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NYPD is refusing to comply with NYC’s new surveillance tech laws
- malfist 4y agoSounds like a police department wants to be defunded. They forget who they work for.
- dgacmu 4y agoHistory with NYPD suggests they know they have a good chance of getting away with it, unfortunately.
- EGreg 4y agoHistory is colorful https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Police_riot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Police_riot
- hedora 4y agoHey, citizen’s arrest is a thing. We just need the proponents of this law to surround the chief on their way to work (or maybe a police station), then call the feds. This actually worked reasonably well in the US a century or so ago. It’s one of the few use cases for the 2nd amendment that made any sense (other than hunting for food).
- devoutsalsa 4y agoMakes me wonder if anyone has ever been charged with resisting a citizen’s arrest.
- zdragnar 4y agoNo, but you'll definitely get charged with false imprisonment if a judge decides your citizen's arrest was unwarranted.
- chimeracoder 4y ago> Makes me wonder if anyone has ever been charged with resisting a citizen’s arrest. Citizen's arrest is a state phenomenon, meaning that there it's not one single law but rather a function of a variety of laws in states and which differ between states. That said, most modern citizen's arrest systems in the US trace their origins back to the Civil War era, to provide a way to arrest alleged escaped slaves (emphasis on "alleged"). You can imagine how that played out in practice.
- dikaio 4y ago“Call the Feds” is that sarcasm? If you haven’t read of late the way the federal government uses law enforcement for their own agenda regardless of the US constitution than I will assume calling the feds was made in parody.
- ericmay 4y agoWhat are some specific examples of the "federal government using law enforcement for their own agenda" and what is that specific agenda that they are using law enforcement for?
- rendall 4y agoI believe that equitable sharing of civil forfeiture counts. Locals make a law preventing local cops from seizing cash and property that is not part of a criminal investigation. Local cops bypass that law by working with the Feds. Profit! https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/ https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/
- ericmay 4y agoWhat's the specific agenda here?
- rendall 4y agoWhat it says right on the tin, man. To bypass local laws that prevent local cops from using civil forfeiture to seize cash and property. Confused by your question.
- ericmay 4y agoOh sure let me try again: The GP stated that > ...the federal government uses law enforcement for their own agenda... Can you just state what the agenda is? It can be general, or it can be specific to civil forfeiture since you brought that as an example.
- Chris2048 4y agoDo citizens get Qualified Immunity? b/c that's the what allows the police to murder you.
- dabluecaboose 4y agoThe 2nd amendment isn't, and literally never was, about hunting.
- sneak 4y agoThe second amendment has been effectively abolished in New York.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoPoliticians of bigger metropolitan areas tend to learn quickly that cops are a fairly important power center ( usually come a bigger unrest ). For example, in Chicago, both Lightfoot and her predecessor faced those issues. You have to understand. The relationship is not nearly as straightforward as you make it out to be.
- merrywhether 4y agoI wish the defunding movement had instead focused on moving monetary liability from the city instead to the police union. Let the officers pay higher dues to protect their problematic colleagues from million dollar judgements. I feel like that change would be much more politically viable and also have a strong ripple effect. Right now the solidarity of the thin blue line is free, and I don’t think it would stand up to internalizing that cost.
- tehwebguy 4y agoCivil rights violations done on behalf of the city should not have a cap of some private group’s bank account / insurance policy.
- piuantiderp 4y agoDefunding is the dumbest possible move. You have to align the incentives of the police with those of the middle middle-upper class, anything else is disfunctional will only get worse.
- int_19h 4y agoWhy should incentives of police be aligned with one particular swath of the population that isn't even representative of it?
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago"Impact on disparate groups" I know who made the law happen, but it seems odd to me to ask police depts to run statistical analysis of their own work. Not only they are not a neutral party, but thats not their mission. Thats for qualified data scientists and researchers to do. Police are supposed to address crime
- hobs 4y agoWell, it seems like they should arrest themselves based on this article.
- sixothree 4y agoThis country was founded on the principle of checks and balances. There are no checks on the police. Without adversarial oversight, police will always be above the law. This is a bad place for our country to be.
- javajosh 4y agoYes. In theory justice checks the police. But if the DA and/or judge goes after the police, then the police stop cooperating with them on cases. Even good police in the department who want change will get no leverage that way. I'd love to read a long-form, probably anonymous piece by an NYPD IA officer about their experiences. I'm sure it would be suitably horrifying.
- sixothree 4y agoThe current framework is not sufficient. The DA needs adversarial checks too.
- salawat 4y agoPublic Defenders are supposed to be a check on the DA, but we can all see how well that turns out funding-wise. I can only assume the media was assumed to be a check on the police, as they're the only professionally investigative edifice that isn't government funded. Again though, there is a notable asymmetry there. Particularly nowadays.
- jtmlis 4y agohttps://english.ctivd.nl/binaries/ctivd-eng/documenten/review-reports/2022/02/08/index/CTIVD+NR74+Summary+of+CTIVD+Report+No.74.pdf https://english.ctivd.nl/binaries/ctivd-eng/documenten/revie...
- zzzeek 4y agocant imagine why a police department where thousands of their employees park their personal vehicles each day all over sidewalks illegally as a matter of course might be slow-walking some annoying rule about surveillance.
- javajosh 4y agoThey also regularly use their lights and sirens just to get through traffic. Those constant little violations of the law have a cumulative effect, like how broken windows and other minor violations make a neighborhood feel less safe.
- gukov 4y agoOh, so exactly like in Canada. Good to know we’re not the only ones, I guess. I do think turning on the lights possibly serves a good thing: it’s a silent reminder that the cops are in the area, especially at night.
- Topgamer7 4y agoI've actually heard that this is a gang surveillance tactic. The police will act in car pairs to shadow a gang's car from a block over. And not use their sirens or lights to not alert the criminals. Or maybe that's just conjecture.
- dylan604 4y agoWhat you describe sounds like an amateur hour Keystone cops level of surveillance. Or some dirty cops doing some shady stuff. A real surveillance would be so much more professional. Depending on the budget/case/interest, they use multiple cars in the pursuit. Some cars are in front, some are behind the subject. They rotate positions so that the same car isn't in the same position all the time. There are so so many other techniques available as well that isn't just conjecture.
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- calvinmorrison 4y agoSurely the DA will be on top of this, presumably charging officials with not following the law to a T. When is the indictment coming?
- drumhead 4y agoThere isn't much accountability when it comes to the NYPD. They seem to do what they want and get away with it, and the public as a whole there don't really look like they care.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y agoI think the public has seen the dramatic increase in violent crime and other major crimes since the pandemic and want NYPD to fix it and they don't really care how they do that. Adams ran on a platform of exactly this and now the public expects results.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y agoTbh, in my circles there’s already deep resentment for Adam’s not actually addressing this. Instead we have cops lining up to ticket bike riders for no bells or turning on a red, while bike lanes themselves are notoriously unprotected from cars parking in/driving through them and pedestrians are getting killed in hit and runs that go ignored. The general sentiment is that police presence will always make a situation worse and don’t have incentives aligned with actually improving the lives of people.
- marcellus23 4y agoThe perception that crime has skyrocketed since the pandemic is propaganda, fueled by a police department afraid of being defunded, media outlets desperate for clicks, and a cop running for mayor. Reality doesn't back it up. The murder rate in NYC is roughly where it was in 2009, and still five times less than it was in the 90s. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-is-nyc-safe-crime-stat-reality/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-is-nyc-safe-crime-st... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City#/media/File:MURDERS_IN_NEW_YORK_CITY_BY_YEAR.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City#/media/...
- overrun11 4y agoYour stats don't back up your claim. Crime _has_ skyrocketed since the pandemic as both of your links show. Your first links subtitle states: "Violent incidents are up since the pandemic began" and the second link shows a graph with a quite large spike starting around 2020. That there existed a time in history when the murder rate was a higher than it is now is completely irrelevant.
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- hedora 4y agoDoes this law have any teeth? OIG-NYPD’s only reasonable conclusion is that the NYPD’s use of all the surveillance technologies bundled into the noncompliant report is unlawful. (Due to lack of correct record keeping and reporting.) This should be easy enough to prosecute, e.g., via internal affairs.
- Floegipoky 4y agoMy guess is that this is not a criminal violation and the "best case" scenario would be a civil lawsuit which would end up being paid by the city.
- uncertainrhymes 4y agoWhen I worked in NYC (mid 2010s) we were on the top floor of our building and one day a service guy came through needing access to the roof from our suite. Turns out he was there to update some cameras on the roof that pointed out to Union Square. I talked to him for a while, and while he wouldn't specifically say who owned them, he did say "they could read a business card from 300 yards away." This was probably before there was much facial recognition going on, but it stuck with me that we were only one of many buildings with these set ups. I always heard about London being over-surveilled, I guess the NYPD did a much better job of keeping quiet about it.
- PaulWaldman 4y ago>he wouldn't specifically say who owned them That sounds a little concerning. Was the implication that it was a government agency at some level?
- 14 4y agoExactly. Why would you let a random person into your building if there was no answer who they worked for? Was it because they claimed to work for business and you blindly trusted they were doing what they said or did you have some heads up from your boss saying let them in? There must be more to this story or maybe op just didn’t care about random people entering and accessing equipment.
- pessimizer 4y agoIt wasn't their building, it was clearly a building they rented a suite in. And, at a guess, the tech was let in because the landlord called and asked them to let the tech in.
- swores 4y agoMore likely the person telling the story isn't the person who authorised their access, and just happened to witness it / have a conversation about it.
- rideontime 4y ago
- crop_rotation 4y agoThis reminds me of San Francisco Police Strike 1975 where the Police ignored court orders and called the court order "Unconstitutional". (https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/20/archives/police-out-san-francisco-faces-fire-and-transit-strikes-new-tieups.html https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/20/archives/police-out-san-f...) In the end they got what they wanted too.
- fakedang 4y agoLooks like USA is a police state after all. The irony.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoNYC, SF, and other big cities behave this way, but most of the rest of the country doesn't.
- dylan604 4y agoMost? Corrupt county sheriffs are a tale as old as time. I don't know why people try to give a pass to non-big city policing with a brush off like this.
- dumpsterlid 4y agoWhere is your evidence for that?
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- paxys 4y agoSmall town police departments are worse. They just don't get all the press.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThey also don't have the same level of power as the NYPD, which is a big difference.
- ck2 4y agoThink about this one: The NSA is probably aware and/or can detect every corrupt cop in the country. Certainly the financial corruption, they aren't stuffing cash into their mattresses. Yet nothing is ever done with that data, even without using it for prosecution.
- Avshalom 4y agoYou don't need to be the NSA to figure out who's a corrupt cop. They wear badges and have uniforms.
- sneak 4y agoHow do you know nothing is ever done with it? You definitionally would never hear if it were. Same goes for all judges, congresspeople, etc. Those in a position to surveil the mobile network know every mistress, every drug dealer, every bag man for every powerful person in the country.
- irrational 4y agoLaw enforcement for thee, but not for me.
- susanasj 4y agoI understand the objections to "abolish the police" sloganeering because I think the alternatives of "restorative justice" and all that are pretty poorly defined (I say this as someone pretty involved in left wing politics). However, it's increasingly clear that city police departments in many cities basically operate as unaccountable gangs that extort city government. LA Sheriff's Department has quite a few actual, traditional gangs operating within it. The NYPD routinely breaks the law when they feel like it. In Austin, the Police Academy training was found to be discriminatory and militaristic so the City Council created an oversight board, and the Police Department just doesn't let the board view trainings that they are supposed to. Not to mention the constant police violence that they are rarely held accountable for, including the stuff from 2020 where we watched NYPD officers running their vehicles into protestors. I don't know what the solution is but the status quo feels unsustainable.
- shadowgovt 4y agoAfter watching the NYPD's response to Black Lives Matter, nobody should be terribly surprised about this sort of thing. The organization's leadership pretty clearly considers the organization to be a power unto itself that is only partially regulated by civilian authority.
- theknocker 4y ago[dead]
- firstlink 4y agoSo? Nothing will happen. Police are above the law.
- classified 4y agoSo the NYPD is breaking the law. Aren't they supposed to enforce it?
- dragonwriter 4y agoIf you don’t have a single monolithic local paramilitary law enforcement entity, then you won’t have this problem of police veto.
- bastard_op 4y agoPerfect example of why they don't care, they already ignore virtually all oversight anyways. https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/31/nypd_surveillance_rules/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/31/nypd_surveillance_rul...
- EngManagerIsMe 4y agoAnyone who has been watching cops over the past few decades shouldn't find this at all surprising. Cops consistently believe themselves to be above the law and above oversight -- especially the NYPD, but the problem is in every precinct around the country. It's all cops.
- jMyles 4y ago[flagged]
- jimbob45 4y agowhat we once called slave-patrols-and-plantations and which we now call police-and-prisons There’s been a huge resurgence across Reddit and HN today to resurrect Defund the Police and ACAB but implying police and prisons were invented after 1865 surely takes the cake.
- malcolmgreaves 4y agoI believe the poster is talking more specifically, about the history and development of policing in the United States. > but implying police and prisons were invented after 1865 surely takes the cake I don't think they, nor anyone, is making this assertion. There is a direct lineage from modern day police departments to slave patrols. If it helps to understand it, think about Jim Crow laws of the 19th and 20th centuries. This set of laws criminalized being Black and were enforced by police.
- EngManagerIsMe 4y agoThe first uniformed police force came about in the 1850s. Prior to that, police forces weren't the central utility they are today. Yes, there were guards, but their roles, responsibilities, and behaviors were quite different. I posted a bit of history in a sibling comment, but it's not technically wrong to say that the 1800s was the century in which we got the police forces we have today. (But yes, obviously there were other institutions that predated them.)
- 4y ago
- dmix 4y agoIt always amazes me there isn’t a publicly accountable oversight committee that comes with every major privacy violating power. The courts alone aren’t sufficent. And secret courts like FISA that are only selectively required are doubly insufficient.
- yieldcrv 4y agovarious municipalities enact oversight committees as a “gotcha” to rogue police departments all that happens is that the oversight committee doesn't get information shared to them there are other solutions
- standardUser 4y agoWhen I was a teenager I worked with a city council member in my hometown to help establish an independent oversight committee for the local police department. Within a month, the council member was pulled over and given a ticket, and her teenage daughter was pulled over and given a ticket. They don't say ACAB just because it's catchy.
- nikonyrh 4y agoHow can we push this down to 80% ? :D
- tyingq 4y agoThe skeptic in me says any effort to fix it will just push it all into the shadows behind parallel construction.
- radicaldreamer 4y agoThat's likely already the way most cases are "solved"
- tehwebguy 4y agoSurely the police refusing to comply with this law will be arrested & left to rot in Rikers for months awaiting pretrial arraignment