Protesters flash strobe lights, blare sirens and bang pots and pans outside NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea’s apartment at 2.30am in revenge for cops clearing out their encampment at City Hall
- Dozens of activists staged the 20-minute protest outside the personal residence of NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea
- The rowdy demonstrations woke up several neighbors on the Upper West Side street and left them ‘terrified’
- Protesters said the late night ‘raid’ was retaliation for police razing their ‘Occupy City Hall’ encampment
- Last week, police moved in under the cover of darkness to remove 70 remaining protesters who had been camped outside City Hall for almost a month
A group of activists have staged a rowdy early-morning protest outside the apartment of NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea as revenge for cops clearing out their encampment at City Hall.
Videos shared on social media show around two dozen demonstrators gathering outside the Upper West Side home Shea shares with his wife and children around 2.30 am Wednesday morning.
The crowd blared sirens and banged pots and pans while flashing strobe lights and laser pointers into the Commissioner’s apartment windows for around 20 minutes.
‘This is a raid, Commissioner Shea,’ the protesters were heard chanting in one clip posted by journalist Chris Gelardi.
A group of activists staged a rowdy protest outside the apartment of NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea (pictured) around 2.30 am Wednesday. It’s unclear whether the Commissioner was inside the home with his family at the time
‘If we don’t get no justice, you don’t get not sleep,’ some of the activists reportedly yelled.
It’s unclear whether Shea and his family were inside the residence at the time.
However, the disturbance did manage to wake up others in the building, with one resident telling The New York Post that they thought a fire had broken out.
‘They had a loudspeaker and they said “Wake up, wake up”. I thought there was a fire but they were just screaming for this building,’ the resident stated.
Another neighbor claimed that the loud protest ‘was actually a bit terrifying’.
‘It came in the middle of the night and out of nowhere and was hard to identify,’ they wrote on Twitter.
Videos shared on social media show around two dozen demonstrators gathering outside the Upper West Side home Shea shares with his wife and children
Video shows the crowd pointing strobe lights directly into Shea’s windows in a bid to wake him up
The demonstration garnered mixed reaction on social media, with some saying the protesters had gone too far by harassing Shea at his personal address.
One blasted the group for waking up ‘an entire apartment block as well as pets’, while others were thrilled by the idea.
‘Is the same thing happening tonight? May I get more info please. Would love to show up!’ one stated.
The loud crowd purportedly staged the demonstration as revenge for NYPD officers ‘razing their City Hall encampment’ under the cover of darkness last week.
For nearly a month, activists had been camping outside the Mayor’s office staging an ‘Occupy City Hall’ protest in a bid to have him cut the budget of the NYPD by at least $1 billion.
A line of NYPD officers dressed in riot gear cleared out the last of the Occupy City Hall protesters from their month-long encampment in lower Manhattan last Wednesday
Last Wednesday morning a line of NYPD officers dressed in riot gear cleared out the last of the protesters from the site.
Cops gave the remaining occupants 10 minutes notice, before they moved in at 3.40am.
The police pushed out around 70 remaining people – said to be a mixture of activists and homeless.
In total, seven people were taken into custody during the operation and one officer was injured after being struck by a brick.
The NYPD temporarily shut down the nearby Brooklyn Bridge while they carried out the operation.
The goal of the Occupy City Hall demonstration – similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 – had been to secure at least a $1 billion cut from the NYPD budget.
After the reform was approved by City Hall earlier this month, and signed into law by Mayor Bill de Blasio, organizers of the protests and many of its members left.
After successfully moving the crowd on, the officers then began to take down the makeshift tents and remnants of the encampment