Detectives monitoring 35 anarchists
NEW YORK - NYPD detectives will be carrying photographs of 35 anarchists to try to squelch protesters hellbent on disrupting the city Tuesday, the New York Daily News has learned.
During the past 18 months, undercover detectives from the NYPD's elite intelligence division have infiltrated the meetings of anarchist groups such as Greene Dragon and Black Bloc.
That investigation led cops to identify 35 men and women who have made direct threats of violence against the city or participated in extreme civil disobedience in other parts of the country, several NYPD sources said.
"As we feel they are getting (ready to do damage) ... we are going to take them," said one investigator.
Members of the A31 Action Coalition plan Tuesday to hit numerous convention-related events and certain businesses identified by anarchists as "war profiteers." After a day of anarchy, they plan to converge on Madison Square Garden at 7 p.m.
Police sources said some of the hard-core anarchists who traditionally wear black will wear lighter-colored clothes Tuesday to avoid suspicion.
"We are prepared to arrest anyone who poses a danger," NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Paul Browne said Monday. "There are some individuals we are more concerned about than others. But we apprehend people only for arrestable offenses."
The News reported last week that 50 of the country's leading anarchists were expected to be in the city for the convention, including hard-core extremists with histories of violent and disruptive tactics.
On Sunday, 240 protesters were arrested, including 10 Black Bloc members busted for setting fire to a papier-mache dragon along the march route, injuring a cop. The woman who set the blaze is still at large.
Some of those arrested were hit with high bails Monday. Yusuke Banno, 21, was held on $200,000 bond on assault and a string of other charges stemming from a scuffle that injured the cop as the dragon blazed near 34th Street.
Dozens of other protesters - some of whom were grimy from sleeping on the floor of a makeshift police holding area on a Hudson River pier - were freed without bond.
But obscenities flew in the courtroom when Criminal Court Judge Patricia Nunez set bail for three other men held on charges of trying to block cops from arresting Banno and others in the fire stunt.
"The allegations are serious enough," Nunez explained.
___
(New York Daily News correspondent Barbara Ross contributed to this report.)
___
© 2004, New York Daily News.
Visit the Daily News online at http://www.nydailynews.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.