What Bloomberg Did to Peaceful Protesters
Michael Bloomberg has come under attack for his past comments about women and support for stop-and-frisk policing. But his rivals have yet to raise a lesser-known part of his record that could be as damaging: When last in power, Bloomberg presided over the mistreatment of Democrats who sought to protest Republicans, violating the constitutional rights of hundreds of dissenters.
At the time, Bloomberg was a first-term Republican mayor of New York. The GOP hoped that holding the 2004 Republican National Convention in the city, a site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, would help reelect George W. Bush. Protests in deep-blue New York were inevitable. Bloomberg had months to prepare.
[Annie Lowrey: Just how rich is Michael Bloomberg?]
And he did. Nearly as soon as the convention later :
