How to make a Molotov Cocktail, according to the NYPD.

You already know to be scared of homeless people and Black teenagers and the gangs in The Warriors, but a new threat has emerged on the mean streets of New York City: ToPo Chico sparkling seltzers.

“This is a Molotov Cocktail that was found at tonight’s protest,” the NYPD warns. “We are committed to ensuring everyone’s right to protest. Violence has no place in civic demonstration. These actions will never be tolerated & anyone bringing weapons or dangerous substances will be arrested.”

Is it though? Or is it the contents of someone’s recycling bin? New York City excels at three dimensional trash. Doesn’t this just kind of look like someone stuffed some trash into some other trash and then put it on the street? Because, if I were determined to foment revolution by throwing a Molotov cocktail, I feel like I wouldn’t just, like, forget it on the street.

There hasn’t been a single protest movement in the last 20 years in which the NYPD didn’t trample the rights of protestors, under the pretext that they pose a public danger. When protests broke out during the 2004 Republican National Convention ("Fulfilling America's Promise by Building a Safer World and a More Hopeful America.) officers forced people into a filthy warehouse on Pier 57. Others were kettled. From the Guardian:

A strange, existential drama unfolded. We couldn't leave even though we weren't charged with anything. We were told to stand still or sit down – that included little old ladies out walking their dogs and restaurant take-out guys. Cops on bicycles appeared and handcuffed us, while menacing riot police glowered from the corners. I can still remember bystanders waiting to see what would happen next, counseling us that if we all behaved, the cops would eventually let us go. It was all a terrific error, a case of mistaken identities. Good luck with that. What happened next defies imagination. Over a thousand people from all over the city were deposited at a pier, an old bus terminal, on the West Side and hustled in to a large fenced-in area with two benches and toilets for four...

They did the same thing at Occupy. I had just moved to New York and went to go smirk at the stupid hippies at Zucotti Park. But the second I showed up all of my cynicism evaporated: it was such an inspired movement, I have no words to describe it.

People shit on Occupy now. They say the nonexistent structure caused it to fizzle out, but I don’t think Bernie Sanders would have come as close to the White House without “The 99%” being thrust into the lexicon. And you can’t just gauge a movement based on it’s direct influence on policy: my favorite memory was marching past Washington Sq park and seeing the mostly homeless guys who fleece NYU students at chess join the marchers. It seems like Occupy has been relegated to the “whiny college students” bin of history, but in New York, at least, it really was race, class and age diverse.

Anyway, the police were total assholes. Actually, it was interesting. A very small minority seemed to approve of the protests—once in a while you’d see a subtly raised fist in solidarity. The majority seemed indifferent. And a sizable minority were so enraged by the protests you’d think we were threatening to Occupy their moms. They kettled demonstrators; flung people around like rag dolls; beat them with batons; made sure the plastic handcuffs really hurt; made multiple pointless arrests; pepper sprayed; beat and dragged people. It was … not productive to the NYPDs interests because people who usually never run afoul of the criminal justice system experienced a tiny sliver of it. I know multiple activists and journalists, including me, who got obsessed with criminal justice afterwards. I remember an older Black woman just yelling at the cops about stop-and-frisk (aka groping and harassment of Black and brown youth) and thinking, “Oh. That’s … a thing.” The discourse at the time had posited that people wanted cops doing racist stops for the sake of “public safety.'“ Turns out, not so much.

Fast forward to Black Lives Matter:

New York City has agreed to pay $21,500 each to hundreds of protesters who were kettled, beaten with batons, pepper sprayed, and forcefully detained by New York police officers during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in June 2020.

The settlement applies to roughly 320 people who were "detained and/or subjected to force by police" during a protest in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx on June 4, just days after George Floyd was brutally killed by Minneapolis police officers.

As protests over the brutal death of Jordan Neely erupt—right at the start of summer, to boot—the NYPD probably shouldn’t suggest that demonstrators are making bombs.