Around 11:30 pm on the night of 6 August 1988, a crowd of around 200 people (official police reports inflated the number to 700) gathered in Tompkins Square Park in New York City to protest the enforced 1 am curfew and the police crackdown on homeless people who were using the park as a shelter.

By most accounts, the police provoked the crowd and riot (which lasted until almost 6 am) ensued, injuring 38 people (including reporters and police officers). More than 100 complaints of police brutality were registered.

Allen Ginsberg, who was a witness, stated, “The police panicked and were beating up bystanders who had done nothing wrong and were just observing.”

A couple was beaten by police as they exited a nearby grocery store, and when New York Times photographer Angel Franco tried to take photos, he was beaten as well. The Village Voice photographer John McBride, New York Daily News reporter Natalie Byfield and Downtown Magazine’s Jeff Dean Kuipers were also beaten.

A city review of the riot revealed numerous problems with the police department’s actions that night, including Captain Gerald McNamara’s failure to contact either Commissioner Benjamin Ward or Mayor Ed Koch, his leaving the scene of the riot (to return to the station house for a toilet break), the placement of temporary police headquarters at the center of the park (which forced officers to push through crowds to get there), and the overall aggressiveness of the officers. 2 officers were charged with “excessive use of force.”