6 ms·

I've lived in a few different major cities and NYC for the last decade, and I can definitely say I have never seen more broken, ineffective policing than here.

I've lived in a few different major cities and NYC for the last decade, and I can definitely say I have never seen more broken, ineffective policing than here. It's truly ridiculous. Your experience, obviously, may vary. Multiple instances of police openly threatening citizens. Phones ripped out of hands and smashed onto the ground, for the mere crime of filming an interaction. During the BLM protests, every single act of instigation and provocation that I witnessed was started by the police. I don't know what the answer is. But it is very clear the police here are a paramilitary jackboot squad, and that the city and the strength of their union protects them. They have almost complete impunity, and they see normal, everyday citizens as the enemy. I fear that we're in for more trouble now that we've elected an ex-cop Mayor of the city. (For background, I'm a tall, white man. I can't imagine how bad it would be if I wasn't.)

sjm 5y ago
Yeah it really feels like the NYPD has a lot of contempt for the city they operate in, politically, socially, culturally. I saw the same thing at every protest I attended — when there were no cops around, it was extremely peaceful. I only ever saw it get ugly when cops were harassing people, pushing people around, or trying to basically shut down protests by blocking off surrounding streets and trying to close in on protesters.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > NYPD has a lot of contempt for the city they operate in A lot of New York cops live outside the areas they patrol. The ones who live in the city are overrepresented on Staten Island. That said, for every peaceful protest last summer there were unprovoked nighttime riots which seemed to occur more when the cops were somewhere else.
  - addicted 5y ago
    My sister lives on 6th Ave. cops would congregate right outside her building before the protests so she could observe the entire process. The cops were deliberately ignoring the rioters while strong arming the largely peaceful protestors. She has videos of 50 cops standing while someone broke into a store (by throwing a rock through the glass window), picked up a POS system, and runs, with not a single cop twitching, while just a few hours earlier you had their lieutenant or whatever come kneel with the protesters and as soon as the higher ups left, cops attack 100 lb women from behind as they were walking away. They were deliberately attacking peaceful protestors and deliberately ignoring looters and rioters. You could also see on the signal app which was tracking these gangs of kids who were looting major stores like Macy’s, as well as protestors, and the cops were always where the protestors were and never where the rioters, who were only a few blocks behind, were. It was a very blatant attempt by the NYPD to make the protests appear violent by encouraging looting while discouraging peaceful protesting.
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > ...which seemed to occur more when the cops were somewhere else. Perhaps they were too busy deploying their sleep deprivation tactics[1] on sleeping citizens by lazily driving around the target neighborhood with the sirens on at 3 am, for no legitimate policing reason. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/comments/hduu3h/nypd_drives_around_harlem_with_their_sirens_on_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/comments/hduu3h...
akudha 5y ago
I saw 5 or 6 cops tackle a drunk guy. He was so drunk, barely able to stand, a 10 year old kid could've taken him down. The amount of force used in the most trivial of cases blew my mind. During the occupy wall street protests, I saw the cops a few times (I was working in a nearby building). The amount of serious gear they had, it was insane. I bet they are better armed than most militaries. All I can say is they are super scary.
- mc32 5y ago
  I've witnessed the same. Police responding with overwhelming force. Unfortunately, we're not unarmed like in Japan (or most of the UK), so there have been instances of police being caught off-guard and killed for being too "chill" so by policy they must respond with almost worse-case-scenario. With that, I will say they need to learn how to use less than lethal tactics and force to apprehend a violent person. Firearms should be very the last resort as a result of non-confrontation. In other words, the police at times provoke more violence by the way they address an issue. A violent drunk. Instead of getting up close so they lunge with a knife, get far back, get people to move away and then corral the drunk in or use alternate methods of subduction and use lethal violence only when the perp makes it necessary.
  - diogenescynic 5y ago
    It's safer to be a cop than to be a roofer or deep sea fisherman. Cops need to stop being such wusses. If they don't like the job, find another one but don't rationalize their ridiculous over-use of force as justified.
    - dang 5y ago
      You've been posting flamewar comments repeatedly. We ban that sort of account. Please review the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- the-rc 5y ago
  IIRC, the NYPD budget is much higher than those for Sweden's or Mexico's military and not too far behind Iran's.
achenatx 5y ago
As people have done analysis of what percent of the time police spend on various types of calls, it becomes clear that we only need armed police for around 5%. investigation, forensics, traffic control, etc etc dont need weapons and tactical training. Let the armed police be like fire fighters and be specifically called in when needed.
- j_walter 5y ago
  That's not a fair analysis though. That's like saying EMTs only need morphine around 5% of the time, so they shouldn't have it in their ambulance. You don't know when you might need it, so you carry it all the time.
  - imadethis 5y ago
    Not to be too snarky, but EMTs don't carry morphine. Restricted substances like morphine are only carried by paramedics (or some AEMTs in systems that still have them). As such, paramedics are dispatched to calls that require a higher level of care while ambulances staffed solely with EMTs are sent to less emergent situations. This lines up pretty well with what the GP described. This is in reference to American standards of care, other countries may be different.
    - hirsin 5y ago
      Far from snark, this certainly seems to reinforce the point. We have two levels of response, where one level is called in for more dire circumstances (life or death) and correspondingly has equipment capable of handling a worse situation.
  - tacLog 5y ago
    I completely agree and you could prove it with a study. You would just have to answer for what percentage of those call did the responding parties (dispatch, the officer responding and the person calling it in) thought there was a need for armed police. I am willing to be that while only 5% turn out to need armed police, most of those 5% where uncertain, and a % far greater than that where armed police weren't needed, where very uncertain. It's just not possible to predict when you need to be armed. However, if you go down this line it is also not possible to predict when having a gun on your hip is going to make it more difficult to resolve the issue. There is a tradeoff here that is very hard to make policy around. Something that is being tried is for there to be unarmed medical oriented mental health response units available for calls that don't seem uncertain. I think the data coming out of these changes will change the way big cities operate their departments one day. > This is in reference to American standards of care, other countries may be different.
johnnyb9 5y ago
I have lived in NYC for 10+ years and I can't say I've had a single encounter with the police.
- dopamean 5y ago
  Lucky you.
rkk3 5y ago
> I have never seen more broken, ineffective policing than here When I moved from NYC to San Francisco I was genuinely surprised how much I missed & appreciated the NYPD.
- ryan_lane 5y ago
  Because the SFPD is even more fucked up than the NYPD? They spend all day going around harassing homeless people. I've watched them kick people inside their tents after they didn't move in a neighborhood they normally do hourly sweeps in. And don't tell me how crime in SF is so terrible. It's at historic lows, and in comparison to a lot of cities, the amount of crime is essentially non-existent. The police don't reduce crime, from what I can tell, in any city, using the tactics that they do. Crime seems to correlate more with poverty and ability to afford basic necessities more than anything.
  - bigcorp-slave 5y ago
    I don’t understand how on earth you could come to your conclusions if you actually live in SF. Large parts of San Francisco are a nightmare in large part because of a near total absence of law enforcement. I cannot imagine what cities you could be thinking of, unless you’re thinking of the gang warfare in parts of Chicago. Property crime in SF in particular is at a comically bad level. There is a widespread institutional unwillingness to do anything that might be perceived as hurting poor people, so instead we just let grifters and junkies clean out entire stores (not kidding, we don’t enforce laws against theft below $900), shit and piss everywhere, leave used needles on our sidewalks, and contaminate all our public spaces with tent cities. And don’t forget the constant and unceasing drumbeat of car breakins! Everyone I know here has a story of crime or horror that has happened to them because of the hands-off attitude toward crime here. When I was a kid, people told me, it’s important to have an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out. SF attitude toward street crime is well past that point.
    - ryan_lane 5y ago
      I've lived in SF for the past 10 years. Yes, there's car break-ins and bike thefts. There's homeless people in parts of the mission, and the tenderloin. Most of what you describe here isn't going to be helped by increase police presence (the areas you're describing have the highest police presence in the city, and it's been like this since forever). These things are primarily related to poverty and the hate of the homeless. Want less shit on the streets? Give the homeless access to bathrooms. Want less needles on the streets? Implement needle exchanges. Want less car break-ins and bike theft? Have fewer poor people by making sure they're paid enough, the rents are low enough to pay, and by providing housing to the homeless (most homeless people in SF were living in SF and housed in the past). Putting poor people and drug users in jail hasn't solved the problem in the past, and won't make them better in the future. The police spend all day taking all their shit away, making them even poorer.
pradn 5y ago
The police are also extremely blasé about wearing masks. They hardly did in the thick of the pandemic, let alone now. The people have no democratic control over the police. The mayor and council are too afraid to do anything significant. It wont change unless there's an even more serious grassroots up-swell for police reform, more than BLM.

sjm 5y ago

Yeah it really feels like the NYPD has a lot of contempt for the city they operate in, politically, socially, culturally. I saw the same thing at every protest I attended — when there were no cops around, it was extremely peaceful. I only ever saw it get ugly when cops were harassing people, pushing people around, or trying to basically shut down protests by blocking off surrounding streets and trying to close in on protesters.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> NYPD has a lot of contempt for the city they operate in A lot of New York cops live outside the areas they patrol. The ones who live in the city are overrepresented on Staten Island. That said, for every peaceful protest last summer there were unprovoked nighttime riots which seemed to occur more when the cops were somewhere else.
- addicted 5y ago
  My sister lives on 6th Ave. cops would congregate right outside her building before the protests so she could observe the entire process. The cops were deliberately ignoring the rioters while strong arming the largely peaceful protestors. She has videos of 50 cops standing while someone broke into a store (by throwing a rock through the glass window), picked up a POS system, and runs, with not a single cop twitching, while just a few hours earlier you had their lieutenant or whatever come kneel with the protesters and as soon as the higher ups left, cops attack 100 lb women from behind as they were walking away. They were deliberately attacking peaceful protestors and deliberately ignoring looters and rioters. You could also see on the signal app which was tracking these gangs of kids who were looting major stores like Macy’s, as well as protestors, and the cops were always where the protestors were and never where the rioters, who were only a few blocks behind, were. It was a very blatant attempt by the NYPD to make the protests appear violent by encouraging looting while discouraging peaceful protesting.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > ...which seemed to occur more when the cops were somewhere else. Perhaps they were too busy deploying their sleep deprivation tactics[1] on sleeping citizens by lazily driving around the target neighborhood with the sirens on at 3 am, for no legitimate policing reason. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/comments/hduu3h/nypd_drives_around_harlem_with_their_sirens_on_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/comments/hduu3h...

akudha 5y ago

I saw 5 or 6 cops tackle a drunk guy. He was so drunk, barely able to stand, a 10 year old kid could've taken him down. The amount of force used in the most trivial of cases blew my mind. During the occupy wall street protests, I saw the cops a few times (I was working in a nearby building). The amount of serious gear they had, it was insane. I bet they are better armed than most militaries. All I can say is they are super scary.

mc32 5y ago
I've witnessed the same. Police responding with overwhelming force. Unfortunately, we're not unarmed like in Japan (or most of the UK), so there have been instances of police being caught off-guard and killed for being too "chill" so by policy they must respond with almost worse-case-scenario. With that, I will say they need to learn how to use less than lethal tactics and force to apprehend a violent person. Firearms should be very the last resort as a result of non-confrontation. In other words, the police at times provoke more violence by the way they address an issue. A violent drunk. Instead of getting up close so they lunge with a knife, get far back, get people to move away and then corral the drunk in or use alternate methods of subduction and use lethal violence only when the perp makes it necessary.
- diogenescynic 5y ago
  It's safer to be a cop than to be a roofer or deep sea fisherman. Cops need to stop being such wusses. If they don't like the job, find another one but don't rationalize their ridiculous over-use of force as justified.
  - dang 5y ago
    You've been posting flamewar comments repeatedly. We ban that sort of account. Please review the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
the-rc 5y ago
IIRC, the NYPD budget is much higher than those for Sweden's or Mexico's military and not too far behind Iran's.

achenatx 5y ago

As people have done analysis of what percent of the time police spend on various types of calls, it becomes clear that we only need armed police for around 5%. investigation, forensics, traffic control, etc etc dont need weapons and tactical training. Let the armed police be like fire fighters and be specifically called in when needed.

j_walter 5y ago
That's not a fair analysis though. That's like saying EMTs only need morphine around 5% of the time, so they shouldn't have it in their ambulance. You don't know when you might need it, so you carry it all the time.
- imadethis 5y ago
  Not to be too snarky, but EMTs don't carry morphine. Restricted substances like morphine are only carried by paramedics (or some AEMTs in systems that still have them). As such, paramedics are dispatched to calls that require a higher level of care while ambulances staffed solely with EMTs are sent to less emergent situations. This lines up pretty well with what the GP described. This is in reference to American standards of care, other countries may be different.
  - hirsin 5y ago
    Far from snark, this certainly seems to reinforce the point. We have two levels of response, where one level is called in for more dire circumstances (life or death) and correspondingly has equipment capable of handling a worse situation.
- tacLog 5y ago
  I completely agree and you could prove it with a study. You would just have to answer for what percentage of those call did the responding parties (dispatch, the officer responding and the person calling it in) thought there was a need for armed police. I am willing to be that while only 5% turn out to need armed police, most of those 5% where uncertain, and a % far greater than that where armed police weren't needed, where very uncertain. It's just not possible to predict when you need to be armed. However, if you go down this line it is also not possible to predict when having a gun on your hip is going to make it more difficult to resolve the issue. There is a tradeoff here that is very hard to make policy around. Something that is being tried is for there to be unarmed medical oriented mental health response units available for calls that don't seem uncertain. I think the data coming out of these changes will change the way big cities operate their departments one day. > This is in reference to American standards of care, other countries may be different.

johnnyb9 5y ago

I have lived in NYC for 10+ years and I can't say I've had a single encounter with the police.

dopamean 5y ago
Lucky you.

rkk3 5y ago

> I have never seen more broken, ineffective policing than here When I moved from NYC to San Francisco I was genuinely surprised how much I missed & appreciated the NYPD.

ryan_lane 5y ago
Because the SFPD is even more fucked up than the NYPD? They spend all day going around harassing homeless people. I've watched them kick people inside their tents after they didn't move in a neighborhood they normally do hourly sweeps in. And don't tell me how crime in SF is so terrible. It's at historic lows, and in comparison to a lot of cities, the amount of crime is essentially non-existent. The police don't reduce crime, from what I can tell, in any city, using the tactics that they do. Crime seems to correlate more with poverty and ability to afford basic necessities more than anything.
- bigcorp-slave 5y ago
  I don’t understand how on earth you could come to your conclusions if you actually live in SF. Large parts of San Francisco are a nightmare in large part because of a near total absence of law enforcement. I cannot imagine what cities you could be thinking of, unless you’re thinking of the gang warfare in parts of Chicago. Property crime in SF in particular is at a comically bad level. There is a widespread institutional unwillingness to do anything that might be perceived as hurting poor people, so instead we just let grifters and junkies clean out entire stores (not kidding, we don’t enforce laws against theft below $900), shit and piss everywhere, leave used needles on our sidewalks, and contaminate all our public spaces with tent cities. And don’t forget the constant and unceasing drumbeat of car breakins! Everyone I know here has a story of crime or horror that has happened to them because of the hands-off attitude toward crime here. When I was a kid, people told me, it’s important to have an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out. SF attitude toward street crime is well past that point.
  - ryan_lane 5y ago
    I've lived in SF for the past 10 years. Yes, there's car break-ins and bike thefts. There's homeless people in parts of the mission, and the tenderloin. Most of what you describe here isn't going to be helped by increase police presence (the areas you're describing have the highest police presence in the city, and it's been like this since forever). These things are primarily related to poverty and the hate of the homeless. Want less shit on the streets? Give the homeless access to bathrooms. Want less needles on the streets? Implement needle exchanges. Want less car break-ins and bike theft? Have fewer poor people by making sure they're paid enough, the rents are low enough to pay, and by providing housing to the homeless (most homeless people in SF were living in SF and housed in the past). Putting poor people and drug users in jail hasn't solved the problem in the past, and won't make them better in the future. The police spend all day taking all their shit away, making them even poorer.

pradn 5y ago

The police are also extremely blasé about wearing masks. They hardly did in the thick of the pandemic, let alone now. The people have no democratic control over the police. The mayor and council are too afraid to do anything significant. It wont change unless there's an even more serious grassroots up-swell for police reform, more than BLM.