N.Y.P.D. Besieges a Protest Leader as He Broadcasts Live

Derrick Ingram, an organizer of a group leading New York’s Black Lives Matter protests, was besieged inside his Manhattan apartment on Friday while a police helicopter patrolled overhead, officers banged on his door and police dogs waited in the hallway.

The street outside had been closed off by roughly two dozen police vehicles and dozens of officers, including some who were wearing riot gear. At the end of the block, Black Lives Matter supporters had gathered with bullhorns and cameras to protest what appeared to be Mr. Ingram’s imminent arrest.

“What did I do? What did I do?” he said on a livestream posted on Instagram. “I was born Black, that’s what I did.”

The tense standoff in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood continued for several hours as Mr. Ingram, 28, talked to lawyers via Zoom and communicated with the outside world over the Instagram video.

He declined to let the officers enter his apartment without a warrant. A police spokeswoman, Sgt. Jessica McRorie, said later that the officers were there to arrest him on charges that he had assaulted an officer.

In the end, the police left shortly after 1 p.m. without arresting him. But the tremendous show of force renewed questions about how the Police Department is addressing the protests for racial justice that have continued in New York for weeks and how they are dealing with those who participate in them.

The episode came about 10 days after the arrest of a transgender woman, Nikki Stone, 18, who was taken away from a protest in an unmarked van in a move that drew criticism from Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

In that instance, Mr. de Blasio suggested the arrest had been justified, but he criticized its execution, saying police leaders should have handled it differently given continuing tensions over the department’s practices.

Mr. Ingram is a founder of Warriors in the Garden, group that has led many marches and rallies around the city since forming in June. The police spokeswoman did not offer details about the assault he is alleged to have been involved in and she said the investigation was continuing.

With hundreds of people watching the scene unfold on the Warriors in the Garden’s Instagram account, Mr. Ingram sat in the living room of his West 45th Street apartment while a police officer pounded on his door and told him to come out.

At one point, the officer could be hearing saying the police were treating Mr. Ingram “like a gentleman.”

“Why do you think ‘hostage negotiation’ is here right now?” Mr. Ingram said to those who were watching the video. “They have dogs. I can hear the dogs in the hallway. They’re texting me right now.”

Addressing the audience, he said he was afraid that the officers would hurt him if he went outside or would plant something incriminating in his home if he let them in.

The video was interrupted at another point. When it resumed, he said he believed the officers were interfering with his cellphone calls so that every time he got one, a “detective” was intercepting it. The claim could not be verified.

In a statement issued later, Mr. Ingram said the officers who came to his home had not produced a warrant and had “used threats and intimidation tactics.” 

“This was an attempt to silence our movement,” he said. “This militarized police response endangers the safety of residents in Hell’s Kitchen and across” New York City.

The Warriors in the Garden formed in New York amid the demonstrations that began after the killing in police custody of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Several of its leaders — most of whom are Black and in their 20s — live in Hell’s Kitchen and elsewhere Midtown Manhattan.

One of the group’s leaders, Joseph Martinez, 20, said in June that the name was a reminder “to tend this vision we have while fighting in this climate of violence and brutality.”

The group’s Instagram following has swelled to more than 30,000 users over the course of the summer as it attracted the attention of so-called influencers. Several of its members have been arrested during the recent protests.

Before he began organizing protests, Mr. Ingram used his own Instagram account mostly to talk about his Haitian heritage and his diet and fitness regimen. He has participated in protests despite having lupus, an autoimmune disease that he said put him at a higher risk of complications were he to contract the coronavirus.

“We are fighting two pandemics,” Mr. Ingram told a reporter in June, referring to the virus and racism.

During the livestream on Friday, he said he had never assaulted or threatened anyone. He said he feared that he was being targeted for having filed complaints with the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates allegations of police misconduct, after clashes with pro-police protesters in Bayside, Queens, in July.

The group’s message — shouted on the street outside Mr. Ingram’s apartment on Friday — has been “peaceful protest.” Its goal, leaders said in June, is to change the criminal justice system.

One of Mr. Ingram’s supporters who came to Hell’s Kitchen on Friday, a 22-year-old woman named Bobbii, who declined to give her last name, said that some protesters occasionally teased him and others in his group for their reputations as peaceful organizers.

“Warriors in the Garden — other people in Black Lives Matter make fun of them sometimes because their whole thing is don’t ever engage with the police,” she said. “They’re always so careful.”

Troy Closson and Ali Watkins contributed reporting.