vigilant TV

NY Times says New York City Hall has tacitly acknowledged it erred in preventing an anti-war rally on February 15.

Instead of permitting a march, the city insisted on a “stationary rally,” with protesters confined to “pens” behind metal barricades. By day’s end, the Police Department was hard-pressed to call this its shining hour. There were too many credible reports of officers’ behaving badly, even brutally, to shrug them off as the whining of a few malcontents.

Clearly, the mayor thought harder about police procedures the next time a big protest rolled around, on March 22, with the war in its first days. He reversed course and approved a march, a protest that went off largely without a hitch. Law, order and free speech were all preserved. Simply by shifting gears, the administration would seem to have acknowledged, however silently, that it had misstepped in February. – NY Times, Police Lessons in Free Speech and Missteps.