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ANGER MANAGEMENT
12.23.14
The Monsters Who Screamed for Dead Cops
A little over a week ago, a group of people marched down the streets of Manhattan and called for police to be killed. But exactly who cried out for violence has been something of a mystery as New York goes through its most tense moment in more than a decade.
Evidence from photos, videos, social-media posts and interviews suggest that a group—the New York chapter of the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee, or TMOC—might have been involved. There is no definitive proof that TMOC led the call for dead cops, but there is a web of circumstantial ties with the group at its center.
TMOC’s own social-media posts put them near the scene of the cry for police blood. Some of the slogans used that night—including “arms up, shoot back!”—are the same as the ones used by TMOC. And recently TMOC has been soliciting money for the legal defense of people it calls its “comrades” who were arrested for allegedly assaulting police officers on the Brooklyn Bridge, just hours after the “dead cops” chant was recorded.
But the group wasn’t just hurling violent slogans. The same night the “dead cops” chant was recorded, two police officers were attacked on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The bedrock of TMOC’s politics, judged by their social-media output, is hatred for police and endorsement of violence against them. The group seems to blend “black bloc” anarchist street violence with social-media campaigns. Keeping their organizing online, members can plan and incite without coming out from behind their digital masks until they hit the streets. (The group did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
Finding TMOC started with an interview of the man who shot the video showing marchers chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!”
It’s impossible to make out any faces in the video, which was shot from a roof at night. The person who took the footage didn’t know anything about the people involved. He told me that all he could see was the banner carried at the front of the group which read, “No Cops No Prisons.”
An Instagram of that “No Cops No Prisons” banner displays a number of hashtags, including #turnuptheanger, a hashtag associated with TMOC. (The first mention of #turnuptheanger on Twitter, for example, directs to a Facebook page hosted by the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee NYC.)
It’s not the only apparent link between the “dead cops” chant and TMOC. At the beginning of the video and before the call to kill police, you can hear what sounds like, “arms up, shoot back!” That slogan appears on TMOC’s Twitter account.
The day before the December 13th, Millions March, a nationwide protest concerned with racial justice and policing, TMOC began planning a march within the march using “Turn up the anger” as their rallying cry. The hashtag also served another purpose. People using it effectively opened a secret channel on an a public platform. Anyone who typed #turnuptheanger into Twitter could post photos or write messages only seen by others who knew the hashtag.
Facebook’s digital flyer for “turn up the anger” has 1,900 invites, 356 people reporting they attended and 44 listed as maybes. A small group but one whose insurgent mentality, targeting peaceful protesters along with police, gave it an outsize impact.
Ashoka Jegroo is a freelance reporter and graduate of the City University of New York’s journalism school. He has been attending the protests in New York and documented the #turnuptheanger contingent of the Millions March.
By email he told me, “the #turnuptheanger hashtag was just used by the more radical wing of the movement that day.” Jegroo said he has “no idea” who started the #turnuptheanger hashtag but knew of the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee, which he has seen at past protests. TMOC is “just one of many groups—but definitely one of the more radical groups—in this movement who organize actions,” Jegroo said.
“I saw the ‘dead cops’ chant on YouTube,” Jegroo said, “but I don’t remember being around when it happened.”
Later that night, that same black-and-red banner would be seen again—in the column of marchers chanting for dead cops.
As the #turnuptheanger contingent got moving, they started with calls to “off the pigs.” Then a tweet records that “black bloc”—a name anarchists often use for themselves—“smashed up a cop car with a cop in it, forced to abandoned car.” That tweet came from Shay Horse, whose bio lists him as an independent photojournalist with ties to Occupy Wall Street. In another post from the same night, Horse uses “Black bloc” to refer to marchers carrying the “No Cops No Prisons” banner who ”broke threw [sic] the barricades and are throwing trash and glass bottles in the street.”
Another anarchist-leaning Twitter account also attributed the ugliest anti-police rhetoric to the #turnuptheanger contingent at the protests.
In this exchange, @Foundersgirl blames “Obama supporters” at “Sharpton’s rallies” for “death to cops” calls. @Anarchonatheist—who had earlier said “those pigs were thugs” about the murder of two police officers—corrects her. “That chant was done by the #turnuptheanger contingent at the millions march,” @anarchonatheist tells @Foundersgirl.
The owner of the original video of the “dead cops” chant told me it was taken on 32nd Street between 5th and Madison avenues.
TMOC’s own social-media posts never place it on that block. But they do put it right around the corner near the time the video was shot.
A tweet from another account using the #turnuptheanger hashtag puts the group two blocks away from the location of the “dead cops” chant.
If they were involved, it’s not clear whether they were acting alone or in concert with other groups.
Whether screaming for murder of civil-service workers constitutes incitement or an anarchist group’s full use of free speech is another open question—the New York Civil Liberties Union didn’t respond to a request for comment in time to be included in this story.
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