The highest-ranking uniformed member of the NYPD, Chief of Department Terence Monahan, who knelt with protesters at the beginning of June, was one of four NYPD officers injured during protests in New York on Wednesday. Monahan and the other injured officers were marching with a pro-police group when they clashed with anti-police activists.
“Police photos of the aftermath showed a lieutenant with a bloodied face, a detective holding a bandage to his head, and a bicycle officer helping a fellow officer dress a head wound. Monahan, who last month kneeled in a show of solidarity with protesters, sustained injuries to his hand,” The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Monahan was “said to be bloodied but not seriously hurt,” ABC 7 stated, noting that a sergeant and a lieutenant who were attacked with canes and bats were transported to a hospital.
These are the injuries our officers sustained. pic.twitter.com/KI9wQKywHH
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) July 15, 2020
Bill Casey of the Retired Sergeant Association told ABC 7, “We’re fighting for unity. It just seems that there’s so much violence. And the cops are being portrayed as villains instead of what they really are, which is heroes.”
On June 1, Monahan knelt with protesters.
Highest-ranking uniformed member of the NYPD takes a knee with protesters following the death of George Floyd.
Chief of Department Terence Monahan urged demonstrators to "be safe" as he hugged them. https://t.co/dAKlPisUk6 pic.twitter.com/njjBiVSxEC
— ABC News (@ABC) June 2, 2020
Monahan stated that his kneeling was the first step in “getting this together” and “getting those groups out of here,” referring to reputed outside agitators stirring up trouble. “The people who live in New York want New York to end the violence. Get the intruders that are not from this city the h*** out of here and give us back our city.”
“We’ve had five days of war here, that needs to end. It has to end today,” he added, telling protesters, “Leave it out to those who are to cause damage and we’ll get rid of them. We’ll get rid of those that are ruining your neighborhood.”
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio praised Monahan, saying, “Terry Monahan defused a very tense situation in Washington Square Park. This is not just an average cop. He took a knee with the protesters out of respect. That’s an indelibly powerful statement.”
Monahan stated on “CBS This Morning” of the protests after the death of George Floyd, “What happened in Minnesota was an outrage, completely and totally. But 800,000 law enforcement officers around this country are paying the price for what that guy did in Minnesota.”
He then appealed to the protesters, saying, “Protest, yell, scream, let your rage out, but don’t take your rage out on the community, destroy the businesses that actually employ members of this community.”
Monahan continued, “Bottles and rocks thrown at my cops, windows being broken, stores being looted … got no place in American society … You have to look at the entire incident. You have to look at the rocks being thrown, the injuries to my officers, what happened before, what precipitated that event. Knowing that we had a commanding officer trapped in his car, his last transmission was, ‘This may be my last transmission,’ dragged out of that car. This is what’s going through a cop’s mind as he gets surrounded.”
“I would never say that we are a racist police department. Absolutely not,” he concluded. “Have incidents happened? Maybe there was a racist incident, something, and that person has been removed from this agency? Absolutely. We all care about the communities we work in. We care deeply in the minority communities, the cops that work there, each and every day.”