DOWNTOWN — NYPD officials responded to a video released Monday by the hacker group Anonymous, which the group claims is police department internal footage of the raid on Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park last November.
The video, which is a string of shadowy night-vision movements of groups of police in riot gear, opens with a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, which was popular with Occupy Wall Street protesters, and a police uniform. He describes the NYPD's attempts to push out any media with videocameras from the park prior to the raid.
"'Purports' is the operative word," said Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne in a statement Monday. "Contrary to the narrators account, there are scores of protesters who took video but no attempts by the police to confiscate it."
"I saw one protester standing near me who videotaped the same opening scene in a YouTube video of officers sawing a chain that two protesters used to chain themselves to a tree in the park," Browne added in a statement.
The man on camera identifies himself as Technical Assistance Response Unit Detective Keith Livingston. Browne said the man in the video's opening sequence is not a member of the NYPD, adding that his uniform is clearly bogus. However, he said the computer-generated audio on the video "sounds like it may have been taken from material turned over to plaintiffs who are suing the police."
The video shows police dragging and tussling with protesters and sawing a chain protesters used to attach themselves to a tree.
Anonymous narrates over the video that police arrested protesters who tried to film the raid and kicked journalists out of the park.
Browne said that television media were allowed to line up on the west side of the park along West Street to document the removal.
While reporters were allowed to record the removal from certain areas outside the park, a handful of journalists and photographers were arrested during the raid at the perimeter of the park and during protest later in the day.
