How should the NYPD handle celebrations turning into chaos?
When I was a New York City cop, I would always wish the Yankees bad luck in the playoffs. It wasn’t just my family’s lineage as Mets fans and the vengeful suffering that wrought; in the small corner of my mind that concerned baseball, it would always be 1986 and the Mets would be world champions. I had been a rookie officer in Brooklyn when the Yankees won the World Series in 1998, and we were deployed to Bay Ridge to quell the “celebrations.” We chased violent drunks around all night as they tried to destroy whatever could be lifted, thrown or stomped on, fought with each other for no reason, and sped up and down the avenues hanging out of cars, screaming. As cops, we were either curmudgeons telling people to stop being so damn happy, or we were going toe-to-toe with the U.S. version of soccer hooligans. I will never forget the sight that night of a couch coming out of the window of a third-floor apartment, on fire. I took no special joy in chasing frenzied sports fans down the street with my baton cocked over my head. So, selfishly, I hoped the Yankees lost.
This kind of cop logic was on full display this week when the Knicks came back from a 29-point deficit that left them a game away from winning the NBA Finals for the first time in 53 years. A flurry of terrible calls by the refs early on left millions of fans furious and thousands on the verge of a riot. The improbable turnaround that followed catalyzed this energy into a drunken melee on a grand scale, the pointlessness of which was on display in the destruction of a yellow taxi. The car wasn’t symbolic of the referees who made the abominable calls, nor was it the team cab of the San Antonio Spurs. It was a car driven by someone whose livelihood has been mostly supplanted by Uber and Lyft drivers, who will soon enough be replaced by robots. It was pure felony criminal mischief.
As the majority of fans celebrated lawfully, some fought each other and destroyed street signs, magazine bins and store windows. Dozens were arrested, and 10 police officers were injured. In advance of the next game — Saturday night, in San Antonio — the NYPD has ordered thousands of extra officers to come in on their day off.
In the grand scheme of enforcing social cooperation in public spaces, the crowds that celebrate historic sports victories deserve a lot of leeway. When I was the commander of the West Village’s police precinct in 2011, New York state legalized gay marriage, and I let an ecstatic crowd block traffic and sidewalks, drink in the street and make a deafening amount of noise for hours, all in violation of the law. It was a momentous night in one of the world's epicenters of gay rights, a dream come true for so many people. Sports aren’t the same as human equality, but in the same way, the city needs to loosen the normal standards of disorderly conduct when New York’s beloved Knicks tee up to win the championship for the first time in most of our lives.
This doesn’t mean it should be a free-for-all, and it’s the job of policing to prevent that. New Year's Eve at Times Square, nearly all parades and countless political protests end without incident because they are well policed from the outset, long before a tipping point takes hold, setting a standard that nearly everyone respects. Where the biggest crowds will form during a game isn’t a mystery, and the police have the prerogative of setting up pens, controlling access, regulating traffic, staying highly visible and dispersing crowds shortly after the game ends. Mobile field forces can respond to disorder throughout the city and swiftly make arrests before the violent energy of small groups becomes contagious.
This point is critical, because what we saw after the last Knicks game had a classic hallmark of a riot: a group of people eager to use the cover of a big, emotional crowd to engage in violence and property crime. Then, other people, riled up but followers by nature, take the cue and join in only because they have an example to follow. When police come in fast and take the opportunists away in handcuffs, it chastens the crowd and shows followers what the boundaries are. In the way that going after the biggest bully in the playground keeps the wannabe bullies at bay, aggressively policing the first people who test the NYPD’s limits will keep the rest of the crowd on the right side of a raucous celebration.
Then there is the timeless New York City wisdom of knowing when to stay home. If a sea of drunken, screaming young men isn’t your thing, then many parts of the city will be off-limits on Saturday night. Basketball is one of our most accessible sports, cutting across race, class and geography in a profound way, so this type of forbearance is a small sacrifice for the greater civic moment. And if the track record of the city’s teams is any indication, it won’t become a habitual ask.
There is one critical thing to remember in all of this: Unlike the violence at a political protest, a night of sports mayhem doesn’t run the risk of going on day after day, or metastasizing over time. The violence of the sports fan isn’t the violence of the revolutionary. Nobody comes out the day after a team wins to riot again, and if they did, nobody else would get swept up and join them. This is a temporary disorder born of joy and catharsis, not a license to take it to the streets again tomorrow. So regardless of how the Knicks do, their worst-behaving fans are a time-limited problem.
Now free from the burden of policing New York City, I hope the Knicks win (but still not the Yankees). If they do, destructive opportunists will try to play their hand, and I hope they get summarily arrested. I hope the people caught up in the moment control themselves, sleep it off, wake up feeling vaguely embarrassed, and tell their grandchildren about it one day. I hope New York City police do what they often excel at: controlling a huge, historic event that consumes the city for a night.
I will be staying home.
