Eventually the brutality complaints ballooned to over 100. Video and images of "police officers striking demonstrators with nightsticks and kicking other apparently defenseless people while they were lying on the ground" were flashed continuously across the media.
New York Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward issued a scathing report laying the blame for the riot squarely on the precinct. The police actions were "not well planned, staffed, supervised or executed... which culminated in a riot." Ward announced the retirement of Deputy Chief Thomas J. Darcy, who was absent from the scene and derelict in his duties. In the middle of the riot the commander left the scene to go to the bathroom at the station house, several blocks away from the fighting. The police helicopter used to illuminate the area only attracted bigger crowds. Several nearby rooftops were not secured by police and were used to throw bottles and debris at people on the street. Koch admitted he had not seen the feces and urine himself. "There are people, hundreds of them, I'm told, who park there all 24 hours a day, and obviously there are bodily needs." Ward himself had been the subject of controversy in the past, and the riot became a cause to reflect on the negative aspects of his record as Commissioner. After 10 people were shot in Brooklyn in 1984, nobody could find him for days. Two officers were charged with use of excessive force. Officer Karen Connelly was accused of using her nightstick "wrongfully and without just cause" to strike a civilian, and Philip O'Reilly, who was accused of interfering with
Times photographer Franco, and of using his nightstick to injure Franco's hand. The
Civilian Complaint Review Board recommended the officers be charged, and Commissioner Ward endorsed the recommendations. in
Police Department v. ÓReilly, OATH recommended that the charges against Philip ÓReilly be dismissed, while in
Police Department v. Connelly OATH recommended that Karen Connelly's employment be terminated.
Neighborhood reactions A neighborhood divided over their feelings about police were united against their aggression. "The streets were full of people who I see coming out of their houses every morning with briefcases...I mean people who work on
Wall Street, and they're standing in the street screaming 'Kill the pigs!'" said Phil Van Aver, a member of
Manhattan Community Board 3. Instead, the
police riot ripped open old wounds about brutality and the neighborhood's housing problem many longtime residents faced. "The police, by acting in the brutal fashion that they did, managed to link a small group of crazies to the legitimate sentiments of opposition to gentrification," said Valerio Orselli, director of the Cooper Square Committee, a nonprofit housing group. "Now the issue has become police brutality, not housing. It's set everyone back." Many people relished the neighborhood as a home for society's
outcasts. Getrude Briggs, owner of East
7th Street store ''Books 'n' Things'', and a resident of forty-one years: "Of course [the East Village] still attracts a lot of freaks, because it's still a place you can be free. For a lot of kids, coming here is a way to get away from the choking atmosphere of
suburbia." Thirty-year resident Barbara Shawm protested the East Village's dangerous reputation: "A 90-pound woman can easily fend off a
down-and-outer or an
addict. They're not dangerous. It's more dangerous
uptown — what people do to each other in
elevators." ==Music and the riots==