Cops turning their back on Mayor DeBlasio.
Tag: NYPD
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Two Officers Down
Shot and killed. Ambushed in their car in Brooklyn. Earlier the killer shot his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore.
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“To say it’s all the fault of racist cops is letting the system off the hook”
A quote from me in an interesting article by James Reinl in Al Jazeera. I go on to say:
“Some people honestly believe that cops don’t shoot white people and don’t give tickets to white people for minor issues. This view is demonstrably false,” Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore lawman and academic at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Al Jazeera. “Let’s get the facts right and then talk about injustice – because there’s plenty [of injustice] out there, but police provide a [too] easy scapegoat.”
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Well done NYPD. Well done NYC.
Once again the NYPD shows it can get the job down and keep the city safe. All in all, went off pretty well yesterday. Some protestors were chanting: “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” And one police officer had his nose broken when he tried to stop a protester from throwing a garbage candown on others from the top deck of the Brooklyn Bridge. A crowd attacked two NYPD Lieutenants: “Amid the fracas, the protester who was throwing the garbage can escaped.
But he left behind a bag containing three hammers and a black mask.”And that wasn’t the only incident. But all in all, we should be happy that injuries were were few and minor.
I did read one angry cop tweet about how pissed off he was at the mayor, who should “let the
NYPD take control again.” What an idiot. Like it would better for the city — or
safer for the NYPD — if the police were told to bust heads and bum-rushed the crowd, 1968 Chicago style.The way I look at it is that thousands protested peacefully, police policed professionally, and everybody got to go home. Most everything went off without major problems (unlike, as usual, Oakland).
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LRAD: Long Range Accoustical Device
I was a little too generous in my previous post when I said we don’t know harm this device causes. From a 2012 NYPD briefing on the LRAD (Long Range Acoustical Device), also known as a sound cannon, via the Gothamist.
In addition to having “loudspeaker” capabilities, the device can also be used, in a special mode, to propel piercing sound at higher levels (as measured in decibels) than are considered safe to human ears. In this dangerous range (above 120 decibels), the device can cause damage to someone’s hearing and may be painful. It is this technology that device was designed for a USS Cole attack-type scenario. … The device could be used to send out sound at a dangerously high level causing attackers to turn away, or at least, to cause pain/hearing damage to try and repel
the attack.The LRAD devices … were deployed during the RNC in 2004, for use as loudspeakers…. The device was used as a louspeaker to make announcements to the crowd of protesters, with mixed results. No injuries were sustained.
Again from the Gothamist:
While there might be situations where police have a legitimate use for the device, such as dispersing a large and violent group, [Alex Vitale] says this wasn’t such a situation. “LRADs should be used to avoid having to do a baton charge,” Vitale says. “This was used to scatter already scattered protesters.”
And these devices were tested by the NYPD, in an empty parking lot.
Also (and correct me if I’m wrong) the decibel scale is logarithmic: going from 1 to 10 is a ten-fold increase while going from 1 to 20 is a 100-fold increase. But this is the amount of power or energy in sound, which goes up 10 times every time decibels go up 10 units. But the volume of this sound, the way sound is perceived by the human ear, roughly doubles for every 10 decibel increase. 120 decibels sounds twice as loud as 110 dB (as does 110 compared to 100 dB). So 120 decibels sounds something like 64-times as loud as 60 dB, which is volume of normal speech.
In Test #1, spoken voice commands were given. 20 feet away, sound was measured at 102 dB. In Test #2, noise burst were used, and sound was measured at 110 dB. Now 320 feet is a pretty long distance. It’s the length of a football field. Or half the length of an NYC subway platform (yes, the NYC subway trains really are 600+ feet long). The NYPD LRAD tests were done on cold windy winter day at the beach in The Bronx. Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, an urban canyon with hard sides, is less than 100-feet wide (including sidewalks). You can’t get more than 40 or 50 feet from the center of the street. So… what were the results of the NYPD test at a distance of 50 feet? “Potential danger area. Not tested.” In fact, nothing closer than 320 feet was tested. It might be dangerous.
This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. But the NYPD won’t have to foot the bill. It’s going to be paid for by me and other resident taxpayers.
(Link to the sound cannon and its first use in 2009 in Pittsburgh. And about the military purpose and history of this potential weapon.)
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I can’t hear you!
In 2004, the NYPD bought two “long-range acoustic devices” ($35,000 per) and said that during the convention, “they would be used only for announcements, and that their shrill deterrent function would not be employed.” I didn’t believe that would last. Because, as is always the case, if you give cops toys, they will play with them. Which is why you should be worried about military hardware going to police departments.
Well this is military hardware. And of course they have now been deployed against US civilians.
By my account, it was first used by police against US civilians in 2009.
Look, maybe sound devices are an effective use of crowd control. Maybe it’s better than tear gas and batons. I don’t know. But first don’t you think we might want to be learn if sound cannons cause about lasting permanent damage? We simply do not know because we didn’t care. They were to be used again terrorists we don’t give a damn about.
These weapons are a tool used to keep terrorist boats away from Navy ships, to prevent another attack like happened to the USS Cole.
All I can think of while watching this clip is science fiction movies that portray the US in a depressing dystopian future.
So now — without any public debate or decision-making by elected politicians — equipment designed to defend our troops against terrorists abroad is being used by civilian police departments against the public, some of whom who are “interfering with vehicular traffic.”
Taking the totality of the situation, I say “fuck ‘vehicular traffic’.”
(More on the sound cannon from it’s first use in 2009 in Pittsburgh. To its lack of adequate testing.)
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Garner’s Death
I don’t have much to say because I wasn’t sitting on the grand jury. I have no new information. Apparently the good citizens of Staten Island have spoken. From the Daily News:
After four months of reviewing the evidence, a majority on the panel
concluded there was not enough there to charge Pantaleo with
manslaughter, reckless endangerment or criminally negligent homicide. The 23-member grand jury, sources said, was comprised of 14 whites, with the rest being black or Hispanic.I wrote about Garner in the Daily News a few months ago and stand by it. And here’s everything I’ve blogged about the incident. And see this in the Times.
I will add:
A) I’m a bit surprised that the officer wasn’t indicted. My money would have been on an indictment.
B) The cop is lucky as hell he killed a guy in Staten Island (as opposed to Brooklyn or the Bronx).
C) I strongly suspect the officer is a dick. Now this isn’t based on fact but just my own small-minded prejudice. But from my limited experience policing, when you have a group of cops, the cop who first gets physical? The cop who jumps on an unarmed suspect? The cop who, with a half dozen other cops right there still deems it necessary to single-handedly take a guy down? Half a dozen other cops, smart cops, also there at the scene didn’t see a need to get physical right there and then. And one cop decides to get physical? And getting physical is a way you can’t get yourself cleanly out of? From my experience: 9 times out of 10 that cop, the most aggressive cop, is a dick. And 10 times out of 10 the cop who is most aggressive sets the tone for the entire incident.
But being a dick isn’t a crime. Nor is a chokehold.
D) But a chokehold is against departmental rules. That officer is now going to be f*cked by the department. It is written.
E) And yet… I still keep thinking that a fat guy in horrible shape maybe shouldn’t make such a stupid choice as to actively resist arrest. The force stops when the resistance stops. He died. There seemed to be no intent to kill anybody. You might have bad policy, bad tactics, and a tragedy, but even all of that together doesn’t equal a crime.
F) I would love for just one “progressive” liberal to come out against New York City’s crazy cigarettes taxes and prohibition against selling loosies (individual cigarettes). By one estimate (in the Bronx) 76%(!) of cigarettes are now bootlegged! Prohibition has consequences, particularly — historically and today — for minorities.
I’m off to Mexico for a week. Comment nicely and stay safe.
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“A fairer, safer city”
I stumbled across this column by Harry Siegel yesterday in the Daily News while getting my shoes shined. It’s bar far the best thing I’ve read in a while about the current state of crime and New York City. Read the whole thing. But here are some highlights:
Pay no mind to the shrill voices on the left warning of a creeping police state. Or to those on the right shrieking about urban anarchy around the corner.
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Almost everyone lies about crime and cops, because no one knows exactly how the two relate and almost no one cares to admit an obvious truth: that safety and justice are often competing interests.
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Still, former Commissioner Ray Kelly sounded ridiculous insisting hundreds of thousands of stops and frisks of New Yorkers, the vast majority young men of color who had done nothing wrong, were crucial to keeping guns and blood off the streets. And his critics sounded equally ridiculous insisting those stops had no impact on crime, never deterred anyone from taking their guns to town.
But it’s the police unions — who complained bitterly about Kelly’s quotas and numbers-driven approach and now are muttering about a work slowdown in response to Bratton’s calls for cops to exercise “discretion” on pot arrests and more generally — who sound most ridiculous of all.
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How many bad stops are worth a saved life? There’s a reason cops and critics have both ducked that question for a decade now.
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But, as de Blasio has rightly stressed, broken windows is based on officer discretion, and only stopping people suspected of a crime. Stop-and-frisk-based policing, on the other hand, was based on stopping huge numbers of people, mostly black and brown young men, who had done nothing wrong.
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The bottom line: Crime is down. Stops are down. The new mayor — politically accountable in ways his billionaire predecessor was not — and his commissioner are living up to a wonderful, difficult promise to deliver a “fairer, safer” city.
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“Cops fucking love overtime”
I’m quoted in Vice Magazine’s article, “New York City’s Biggest Marijuana Problem Is the Police.” Of fuckety fuck. Do I really swear that much?
And here’s another unrelated story about the corrosive effects of overtime.
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Just following the law
The major final ordered the police commissioner to order the department to follow New York State and not arrest people for small-scale possession of marijuana. This has actually been the law since 1977. But the NYPD has subverted the law, especially in the past decade, by arresting people anyway. And we’re talking tens of thousand of people per year. And yes, of course it’s racial unfair (since whites smoke just as much if not more weed than blacks, but don’t get arrested for it).
The Times account is here. The Post’s is here.
The union reps issued their usual tone-deaf disbelief. Which is their right, I suppose, but it would be better if the union reps kept to things like pay and working conditions rather than promoting their uniquely conservative ideological world view. From the SBA head; “People are asking: ‘What is going on? Is this department losing its mind? Has the city lost its mind?’”
Answer: A liberal mayor wants cops to stop arresting minorities when the crime is marijuana posession.
The head of the city’s Detectives’ Endowment Association: “I just see it as another step in giving the streets back to the criminals. And we keep inching closer and closer to that.” But here’s the thing, we’re not giving the streets back to criminals (at least not yet)….
And besides, most of you guys didn’t vote for the mayor. And not just because you hate him, but because you don’t live in the city. But the citizens of New York City did elected the mayor. And so de Blasio does, to a great extent, actually reflect the represented will of the people. And besides not arresting people for small-scale possession of marijuana has been the law since friggin’ 1977! It’s just that since the late 1990’s, police officers just decided to subvert the law.
Here is the rule: don’t arrest people for small-scale possession of marijuana. I’m not certain why that is so radical. You don’t arrest people for a lot of things. You don’t arrest people for jay walking. You don’t arrest people for littering. Hell, you don’t arrest drivers for killing people with their cars! Just add marijuana to the list.
Now you can still stop people. You can still run them. You can still cite people for possession. But you cannot arrest them. Guys, I’m sorry you don’t like it. But them’s the breaks.
So what does this mean? Well, it could mean a lot fewer arrests for police officers. That’s not bad if you’re a taxpayer or a fan of the bud. But what if anything can police do compensate for the lost overtime? I don’t know.
Here’s the thing: cops do not and did not actually give a shit about marijuana any more than than they do about jaywalking. Cops wanted to make arrests. And stopping people and finding weed because a way to make arrests. And we’re talking a good chunk (like 1 in 7) of all arrests in New York City. Up to 50,000 a year! So we’ll see if something else takes the place for such discretionary arrests. But probably not.
This could actually be a pretty major shift in police culture. But it has been argued that marijuana arrests became a thing in New York because of arrest pressure combined with the drop in crime. So will something else because the new reason to arrest when there’s no other good reason to? I hope not. Probably, in the long run, the past 20 years of massive marijuana arrests will be seen as the aberration. Just another crazy bit of New York City history. Like the 2nd Avenue L, the New York Giants (baseball), and the 6-shot revolver.
[Also, based on this picture, 25 grams (0.88 ounces) is a lot more weed than I thought it was.]
