NYPD texted one another to ‘Kick their a—’ before mass arrests at Black Lives Matter protest

Jillian Snider, a retired NYPD officer who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the 2020 demonstrations were especially emotional for police because protesters were criticizing their profession.

“People were not happy with us at that moment in time,” she said. “It only takes one extremist in that group of a thousand peaceful people to turn a situation volatile and dangerous. And that’s how we have always been trained.”

No matter what the protest is about, Snider said, police need to have good communication skills and not take protests too personally. She also said officers shouldn’t spend more than two or three years in a unit that constantly dispatches them to protests. Anyone assigned to the Strategic Response Group or another specialized unit should be able to handle themselves in any type of situation, she added.

But Snider said it’s difficult to judge the text messages out of context, without knowing the officers’ intentions. She said messages encouraging one another to “have a fun safe night,” for instance, reflect typical communications between officers trying to lighten the mood before conducting a serious job.