Opinion ID: 4669093
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Early Morning Incident

Text: At trial, the parties testified regarding two confrontations between Tardif and NYPD officers that occurred during Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in the early morning and afternoon of March 21, 2012. The previous evening, around 7 eighty to one-hundred protestors encamped inside Union Square Park, and about seventy police officers in the area monitored the demonstration. Around midnight, a line of police officers moved southward through the park ordering, and sometimes physically moving, protestors out. After clearing the area, officers placed metal barricades along the park’s southern stairs, with about forty police officers stationed on the inside of the barricades and the group of eighty to onehundred protestors congregated outside along the 14th Street plaza. The remaining thirty or so officers stationed themselves about ten feet to the east and west of the protestors. Among these officers was Sergeant (now Lieutenant) Mattera, who was deployed to Union Square Park for crowd control. After being removed from the park, the demonstrators, including Tardif, began shaking the metal barricades and yelling at the officers. At around 2:00 a.m., police officers told protestors that sanitation workers would confiscate and discard any unattended property. Daniel Shockley, a volunteer legal observer with a nonprofit organization, and Stephanie Shockley, his wife, testified that officers moved into the crowd and, in some cases, confiscated items that people were standing next to and, in other cases, grabbed items out of people’s hands and passed them 8 to sanitation workers for disposal. According to Tardif, one officer confiscated her backpack. Tardif testified that, after confiscating unattended property, the officers on both sides of the protestors moved their lines inward, causing the protestors to back into each other. According to Tardif, an unidentified officer then came through the police line and shoved her in the chest with his baton, causing her to hit the ground. Tardif testified that, as she rose to her feet and “took a couple of steps,” Sergeant Mattera “quickly” approached her and grabbed her shirt. Id. at 893-94. Tardif—then a 23-year-old, standing 5’1’’, and weighing 175 pounds— testified that Sergeant Mattera “twisted and threw [her] away from him” onto the ground. Id. at 894. As Tardif hit the ground, her head struck the pavement, causing her to sustain a concussion and lose consciousness. Tardif testified that, prior to her interaction with Sergeant Mattera, she “had not put [her] hands on any other officer” and was six or seven feet from the closest officer when he grabbed her. Id. at 897. Daniel Shockley testified similarly. He stated that, about ten feet from him, he observed Tardif “just standing with other protestors a few feet away from the police” and that he “saw an officer lunge out of the group of police officers and 9 grab” Tardif. Id. at 703-04. According to Shockley, Sergeant Mattera “spun [Tardif] around” and “threw her backwards.” Id. at 704. He further testified that Tardif “landed on her back” and the back of her head “hit the sidewalk.” Id. at 705-06. Shockley then stated that, after this confrontation, protesters began yelling for a medic, but Sergeant Mattera did not move toward Tardif or attempt to render any aid after pushing her. For his part, Sergeant Mattera testified to a different version of events. According to Sergeant Mattera, Tardif suddenly appeared in his field of vision and “looked as if she was about to run into the back of [another] police officer.” Id. at 797. It also “looked like she had her hands on the back of [a] police officer.” Id. at 776. In an effort to “prevent the situation from further escalating,” id. at 801, he “instinctively” grabbed Tardif and “pull[ed] her off to the side,” id. at 797, causing her body to “twist[] around” toward him, id. at 781. Sergeant Mattera further testified that his “intention was to pull her off to the side and get her away from the police officer that she was running into,” id. at 800, but “she was a lot heavier than [he] expected” and, during this motion, he “lost grip of her and she fell down,” id. at 797. According to Sergeant Mattera, he did not intend for Tardif to fall to the ground and was unable to break her fall. He also testified that he did 10 not believe that he “could have used less force to accomplish [his] goal.” Id. at 80203. He further explained that he did not place Tardif under arrest because he “didn’t feel like she knew what she was doing.” Id. at 801. He thought “she was running up to see what was going on” and it was a “coincidence that . . . the one person that she ran behind was a uniformed police officer.” 3 Id. at 801. Shortly after the incident, an ambulance arrived and Tardif was thereafter transported to Beth Israel Hospital at 4:00 a.m., where she was diagnosed with and treated for a concussion, and given a soft cast and crutches for a sprained ankle.