

Williams, who at the time was a Councilmember representing East Flatbush, Marine Park, and Midwood, was detained and held by police after he and Foy were crossing through a barricaded sidewalk. Williams and Foy—both Black—were soon met by police officers who pushed them to the ground. They were both detained but not charged with a crime. Williams and Foy still pursued a complaint with the CCRB, claiming the officers had used excessive force.

Even with video capturing a portion of Foy’s arrest, the CCRB exonerated the officers in Williams’ case and unsubstantiated the claims in Foy’s case.

"It showed the strength of the officer's word,” said Williams of the experience. “I was a City Councilmember and my word didn't mean anything.”

In cases without any video evidence, the unsubstantiation rate was 51 percent, while in cases where there was video, it was 44 percent, according to a recent CCRB study.

But even if there is video, an officer can dispute what’s on screen, which could then trigger an unsubstantiated complaint, according to Jenzo DuQue, a former CCRB investigator who serves as an investigator for Neighborhood Defender Service in Harlem.

DuQue recalled that the police would argue that the video was inconclusive or that it “doesn’t feel like a representation” of what actually happened, which would then increase the chance that a complaint would be unsubstantiated.

“Part of the circumstances are just officer perception,” said DuQue. “And so they're going to make decisions or justifications, based on that additional information that isn't readily available [to investigators].”

Body-worn cameras, which all uniformed NYPD patrol officers were equipped with in the beginning of 2019, appear to help the CCRB reach determinations in cases. Between May 2017 and June 2019, the CCRB reached determinations in 76 percent of complaints with body-worn camera evidence, compared to 39 percent when no video was available, according to a recent survey.

But the CCRB does not have direct access to body camera footage—they must request it from the NYPD. Currently there is a backlog of roughly 700 requests for this footage.

Adding to the bureaucracy is the fact that the CCRB—composed of mayoral, New York City Council, and NYPD appointees—does not have final say over whether officers should face discipline. That powers lies with the NYPD Commissioner.

“Investigators have no real control over the outcome of a case,” said DuQue. “The board decides whether misconduct occurred and whether to recommend discipline, but ultimate authority falls to the commissioner, who can similarly flip allegations and disagree with the board's findings, so there are many layers between investigation and determination/outcome.”

An unsubstantiated complaint can also happen when an officer fails to appear at their CCRB interview, a requirement by the New York City Charter that hasn’t been enforced by the NYPD, according to Maryanne Kaishian, a defense attorney with Brooklyn Defender services, who is familiar with Simon’s case.

“If the police fail to show up, fail to explain the actions that they were taking, fail to explain what it is that they were doing in the neighborhood or why it was they approached somebody, the CCRB may be unable to determine whether NYPD rules were broken. Since an unsubstantiated claim means that the CCRB cannot reach a determination, this may be the result of police refusing to cooperate,” said Kaishian.

Ethan Teicher, a spokesperson for the CCRB, said that the board’s mandate is that a “preponderance of the evidence” must be collected to prove a substantiated or exonerated case, adhering to the rules presented in the NYPD patrol guidebook. In a statement, Teicher acknowledged that “current unsubstantiation rates are a problem for New York City that the CCRB is committed to solving.”

“In fact, reducing the unsubstantiation rate is a significant reason why the Agency continues to push the NYPD to address the backlog of body-worn camera requests,” said Teicher. “New Yorkers need the CCRB to be able to make fact-based investigative findings. It is crucial that the CCRB have access to as much evidence as possible in order to carry out its investigative mandate.”

Unsubstantiated complaints—which remain on an officer’s record—hold some usefulness when establishing a pattern of alleged misconduct, according to Molly Griffard, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society.

"It can be telling when there's a pattern of complaints against an individual officer or a precinct,” said Griffard. “It doesn't tell you for sure that [an unsubstantiated case] happened, but it does tell you that a number of people have complained about a similar type of misconduct that this officer or precinct are engaging in, which I think can then tell the public here are some of the problems with policing and also should be tell our lawmakers about what's going on with policing and what and public perceptions of policing as well."

A trove of CCRB data recently published by ProPublica reveals a portion of Captain Diab’s record, showing 44 complaints filed against him, in which 22 were unsubstantiated, 12 exonerated, two unfounded, and seven substantiated, requiring retraining. The dataset does include the five unsubstantiated complaints and one exoneration involving Simon’s case against Diab. Those include discourtesy, abuse of authority, and force allegations. (You can read more about those newly released police disciplinary records here).

"He has a very long record of complaints and it’s baffling that the city has him still being a police officer," said Simon. "How can we get the bad apples out if the CCRB finds every officer is cleared of doing their wrongdoing? What other way do we get the bad apples out?”

Gothamist asked the NYPD if they or Captain Diab wanted to comment for this story. They have not responded to Gothamist's request. A request for comment to the Captains Endowment Association was not returned.

A year and a half since his incident, Simon continues to deal with the aftermath of the confrontation that’s left him wary of the police and a system he thought would help him.

"This affected not only my life, it affected my kid's life. Every time I go out of the house, my son says, 'Daddy, oh, you see police, run,'" said Simon.

His recommendation when filing a complaint? “Don’t bother.”

GET YOUR KNEE OFF OUR NECKS

A teenager outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal, taking a knee on a block crowded with protesters, relished the feeling lost these last months — of being part of something.

A 23-year-old art teacher, Evan Woodard, was thrilled to see his city at the fore of a nationwide event. “I’m proud to call myself a New Yorker,” he said. “This is everyone’s city.”

People who just last month were dutifully keeping behind doors and masks have turned out by the tens of thousands in the past week to gather in the streets and shout to be heard.

The lurch between twin crises with opposing aims — isolation and assembly — has been jolting, and to many, positively liberating. People feeling penned for months, then pushed past a tipping point by images of a man’s life ending under an officer’s knee, have surged to the streets — for some, mask be damned — to be part of something.For those coming out day after day to protest, marching with friends and strangers under cheers from the open windows above feels something like normal. If sheltering at home was a reaction to a threat, this is the opposite — action.

Simonez Dega, 23, a waiter at Olive Garden at a protest near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, welcomed the change from making music alone in his apartment to marching elbow to elbow. “It feels truly warm,” he said. “It felt like we were all bees in the hive. Now it’s like, that’s another bee, that’s another person that is here for the same reason. It’s a different energy.”

Mr. Dega added: “As a black male, I had to go out and protest.”

The demonstrations would consume the city at any time, but they arrive at a particularly anxious moment, with virus restrictions about to start easing after months of a curve-flattening quarantine.

Even as new cases ebb, New York City remains the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. More than 200,000 residents have contracted the virus and 21,000 have died, or are presumed to have died, of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

More than 2,000 people have been arrested. The arrests continued on Thursday, with thousands of people still on the streets past the curfew, and confrontations with the police again flaring up.

Encircling of Peaceful Protesters Shows Aggressive Shift by N.Y. Police

Officers have charged and swung batons at demonstrators after curfew with seemingly little provocation. The mayor said he would review any reports of inappropriate enforcement.

NY TIMES

It was about 8:45 p.m. in Brooklyn on Wednesday, 45 minutes past the city’s curfew, when a peaceful protest march encountered a line of riot police, near Cadman Plaza.

Hundreds of demonstrators stood there for 10 minutes, chanting, arms raised, until their leaders decided to turn the group around and leave the area.

What they had not seen was that riot police had flooded the plaza behind them, engaging in a law enforcement tactic called kettling, which involves encircling protesters so that they have no way to exit from a park, city block or other public space, and then charging them and making arrests.

The kettling operations carried out by the city’s police after curfew on recent nights have become among the most unsettling symbols of the department’s use of force against peaceful protests, which has touched off a fierce backlash against Mr. Blasio and Mr. Shea.

In the past several days, New York Times journalists covering the protests have seen officers repeatedly charge at demonstrators after curfew with seemingly little provocation, shoving them onto sidewalks, striking them with batons and using other aggressive tactics.

In an interview on WNYC on Friday, the mayor said the encircling of protesters was sometimes necessary for public safety. “I don’t want to see protesters hemmed in if they don’t need to be,” he said, but he added “that sometimes there’s a legitimate problem and it’s not visible to protesters.”

Some protest organizers urge crowds to go home. Others marched on, and were arrested.

The protests that have filled New York’s streets in recent days entered their second week on Friday with thousands of people gathering at sites across the city for demonstrations, marches and vigils that continued to be overwhelmingly peaceful.

While several groups defied a citywide curfew again and risked encountering the forceful tactics the police had used the two previous nights to clear out those who did not disperse, other rallies broke up voluntarily as 8 p.m. approached amid intermittent rain.

“Everybody go home,” organizers of a group on Manhattan’s Upper West Side implored the crowd as a number of officers approached shortly before the curfew took effect. “It’s a wrap.”

In Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood, where mass arrests were narrowly averted on Thursday night, one protester announced to the crowd, “You are nothing less to the cause if you’re not here after curfew.”In Brooklyn, a line of officers blocked hundreds of protesters at Grand Army Plaza, while dozens of patrol cars kept them from retreating. The protesters stopped and raised their arms, led in front by a line of cyclists who had been acting as a buffer.

Randy Williams, 38, stepped forward and began to talking to some of the officers, working with other organizers to try to ease a tense situation. The group negotiated for the protesters to be able to leave peacefully, without arrests.

“This is the first protest people have not feared for their life,” Mr. Williams said. “The protest has ended for the night. We will respectfully go home now.”

But less than an hour later, the police again employed the more forceful tactics they had used on recent nights, targeting a group that had left Grand Army Plaza.

Officers appeared to surround a number of protesters on Nostrand Avenue. Videos showed officers aggressively pushing back a man who was filming them as they made arrests, then chasing him with a baton and shoving a reporter who was filming while the man was taken into custody.

On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, police blocked a march that started near Mayor Bill de Blasio’s official residence and arrested around 20 people, rushing at some and forcing them to the ground.

The night’s relative calm came on a day that started with the mayor continuing to defend the police’s actions in breaking up demonstrations, even as videos and photos showed officers employing aggressive and sometimes violent tactics to do so.

“What I saw overwhelmingly, and have continued to see, is peaceful protest being respected on both sides,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news briefing.

But with criticism of the mayor mounting — including from Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, who had helped the tension in Clinton Hill on Thursday — he said for the first time that some officers would be disciplined, and suspended, for their treatment of protesters.

Late Friday, several were.

In a statement released late Friday, the commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, said that one officer had been suspended after video emerged of him pushing a woman to the ground in Brooklyn on May 29. In addition, the commissioner said, a supervisor would be transferred as a result of the incident.

An officer involved in a separate incident the next day was also suspended for pulling down a man’s face mask and then spraying the man in the face with pepper spray, the commissioner said.

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The mayor also continued to defend the curfew against calls that it be abandoned. He said it would be enforced through Monday morning, when the city is scheduled to begin reopening after a lengthy shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. de Blasio’s affirmation of the curfew came even as the Manhattan district attorney joined his counterparts in Brooklyn and the Bronx in saying he would not prosecute those who were arrested during the protests for low-level offense like unlawful assembly.

Commissioner Shea, who has condemned the killing of Mr. Floyd, apologized at a news conference on Thursday for any instances of misconduct his officers had committed.

But he also demanded that demonstrators stop insulting and attacking his officers and he warned that anti-police rhetoric could lead to continued violence against those he oversees.

“For our part in the damage to civility, for our part in racial bias, in excessive force, unacceptable behavior, unacceptable language and many other mistakes, we are human,” he said. “I am sorry. Are you?”

At his news conference, Mr. Shea ticked off ways in which he said the police had been attacked over the last week and said “anarchists” armed with dangerous weapons had tried to undermine otherwise productive protests.

Late Friday, he sought to provide evidence for his assertion, posting photos on Twitter of items he said had been seized from people who were arrested at a protest in the Bronx Thursday night.“These are not the tools of peaceful demonstrators,” he wrote. They were, he continued, “the tools of criminals bent on causing mayhem & hijacking what we all know is a worthwhile cause.”The items included handcuffs, a backpack, lighter fluid, gloves, a pocketknife, a hammer and a wrench.

District attorneys in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx will not prosecute people arrested and accused of low-level offenses in the protests.

Since last week, more than 2,000 people have been arrested in the city on charges like disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, unlawful assembly, assault on a police officer and burglary, according to the police and prosecutors.

Protesters rallied at a Brooklyn jail where a prisoner was pepper-sprayed and died this week.

There were more than 1,000 people in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn on Friday evening at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal jail where, the authorities say, guards pepper-sprayed a prisoner early Wednesday. He was found unconscious and later died, officials said.

“We see you,” one person in the crowd shouted. “We hear you,” another said, as detainees pounded on the jail windows. “You are not alone,” the crowd chanted again and again.

The death on Wednesday of the prisoner, Jamel Floyd, has become another flash point amid the protests that have continued for more than a week across the United States over police brutality and institutional racism, including in the criminal-justice system.

Mr. Floyd, a 35-year-old black man who was serving a state prison sentence for burglary, had been moved to the Brooklyn jail in October, the federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement on Wednesday

.

The guards used the pepper spray on him after he became increasingly disruptive and potentially harmful to others, the statement said. He barricaded himself in his cell and was breaking the cell-door window with a metal object, the statement said.

Mr. Floyd’s family has challenged the official account.

More police violence occurs during protests over police violence.

As protests over the death of George Floyd sweep the nation, the demonstrations have revealed powerful moments of peaceful protest and in some cases among police officers, who have been seen taking a knee in solidarity, reading the names of police brutality victims out loud or quietly crying alongside protesters.

But the protests have also revealed widespread incidents of police aggression, documented with the same tool that captured Mr. Floyd’s death under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis: video.

In Buffalo, two police officers were suspended without pay after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester, who was hospitalized with a head injury. In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Miami Herald reporters filmed officers who were shooting a nonviolent protester in the head with foam rubber bullets, fracturing her eye socket. Cellphone videos show New York City police officers beating unarmed protesters and sideswiping demonstrators with opened squad car doors.

Captured by bystanders and sometimes shown on live television, the episodes have occurred in cities large and small, in the heat of mass protests and in their quiet aftermath. A compilation posted on Twitter by a North Carolina lawyer included over 300 clips by Friday morning.

The episodes have emerged over nearly two weeks of largely peaceful demonstrations in at least 600 cities across America, as thousands of people filled the streets in historic protests against systemic racism and police brutality.

Authorities in the city of Las Cruces in southern New Mexico announced on Friday that a police officer would be fired and charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the killing of a man who fled from a traffic stop.

The man, Antonio Valenzuela, 40, died on Feb. 29. The Las Cruces Police Department said he had an open warrant because of a parole violation, and was tased twice by officers while running away after being pulled over. Officer Christopher Smelser then used a chokehold technique on Mr. Valenzuela.

The Las Cruces medical examiner’s office determined this week that Mr. Valenzuela died from the injuries caused by being asphyxiated, the department said.

The death of Mr. Valenzuela, a painter and father of four, has resonated across New Mexico, which was already grappling with some of the highest rates of fatal shootings by police officers anywhere in the United States.

Involuntary manslaughter is a fourth-degree felony. Officer Smelser is also in the process of being fired from the force, said Dan Trujillo, a police spokesman. Officer Smelser could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday, and it was unclear whether he had a lawyer. 

The message from the president is to dominate the streets with force. The message from many of their chiefs and mayors is to tolerate, connect and empathize. The message on the streets, at times, is that they are part of the problem. The message from the news media is watch what you say and do.

In St. Louis on Monday night, four officers were struck by gunfire in a shootout between gunmen at a protest and the police. In Las Vegas, an officer was put on life support after he was shot near the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino as police forces tried to disperse crowds that had hit them with bottles and rocks. In Buffalo, the driver of an S.U.V. sped through a line of law enforcement officers in riot gear, injuring two of them in an episode caught on video.

But the outrage over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis has upended that notion, inciting social unrest and violence that has put urban and suburban police departments across the country on alert. It has been a challenge for officers, at a time when many are also confronting the coronavirus.

“These type of protests take a significant toll on an officer’s mental wellness, and they add so much stress,” said Manny Ramirez, a sergeant with the Fort Worth Police Department and the president of the police officers’ union. “This is Fort Worth, Texas, 1,000 miles away, but yet these officers have become targets for that rage.”

Sgt. Ramirez, 35, was in a command post on Sunday when protesters began hurling frozen water bottles and rocks at officers. One officer was struck on the elbow with a projectile. Another broke his leg while chasing a looter. “There’s got to be some way to ensure that going forward we can have something constructive come out of this,” he said.

“I’ve gone home once in the last four days,” said a Los Angeles officer watching the crowd months after having the coronavirus. “My girlfriend had to drop off clothes so I could change. It’s been hell, for everybody. Monsters and Red Bull, that’s the only thing that’s keeping me up.”

In Austin, Texas, a 20-year-old African-American protester was in critical condition after he was shot in the head with a beanbag round fired by a police officer on Sunday. A protester standing next to the man had thrown objects at the police, and in response an officer struck the victim instead. Others hit by similar police-fired rounds include a woman giving medical assistance and a pregnant African-American woman.

In many ways, the police response to what is happening on the streets illustrates a kind of post-Ferguson era of policing. Officers — not only chiefs but even the rank and file — have embraced the demonstrations and aligned themselves so much with protesters that they march alongside them. In some parts of the country, chiefs have become more politically outspoken and more emotional than they have been in decades.

The N.F.L. commissioner said the league should have listened to black players’ concerns earlier.

After President Trump renewed criticism of N.F.L. players protesting during the national anthem, Commissioner Roger Goodell delivered his strongest support yet for their right to demonstrate to fight racism and police brutality.

In a swift response to a video montage that featured star players asking the league to address systemic racism, Goodell said he apologized for not listening to the concerns of African-American players earlier and said he supported the players’ right to protest peacefully.

During the 2016 season, Colin Kaepernick started the movement within the league when he knelt to call attention to racial injustice and violence by police, but no team has offered him a contract since then.

Goodell’s comments were diametrically opposed to the president, who spoke out to defend New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who said this week that it was disrespectful to kneel during the pregame playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Brees apologized on Thursday after immediate backlash. But the president said on Twitter that Brees should not have backtracked and that people should stand when the anthem is played. On Friday night, Brees directed an Instagram post to the president.

“We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities,” Brees said. “We did this back in 2017, and regretfully I brought it back with my comments this week.”

More than any other major sports league, the N.F.L. has wrestled in recent years with the issue of race, the lack of African-Americans and other people of color in positions of power in the league and the rights of players to protest social issues on the field. While three-quarters of the league’s players are African-American, nearly every team owner is white and several of the most prominent owners are strong supporters of the president.