36 ms·
My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works
- danharaj 6y agoThe NYPD has a budget for spying on people in other countries. State power is weird.
- rmrfstar 6y agoStrictly speaking, that is not in their budget. Comes from anonymous donors [1]. Nothing strange about that. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/nyregion/terrorism-nypd-intelligence-crime.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/nyregion/terrorism-nypd-i...
- jfengel 6y agoOK, that's weird. It doesn't entirely come as a surprise that they would have an international arm, since they are home to the UN and were the most visible target of the most prominent international terrorist attack. But having that money come anonymously... that's suspicious.
- rmrfstar 6y agoStill weird. The FBI and the rest of our national security apparatus exist to deal with those issues.
- jfengel 6y agoI mean it wouldn't surprise me if the NYPD had a liaison directly with FBI field offices outside of the country, since the stakes are so high and tight integration could save lives. It would also be weird if the NYPD were operating much more directly than that.
- pjc50 6y agoThe "anonymous donor overseas placement" system is clearly a means to launder bribe money into holidays for officers. Anonymous "donations" to police are so obviously corrupt they might as well hang up a sign.
- ciarannolan 6y agoFor those curious who didn't know about this (like me): >With offices in 11 foreign capitals and an unpublished budget, the ILP’s far-flung counterterrorism cops operate outside the authority of top U.S. officials abroad, including the American ambassador and the CIA station chief, who is the nominal head of U.S. intelligence in foreign countries. >The ILP is supported by private donors through the New York Police Foundation, which won't say how much it has given the NYPD, beyond a sentence on its Web page that it sought to raise $1.5 million for the program in 2010. The NYPD itself won't say whether any of its annual $178 million budget for intelligence and counterterrorism goes to posting detectives in Paris, London, Madrid or other posh capitals. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/11/nypds_foreign_cops_play_outsid.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/11/nypds_fore...
- hef19898 6y agoSo the NYPD privatized secret policing? Nice one!
- stefan_ 6y agokeep having to preface everything lately with "not a joke," but no joke the NYPD's International Liaison Program, which has a secret budget and operates in 13 foreign countries with no oversight, just showed up in an official NYPD cruiser for a pro-police demonstration in Paris https://mobile.twitter.com/newyorkyearzero/status/1273754924250288128 https://mobile.twitter.com/newyorkyearzero/status/1273754924...
- jeffbee 6y agoDoes it also seem weird to you that small countries have intelligence bureaus? Denmark and Finland are both less populous than New York City.
- dhosek 6y agoSo then Walmart should have a spy agency because they're bigger than some countries?
- jeffbee 6y agoWalmart is not an executive agency of an elected government, so no.
- dhosek 6y agoAnd New York is not a sovereign nation so...
- mijoharas 6y agoInterestingly, wallmart has their own forensics lab[0] [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/csi-walmart/521565/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/csi-w...
- krick 6y agoFunny enough, I find this purposefully exaggerated example not exaggerated enough. It seems to me there is much more reason for Walmart have a spy agency than for NYPD. After all, if NYPD has a reason to be involved with a foreign entity, there are federal agencies (most prominently NSA and CIA) that supposedly should handle these matters (though what they really do nobody knows). NYPD exists only to serve NY, and NY is a part of USA. Walmart, on the other hand, isn't exactly a part of USA, and if it needs to spy on somebody, it would have to rely on their own internal capacity.
- danharaj 6y agoNo, because they're countries. Who deals with an international incident caused by the NYPD?
- kens 6y agoAnother weird thing about the NYPD is that each police officer gets 20 so-called "get out of jail free" cards to give to friends and family. The recipient can show the card to the police if pulled over and use the card to "wiggle out of minor trouble". https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42780382 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42780382
- bsanr 6y agoThat's a joke, right? Police aren't so stupid to have institutionalized petty corruption with an actual laminated pass, right?
- larrik 6y agoIt's not typically laminated, usually the cop is supposed to take it and call the person who handed it out (or tear it up). This is very real, though.
- vageli 6y agoIt's sickening. https://classroom.synonym.com/how-to-get-a-pba-card-in-new-jersey-13583644.html https://classroom.synonym.com/how-to-get-a-pba-card-in-new-j...
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoEnding qualified immunity and civil forfeiture are ideas whose time has arrived. Even with bipartisan support for stopping these unconstitutional practices they have enjoyed surprising staying power through different administrations.
- ixtli 6y agoI've lived here a long time and come to the realization through observation that the NYPD operates like a private security force for capital. Their primary concern is to defend private property, the people themselves come second. The "community outreach" they do is just enough to keep us from getting accusatory.
- coldtea 6y ago>Their primary concern is to defend private property, the people themselves come second. And of course the more private property one has, the better the protection...
- neltnerb 6y agoUntil someone decides that the capital committed a drug crime because it smelled suspicious.
- vkou 6y agoYou're confusing private property with personal property. The police don't care about your personal property. Just try to get them to do anything useful in response to a burglary. Private property, like land, or the means of production, is an entirely different story. Those things receive full police protection.
- neltnerb 6y agoGood point, thanks. I did mean personal property.
- jackcosgrove 6y agoThey were more honest back when they called it movable property. As in, a peasant's movable property is taxed while a lord's immovable property is not. It's easier to tax things that can be picked up and taken if the tax is not paid.
- justforyou 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- psychometry 6y agoThis is why we need civilian oversight of every police department. Cops are generally too corrupt and/or too incompetent to investigate their own. They've proven their inability to hold themselves accountable for their actions, so it's up to the rest of us to do it.
- minikites 6y agoOr we could abolish the police and create a new public safety department without the structural racism and ingrained power-hungry culture.
- vkou 6y agoI don't understand why you are being downvoted. The point of abolishing police isn't so that nobody shows up when you call 911. It's so that the right person for the right situation shows up when you call 911. Given the current state of American policing, there is only one situation where I would call the police, and expect the right person to show up. That situation is an active shooter. For nearly everything else, I don't need an armed-to-the-teeth, compliance-at-gunpoint, qualified-immunity-protected man with a gun to show up. He is not the right person for 99% of the work the police currently engage in.
- coffeemaniac 6y agoYep exactly. In America we used to have SWAT teams who would fulfill this latter role, for situations when violence of action was urgently needed. The first letter in the acronym stands for "special." These days it's not abnormal for regular beat cops to acquire surplus military equipment and roll up to a petty dispute in an MRAP. I think taking away officer's weapons will drastically change who they decide to engage and how they do so.
- austincheney 6y agoWhat would such a new public safety department be and how would it differ from police? What would such a department do differently in the circumstance of failure to follow lawful orders and how would it have no systemic racism?
- joshuaheard 6y agoWhy is "Black" capitalized, but "white" is not?
- jfengel 6y agoI don't know what style guide ProPublica uses, but very recently AP decided to capitalize Black when used as a cultural term when it conveys "essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black". They go on to say that they expect to make a decision soon about whether to do that with "white" as well. https://blog.ap.org/announcements/the-decision-to-capitalize-black https://blog.ap.org/announcements/the-decision-to-capitalize... https://apnews.com/71386b46dbff8190e71493a763e8f45a https://apnews.com/71386b46dbff8190e71493a763e8f45a
- jfengel 6y agoAnd boy, those must be some fraught discussions. I think of myself as white but not White, because the notion White Culture connotes white supremacy. Black people outside of Africa share a common element of diaspora, at the very least defined in terms of their shared difficulties, while I as a white person in the west define myself more closely with smaller ethnic and national groups than with whiteness as a whole. Still... the terminology of race is never going to be precise, and to the degree it exists at all, I'm going to be seen as white rather than another thing. So we might as well be parallel, and use White along with Black and Indigenous and other tendentious but sometimes useful categories. So if I had to bet, that's where I suspect AP will land. But I don't envy them the process of coming to that conclusion, or the backlash they're going to get either way.
- hanselot 6y agoHave you ever found you had little care left for labels when you realise everyone's neural net is already putting labels on you anyways?
- nailer 6y ago> while I as a white person in the west define myself more closely with smaller ethnic and national groups than with whiteness as a whole. Sure, but how do others define you? Consider that tech companies and activists are trying to redefine the meaning of racism to allow others to discriminate against you based on the color of your skin.
- fallingfrog 6y agoMy wife was in Indianapolis for a couple days and she saw the same thing: a cop crossed over to the wrong side of the road and up onto the sidewalk to strike an unarmed black man on a bicycle head on. They claimed later that the man on the bike had struck the car while it was sitting still (hard enough to put him in the hospital with a fractured skull). No investigation was made. I think they do this because running people over or choking them to death produces less paperwork than shooting them.
- pnutjam 6y agoMost Officer on the job injury and death comes from traffic accidents. Driving all day is dangerous. We should log Police Officer hours the same way we do truck drivers.
- blakesterz 6y agoI thought "accident" when I read that comment first, but on reading it again: "sidewalk to strike an unarmed black man on a bicycle head on." So... "to strike" this wasn't an accident?
- fallingfrog 6y agoNot an accident. He waited for the guy on the bike to come around a corner, then gunned the gas hard, crossed over the double solid line and drove up onto the sidewalk to hit the guy.
- renewiltord 6y agoIn San Francisco, I've seen so many occasions where police and fire (not the fire truck, the little cars) do the "lights and full speed" for really no reason. Or screaming high speed U turns just for the heck of it. Honestly, I'm somewhat sure that this is just considered a perk of the job since it lets them ignore road rules.
- distant_hat 6y ago
- pjc50 6y ago> “I blame myself,” she kept saying. “I never let him out on Halloween. A bunch of Black boys together. I shouldn’t have let him out. But he begged me.” Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police. (Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the police" or "defund the police", because from their point of view the police are the people most likely to assault or kill them or their children on the street, more so than random criminals) > “Young teens or pre-teens of color were handcuffed, arrested, or held at gunpoint while participating in age-appropriate activities such as running, playing with friends, high-fiving, sitting on a stoop, or carrying a backpack.” This is child abuse.
- jeffdavis 6y agoI looked at the numbers in another comment[1], and it seems that for every one black person killed by police (justifiably or not), over 20 black people are murdered by other blacks. So either there's something wrong with my analysis, or the fear of police is somewhat misplaced. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23579467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23579467
- quxbar 6y agoI think you missed the headline - the police are murdering in broad daylight without legal repercussions.
- bzb3 6y agoHe's replying to the comment the other user posted, not the headline.
- dvtrn 6y agoOr we can acknowledge that discussions oriented around in-group violence perpetuated by members of said group (which isn't novel nor unique to the black community) do not obviate discussions of police misconduct and issues apparent in the criminal justice system perpetrated by a powerful and state-operated out-group, Mr. Davis.
- drdec 6y agoWe need the police to take care of their own house and stop the us against them mentality. Until they do we won't be able to truly address the events that have led to BLM and the current protests. The problem isn't a few bad apples, it's a culture that allows a few bad apples to expect impunity and protection from the consequences of their actions.
- uoaei 6y agoThe training regimen for officers sounds like expert-level cult indoctrination. First they inflate your ego by telling you you're joining a high and noble cause. Then they tell you that others don't appreciate the noble work you do and they hate you for reasons out of your control. And you just want to do right in the world so that's not fair! Then they show you every documented instance of when an officer was ambushed and/or killed. This forces you to mentally ostracize yourself from the broader community by instilling a persecution complex. Then they teach you that only your buddies in the department have your back and everyone else is out to get you. Then they train you literally to shoot first and ask questions later. This training consists of variations of the game "slaps" except you're drawing a gun and shooting it at the other player instead of slapping the other player's hands. And at that point you've been shown (1) that you have a huge target on your back, (2) how to pre-empt a perceived attack, and (3) how to justify the use of force or defend your fellow officer for doing so.
- fallingfrog 6y agoThe protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder are currently tapering off, but I don’t see any evidence at all that substantive changes have been made, which means that this is all going to happen again, and soon, and the protests will be bigger, the police response more violent. The black lives matter organization in my city presented a list of demands to the city council and every one of them was ignored, instead the council promised sensitivity training. This is nowhere close to over.
- pdonis 6y ago> The black lives matter organization in my city presented a list of demands to the city council and every one of them was ignored What were the demands?
- danso 6y agoIn terms of sweeping reforms, no – especially re: qualified immunity with SCOTUS recently declining to reexamine it [0]. But I would venture to claim that the Overton window on what police can be held accountable has certainly changed. That all 4 police in the George Floyd case were arrested and charged was unexpected, given the lack of consequences in the Eric Garner case. The arrests and assault charges for officers who attacked protesters in Atlanta [1] and Buffalo [2] is the kind of thing I never thought we'd see, and signals an opportunity (albeit unguaranteed) for the balance to change. The change in public perception is quite striking – including a doubling of white Americans since 2015 who think police brutality is a "very serious problem [3]. And this shift is happening under a presidential administration that is one of the least likely to take federal action against or even just criticize law enforcement. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-qualified-immunity-police-accountability-law-2020-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-qualified-immunity-p... [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/atlanta-police-booked-felony-charges-protest/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/atlanta-police-booked-felo... [2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/buffalo-police-officers-arrested-shoving-75-year-protester/story?id=71106787 https://abcnews.go.com/US/buffalo-police-officers-arrested-s... [3] https://apnews.com/728b414b8742129329081f7092179d1f https://apnews.com/728b414b8742129329081f7092179d1f
- kleiba 6y agoIt's crazy but from a European perspective, stories like this sound more like what I imagine police forces to behave like in dictatorships, not in a democracy. After living in Europe for six years now, my wife is still puzzled sometimes by the differences between Europe and North-America when it comes to the police: how they are experienced by the population and how they see and present themselves and which role they think they're playing in society. Big difference. I'm certainly over-generalizing but here, we see cops as approachable and helpful in general (with exceptions) while in North-America, at least my wife's impression is that of cops being mostly intimidating (again, with exceptions). Of course, this is all complex and different social and societal aspects play a big role, such as e.g., the odds for a cop of running into an armed person. But when I read how the police handled the situation with the group of black trick-or-treaters, it seems so foreign to me now from a more European perspective. I suppose accountability is always going to be an issue - who watches the watchmen? But it should not be - in a democracy especially, there should be functioning mechanism to prevent abuse of power, and that of course applies to police actions, too.
- treis 6y agoThe US has an order of magnitude more crime than Europe but is policed by roughly the same number of officers. That, justifiably or not, leads to short cuts where extrajudicial and unjust tactics are used to enforce compliance.
- trowawee 6y ago> "[...] justifiably or not [...] extrajudicial and unjust tactics are used" ...how could this be justifiable?
- treis 6y agoLet's assume that Europe's cops are at 100% capacity to handle their crime justly. That means the US cops can do the same for only 10% of the crime they see. Leaving 90% of the crime to go unpunished. Or they can do shady tactics and respond to more crime at the cost of Injustice. Obviously the ideal solution is to 10x the capacity of the criminal justice system but nobody's paying for that.
- kerkeslager 6y agoI keep seeing this narrative where people say, "We need law enforcement to prevent crimes, we can't defund the police." And I 100% agree, we need law enforcement. But the police aren't law enforcement if they refuse to enforce the laws.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago> But the police aren't law enforcement if they refuse to enforce the laws. Sure. That's obviously true. However, not very helpful to the discussion as you don't state what percent of police officers "refuse to enforce the laws" Do 100% of police officers refuse to enforce laws? 50%? 5%. Surely that's more beneficial to talk about than simply saying "the sky isn't blue if it isn't blue".
- kerkeslager 6y agoWhile Derek Chauvin was murdering George Floyd, 100% of the officers present did not enforce the law. While Daniel Pantaleo was murdering Erik Garner, 100% of the officers present did not enforce the law, and at least a significant percentage of the court system which did not convict Pantaleo did not enforce the law. When Philip Brailsford murdered Daniel Shaver, 100% of the officers present did not enforce the law by arresting him. A significant percentage of the court system which did not convict him of any crime didn't enforce the law. The police department which reinstated him and then let him medically retire due to PTSD from the murder he committed and pays him $2,500/month pension didn't enforce the law. Since three police officers murdered Breonna Taylor, 100% of the police in Louisville Metro Police Department has not enforced the law. When ex-cops murdered Ahmaud Arbery, 100% of Glynn County Police Department did not enforce the law until months later after massive outcry, and more than one DA refused to enforce the law. When a homeless man in a wheelchair was shot in the face with a rubber bullet by LAPD, 100% of the LAPD did not enforce the law. When Buffalo PD officers assaulted a 75 year old man, 100% of the officers present did not enforce the law, and 100% of the 57 SWAT members resigned from the SWAT team when other police did enforce the law. When Denver PD shot tear at a pregnant woman and her husband who were uninvolved in protests, 100% of Denver PD did not enforce the law. When a Philly PD officer knelt on a man while he said, "I can't breathe" and the officer responded, "Shut up asshole. Are you fucking stupid? That shit don't work here" 100% of Philly PD did not enforce the law. With the exception of Breonna Taylor, these are just some of the incidents that were caught on video. There are many, many more on video, and we can only guess how many incidents weren't caught on video. Obviously I'm not going to be able to give you an exact percentage number of how many police officers refuse to enforce laws when cops commit crimes, but how many examples do you need to see before you will admit it's too much for the current system to be salvageable?
- mensetmanusman 6y agoUnions protect bad apples, that shouldn’t be the purpose of unions. It should be illegal.
- Pfhreak 6y agoPolice unions are almost all terrible. Seattle kicked their police union out of the local labor council, and it would be great to see more cities do the same.
- DenisM 6y agoAny additional information on how Seattle police union is terrible?
- Pfhreak 6y agoThey've consistently pushed back on reforms from both the community and the federal consent decree. They insist they are 'tough on crime' and the city is holding them back, going so far as to demand people vote out the city council. They've described the concerns about policing as "the flavor of the week", they fought against body cams, they've defended police in well documented cases of retaliatory and unbecoming behavior.
- DenisM 6y agoIt would be nice to have links. "defended police in well documented cases of retaliatory and unbecoming behavior" is bit too vague to follow up upon.
- Pfhreak 6y agoSure, here's a handful: https://komonews.com/news/local/police-union-president-defends-officers-in-mondays-fatal-shooting https://komonews.com/news/local/police-union-president-defen... https://mynorthwest.com/70234/police-union-head-vehemently-defends-department-in-wake-of-cop-stomp-acquittal/ https://mynorthwest.com/70234/police-union-head-vehemently-d... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/07/13/seattle-police-union-chief-resigns/87030666/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/07/13/se... https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/memo-seattle-police-union-official-called-sergeants-public-retaliation-against-citizen-minor-misconduct/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/memo-seattle... http://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicupload/eclips/2015%2006%2026%20Court%20First%20Amendment%20protects%20profanity%20against%20police.pdf http://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicupload/eclips/2015%20... https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article64596437.html https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article64596437.ht... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seattle-cop-punches-teen-in-face-seen-on-video/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seattle-cop-punches-teen-in-fac...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- circlefavshape 6y agoFWIW my wife used to know a guy who was a magistrate (a kind of volunteer low level judge) in England. He told her many stories about police telling obvious lies in court in order to justify minor violent behaviour towards suspects.
- bane 6y agoWhen I was younger I lived in a fairly rural area. I was driving home late from work one day on a remote highway and came across one of the most horrific accidents I've ever seen. A driver was pulling onto the highway and was hit by a police cruiser at an almost impossibly high speed. The highway was marked at 55mph, and under normal conditions, the driver of the other car would have had plenty of time to pull out, speed up and join the road at speed. On this road, at this time of night, there were virtually no other cars on the road. The cruiser was going at least 130mph, without lights or siren on, struck the car at the b pillar and literally sheared the car in half right behind the driver. It was unreal, the two pieces of the car looked like they had been cut in two by a giant table saw. The front end of the cruiser was smashed in pretty well. Incredibly, when I pulled my car off the road to help, I found both drivers up, relatively unhurt, ambulatory and in a daze from shock. A few minutes later another cruiser pulled up, called a tow and drove the civilian driver home. It became a local news story as the police officer was not only not arrested, but not disciplined in any way. Insurance covered the cars and the officer was back on the beat in a new car within the week. His rush? He wanted to make it home in time to watch a college ball game after his shift was over.
- eyerony 6y agoOnce saw a police car in a smallish town whip a u-turn for no clear reason, no lights, nothing, nearly hit a car that was pulling out of a bank parking lot and the driver of which had clearly already looked that way and seen no-one coming, then the cop freaked out, u-turned again (lights this time) and pulled over the car they nearly hit. Guess whatever they were breaking traffic laws and driving very dangerously to get to wasn't so important after all. What a shitty day for that person. At least it was probably just a totally unjustified ticket and an unpleasant lies-filled conversation with an upset and fragile-ego'd cop, and not death or injury, I suppose. [EDIT] this and other dangerous-driving observations lead me to treat cop cars on the road like someone I've seen through the window drinking a 40 while talking on the phone. They're far and away the most likely category of vehicle to do something batshit crazy with no warning.
- throwaway373438 6y ago
- dghughes 6y agoIn the article white is written with a lowercase w but black is written with a capital B. Seems odd.
- klyrs 6y agoSimilar to how deaf and Deaf have different meanings, and you don't read stories about Hearing people. If you're intellectually curious, read up on that.
- dghughes 6y agoI think I get what you mean. My mother had diabetes but detests being called a Diabetic she says, "I am a person". Thanks for the heads up. Others just down voted my comment out of contempt for me I guess.
- bmmayer1 6y agoThis says everything: "Instructions on what to do when stopped by the police are on the back of student IDs at Summit Academy in Red Hook, Brooklyn."
- anonymousDan 6y agoThe part about all the school kids having instructions on the back of their student IDs for what to do when stopped by the police is just nuts!
- elliotpo 6y agoEven if you chose to argue statistical frames, as I'm seeing so much in this thread, you're not factoring the ripple effects that must surely be caused by the knowledge that official agents of power view you and your family as inherently, or very potentially inherently, dangerous. It doesn't take a critical mass of groundless violence (even if that mass does indeed exist)-- but just some of it, left unaccounted (or even defended) by those same official agents. Such a message is bound to resonate broadly and cause what should be a comprehensible outcry from, for example, the mother quoted in this article. I'm saying that you might consider the nonchalant (at best) response to such violent incidents.
- zw123456 6y agoI had an incident happen to me where I was stuck in traffic in the left most lane on the freeway next to the diamond (HOV) lane. So the HOV was on my left and was wide open and all the other lanes were completely stopped, or stop and go. A state police officer had people pulled over just ahead of me for HOV violations. A car that was exactly the same model and color as mine was flying down the HOV and pulled in two cars behind me when he saw the cop. When I got up to where the cop was, he was confused and thought it was me. He was pointing at me and pointing at the side of the road and yelling something. At first I didn't understand what was going on, it was not until later that it all made sense. I didn't know a car similar to mine had pulled in a couple of cars behind me. I could not understand what was going on, if he was pointing at me or what. I rolled down my window and he was screaming at me, I had the radio on and had not noticed any of this until he was hopping mad. Then he put his hand on his gun and I could hear him yelling at me to pull over right there right then. So I did, because I was scared as hell. Of course a car came flying down the open HOV lane right then and T-Boned my car. I blacked out for a bit and came to and the air bags had all gone off saving my life I am sure and I was unharmed but my car was totaled. The two young men who were driving the car that T-Boned me both were rushed to the hospital. The cop gave me ticket for improper lane change and HOV violation. I had the wits to take pictures of license plates of the stopped cars and got witnesses from that. I hired a lawyer and he said it was very unlikely to beat the ticket and there was nothing we could do, could not sue the police, they have immunity. Funny, I actually beat the HOV violation in court, witnesses all corroborated my story. The whole thing was super scary and frustrating. I can only imagine how frustrating it is for black people who deal with things 10 times worse than that but it gave me a bit of empathy and understanding how a crazed a-hole cop can wreak havoc and there is nothing you can do about it. I mean all that for a dumb HOV violation for cripes sake.
- tartoran 6y agoWe need more self surveillance tools we’re in control of.
- fortran77 6y agoA car crashed into my Sunnyvale, California home while it was being chased by the Police. The Sunnyvale Police told me to stop taking pictures of the accident while I was standing on my own property. They refused to release the police report of the accident to me (I needed it for insurance claims) because they claimed I was "not a victim and had no right to see it." (The car ended up on my lawn, smashed into my house.) The only official way to file a complaint against the Police force in Sunnyvale California is to fill out a form and the Police investigate it themselves. Anything else, you have to go to court. There's no independent overseer. All police forces are rotten to the core, and will do anything and everything to protect themselves.
- sitkack 6y agoPolice shouldn't have access to their own body camera footage. And it should require multiparty keys to decrypt. Those decryption events should go on a ledger along with the authorization order. PriorArt
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoAnd that's common IT management right there. The group that is being audited for bad behavior gets no say over the audit process, and no say over giving or rescinding access to the audit trail. But when it comes to police, we put cameras on them to shut up the peasants, but we ensure nothing will change by making sure the department has control over the incriminating data.
- snug 6y ago> The boys were driven to our local precinct, the 76th. I eventually made my way there, too. The families of all the boys were there. The police are required to notify families when a minor is arrested. But the families told me that hadn’t happened. They’d learned about the boys’ arrests from friends. (The police later said the families showed up so quickly they didn’t have time to make notifications.) Wow this is really scary to read. There's a miniseries on Netflix I would urge everyone to watch "When they see us" about "The Central Park 5" kids that were coerced into confessing they raped a white woman in the park. They were interrogated for hours and promised to go home if they confessed.
- mancerayder 6y agoWhy are certain political hit-pieces getting flagged, and others, like this one, are somehow immune?
- mancerayder 6y agoHere's an example. If I were to post an article that shows data that NYC shootings are up 30% since activist-pushed disbanding of cops took place, it would get downvoted to oblivion, flagged repeatedly and such. It's an interesting discussion point, and there are some very calm and rational pro and cons to different approaches. Instead, an article like this one from Propublica gets upvoted to the stratosphere. As long as we admit there's some sort of double-standard at play, I'm fine with it. Or we're consistent.
- gatvol 6y agoThis is pretty much SOP (Delay, frustrate, cover) to a greater or lesser degree, for every police force that I have ever encountered. Occasionally an overtly 'bad' apple is sacrificed, unwillingly.
- magwa101 6y agoLimited immunity = total impunity
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoThe author of this article is a filthy hooknosed Jew. Reading anything this lizard person types is like pouring liquefied feces directly into your brain.
- mac01021 6y agoThere are basically two things that the police do: 1> Patrol public spaces to deter illegal behavior in those places, direct traffic, punish traffic offenders, offer directions to tourists, etc 2> Respond to calls from citizens, investigate the crimes that those calls are about, locate and apprehend the associated criminals. I've only lived in places sparsely populated enough that <1> is mostly impractical except along highways and around major construction sites. The VAST majority of the value provided to people by the police clearly comes from <2> - it's the reason that no sane person would mug me (or kill me) for $40 cash on an unpatrolled country road, or invade my home and take up residence there against my will. 99.9% of citizens benefit from <2>, as it's the main deterrent to any antisocial person coming and taking whatever they have of value. It seems to me (though I don't have data) that most (nearly all?) the mistreatment of (maybe mainly black) citizens by police that has been garnering media attention over the past decade or so, happens during the course of <1>.
- aaronblohowiak 6y agoOnly 60% of murders are solved. https://www.vox.com/2018/9/24/17896034/murder-crime-clearance-fbi-report https://www.vox.com/2018/9/24/17896034/murder-crime-clearanc...
- mac01021 6y agoAre you suggesting that, because of this, the existence of the police is not the main deterrent to crime?
- aaronblohowiak 6y agoa few years ago, I getting a beer after work with a colleague. we had become friends and talked about quite a bit outside of work. As the topic of religion had come up in the past, it was not unusual for us to discuss. He was a devout Christian (some kind of protestant) and I am a self-described "athiest Catholic". At a certain lull in the conversation after a couple beers, he leaned in to me and asked in a hushed tone: "so, if you don't believe in hell, why be a good person?" I put my drink down and looked him in the eye and said "that's the scariest thing I've ever heard." Plainly, I don't believe in deterrence as effective or a substantial reason why most people don't engage in bad behavior.
- Hnrobert42 6y agoIt’s articles like this that make me happy that I donate to ProPublica monthly.
- johnflan 6y ago>The commissioner can also let the case go before an internal NYPD judge (whose boss is the commissioner). If the judge decides punishment is merited, the commissioner can overturn or downgrade that, too. The NYPD have their own Judges?!? eh?
- jennyyang 6y agoThe only solution is to incentivize good behavior, not bad ones. Any time a police officer is caught doing something wrong, the money should be taken out of the local police pension fund. If one cop is bad, then ALL COPS SUFFER. This is the right incentive system, so that bad cops get weeded out. First offence, depending on the severity, gets nothing. Second and subsequent get exponentially worse cuts to the pension fund. Good cops will weed out bad cops pretty quickly if they realize all their efforts are being lost because of bad behavior.
- zerealshadowban 6y agoI've seen police abuse innocent people, multiple times, which should be lesson enough. More importantly, I've been falsely accused of assault by a Federal officer, and had to spend all my savings on a lawyer to fight it (one year of fear and hell, until they finally produced the video showing I had done nothing but sit in my car while answering his questions). I don't want to live in anarchy, but I don't want to live in fear. Help.
- rendered_fat 6y agoWhy is black capitalized in this article but white is not?