The union representing police sergeants in New York City tweeted an internal arrest report for the mayor’s daughter on Sunday, after she was arrested at a protest against police brutality.
Chiara de Blasio (and hundreds of others) were arrested over the weekend while participating in protests inspired by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The NYPD told reporters that the arrest was for unlawful assembly — multiple outlets reported, citing authorities, that de Blasio was one of dozens of people who refused to leave a lower Manhattan intersection when ordered. The New York Post reported she was released and given a desk appearance ticket.
But in a post subsequently removed from Twitter, the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) accused de Blasio, 25, of “object throwing.”
The account also posted de Blasio’s internal arrest file, which included her home address (Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence), ID number and other personal information.
“How can the NYPD protect the city of NY from rioting anarchist when the Mayors object throwing daughter is one of them,” the SBA said in the same tweet. “Now we know why he is forbidding Mounted Units to be mobilized and keeping the NYPD from doing their jobs.”
Soon after the sergeants union published the post, the post was removed and replaced with the note, “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules.” (Among other rules, Twitter bars posting private information without “express authorization and permission.”)
At a press conference Monday, Mayor de Blasio said the SBA “did something unconscionable, and it’s not just because it’s my daughter. They do this all the time with people’s privacy. This is another one of the things that has to change.” He compared the Twitter post to law enforcement leaks to reporters.
The mayor said separately that his daughter had told him she was peacefully protesting and believed she was following police orders at the time of her arrest.
“If I had known that my daughter was arrested, I would have been the first to let the public know,” he said, adding that he’d learned of his daughter’s arrest from a media inquiry.
The SBA, which represents thousands of police sergeants, is right-wing in its politics and vocally opposed to de Blasio.
In February, its Twitter announced that members of the NYPD were “declaring war” on the mayor. In another tweet the same day, the account boosted a tweet from President Donald Trump describing New York law enforcement as “under assault.”
“NYC is under siege,” the union wrote. “Send in the Feds.”
De Blasio has generally been supportive of the police response to protesters in recent days, even when pressed by reporters on aggressive law enforcement methods documented across the city.
At a press conference Sunday, after his daughter’s arrest, de Blasio said of the police response to protesters, “we saw tremendous restraint overall from the NYPD.”
Neither the union, Twitter, nor the mayor’s office immediately returned TPM’s requests for comment.
The Post reported that, according to Twitter, the SBA’s account “is temporarily locked for violating our private information policy.”
This post has been updated.
