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Category: Police

  • The Right to Film Police

    A US Court of Appeals in Massachusetts has said that arresting someone for filming the police is a constitutional violation.

    A guy, after we answered in the affirmative as to whether his phone was recording audio, was charged with violation of the wiretap statute, disturbing the peace, and aiding in the escape of a prisoner. The last charge was particularly absurd. But more importantly the court said that it’s not a wiretap if it’s not secret. The court also said the arrest violated the fourth amendment and did not give the officers qualified immunity.

    People still get arrested for taking pictures and videos of police. But I suspect this will happen less and less, especially when cops lose their immunity after making bad arrests (of the guy taking pictures). Besides, given advances in technology, attempts to prevent people from taking pictures and videos is becoming more and more a Sisyphean task.

    As a police officer, I did no not love being filmed. It’s not that I had something to hide, it’s that I don’t want a video taken out of context. And sometimes police officers dohave to use ugly force. Sometimes the public and the media really does not understand.

    A lot of “brutality” videos you can see on youtube show completely justified force (especially when trying to get somebody’s hands from under them to behind their back). So if I’m using justified force, I’d prefer not to see my tough arrest on the evening news used as an “example” of brutality.

    I understand and even agree with all the reasons you don’t want to be recorded. But… you can’t always get what you want. I do not want a society in which unaccountable police arrest people for taking their picture. Recording police (if you’re not interfering) should be considered a constitutional right.

    Of course phones and cameras, especially when somebody is resisting arrest, can still be seized as evidence. If somebody is resisting arrest, a recording isgood evidence. And having to say goodbye to your phone for months might serve as a bit of a deterrent to whipping it out and pressing record. But potential police use of this trick will be tempered by a natural desire to avoid extra paperwork.

    What’s interesting is that this debate makes some peoples’ head explode as it highlights the conservative divide between lip-service to small government and an authoritarian impulse. It makes me think once again of George Orwell’s precient line that the “real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”

  • Galileo was Wrong

    Since we all know that the Bible is the literal word of God (I’m not certain which version, but certainly one of the English-language ones, since it would make no sense for God to speak a language other than American), it turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, that there are people out there who insist the sun revolves around the earth:

    “Heliocentrism becomes dangerous if it is being propped up as the true system when, in fact, it is a false system,” said Robert Sungenis, leader of a budding movement to get scientists to reconsider. “False information leads to false ideas, and false ideas lead to illicit and immoral actions — thus the state of the world today…. Prior to Galileo, the church was in full command of the world, and governments and academia were subservient to her.”

    It is in the Bible, after all (Joshua 10:12-14), so it mustbe true.

  • Newtown Crab

    Newtown Crab

    In the most polluted waterway in America, Newtown Creek, which divides Brooklyn and Queens, I found this blue crab. Now I wouldn’t eat anything from this waterway, but I was surprised by 1) how large this was NYC crab is, and 2) birds know right where to go to get that good lump crab meat! Who teaches them that? It’s not like they’re from Baltimore or anything.

  • Our taxes. Their Police.

    Speaking of rich people buying the services of the state, it seems the Justice Department is now doing the dirty work of pharmaceutical companies by cracking down on Google which got paid to run ads for Canadian drug companies. That’s not free speech. That’s illegal because Congress says it is.

    So the Justice Department is going to enforce a law (which, granted, is part of their job description–but the Justice Department has a lot of discretion as to which laws they want to enforce) passed on behalf of rich companies.

    Remember, our Congress prohibited the government from negotiating drug prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries. If that’s not a giveaway to rich pharmaceutical companies, I don’t know what is! And it weren’t legal, it would be called bribery. Wes Metheny, a senior vice president for public affairs at PhRMA, the main lobby for the pharmaceutical industry, said:

    The industry still opposes allowing the government to negotiate drug prices and letting people import drugs from abroad. He said there is “no guarantee” that either would lower costs.

    It’s so shameless.

    Turns out Medicaid gets the cheapest deals on drugs the prices are, get this, government regulated. Maybe we should increase regulation. Or maybe we should let the unencumbered free market lower prices.

    I mean, anything would be better than a crazy cycle where:

    1) Corporations give money to politicians to pass laws to ensure price fixing so we all pay more for each and every prescription drug sold in America.

    2) Any monopoly-breaking anti-trust effort is attacked by taxpayer funded law enforcement agencies–the long arm of the Department of Justice, no less! The government cracked down on Google because Google has the audacity to run ads for Canadian drug companies. Seems the law trumps free speech when corporate profits are at stake. I guess Google isn’t paying them enough. Besides these ads are chump change to Google. But keeping drug prices artificially high is big buck to Big Pharma.

    3) The pharmaceutical corporations, in turn, funnel their government enforced profit (but just some of it) back to politicians. After all, corporate donations are constitutionally protected free speech.

    But how could that ever happen here? It would be so blatantly corrupt and unfair for all of us to be forced to give our money so the rich can make more. This is America.

  • Little Hurricane Crime in New York City

    The mayor says there were 45 arrests in New York City last night compared to 345 arrests on a normal August Saturday night. Mayor Bloomberg said, “If that doesn’t tell you about New Yorkers, I don’t know what does.” That’s sweet. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s good there wasn’t massive looting, and New York is a pretty great place. But I’d bet that the low arrest total says a lot more about bad weather in general and in particular police being told not to arrest people unless absolutely necessary (to keep officers on the street).

  • Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment!

    Rarely to get exciting reading articles in academic journals (whether that says bad thing about me or the journals I leave to you), but this is exciting: “The Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment: A Randomized Controlled Trial Of Police Patrol Effectiveness In Violent Crime Hotspots.” It’s in the current issue of Criminology (like most academic journals, unavailable to the general public).

    The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment was researched in the 1970s. And though it showed foot patrol in a more positive light than many people remember it for, it was hardly the unequivocal support for foot patrol I would have expected.

    Now I know foot patrol works, but get a bunch of academics in a room and ask a simple question like, “Does foot patrol work?” and you’ll get a lot of “we don’t know” and “no” and “more research is needed.” Even in the police world, opinion is split.

    Well finallysomebody has done a proper study of foot patrol. The bottom line? In high-crime areas, foot patrol decreased serious violent crime by 23 percent. This happened just after three months of foot patrol. No big difference was found in lower-crime areas, but then we fall back on the Newark Experiment and reduced public fear.

    I bet you’ll never hear of a study showing the crime-reduction benefits of officers remaining “in service” to answer radio calls.

  • The Storm II

    The Storm II


    I love that on our block, storm preparations included harvesting all grapes, pears, and figs–and distributing the extras to us!

    The dark grapes are ours (they’re tastier than our neighbors–not that it is a competition, of course). But we don’t have any figs, and these figs are some of the best I’ve ever had! Thank you, Italian neighbor!

    Notice too, the hurricane box of wine.

    It’s raining and the air smells really clean. But nothing of note, yet.

    Afternoon Update: Well thatwas a letdown. Very uneventful here in my part of Queens, best I can tell. Though I am very thankful my basement didn’t flood, like many events in life, I slept through it (except for that goddamn car alarm at 6am).

    Of course the corner 24-hour fruit and vegetable store was open when I went to take a stroll and buy eggs at 3am. It was spooky quiet last night, with no subway trains rolling by and almost no traffic.

  • Mike Bloomberg on the potential for looting

    “This is New York, we don’t have that sort of thing.”

  • The Storm

    Interesting I haven’t heard any fear of civil disorder after the storm hits NYC. I hope that’s just a sign of how things are not.

    I went back and read 1938 New York Timesaccounts of the hurricane that slammed New York. It was pretty devastating. And at least two people were arrested for robbing 20 stores in Harlem.

    Meanwhile I’ve battened down the hatches and taken things off the roof and rugs off the basement floor. By NYC standards, we’re on relatively high ground.

    Ice blocks are in the freezer. I always have flashlights (for my bike) and we generally have a lot of food and booze. And I thinkall our wonderful spring water is gravity fed (the best of 19th century technology!).

    I guess deep down I’ve been hoping for a power outage just so I can sit on our porch and play our Victrola. The neighbors will be in awe.

    Let’s hope it’s fun, but not too fun.

    Here’s to all the police and city workers out there working, keeping all of us safe!

  • The problem that isn’t (that big)

    Ronald Weitzer tries to dispel the myths of human trafficking.