9 ms·

Boston Police use fake social media accounts to phish indie rock show info

108 points by morisy 14y ago

msisto 14y ago
What this article doesn't mention is that the cop who was using the Lemmingtrail board to find out about house shows kept posting even after being outed, eventually being somewhat-ironically accepted into the community. I regularly saw him at shows after he'd been exposed and he was always friendly.
youngerdryas 14y ago
Single page. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/03/boston_police_catfishing_indie_rockers_cops_pose_as_punks_on_the_internet.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/0... It wouldn't be fun if the cops approved, would it?
- msisto 14y ago
  I remember being at a basement show in Allston when I was 18 that was broken up by the cops and thinking "This is so fucking cool". I mean, it's a pain in the ass and sucks for the bands. It can totally ruin your night, but for me it totally fanned the flames and made me love it even more.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Presumably you could give these folks disinformation and check to see if the cops show up. I am not sure why anyone would think police on social media would be any more suave than police in real life. As far back as high school the attempts by law enforcement to get a jump on where the 'bad thing' of the week was going to happen were pretty transparent. I could never figure out if that was on purpose to put people on notice they cared (like driving around a neighborhood to let people know they are watching, showing the colors as it were) or if they were just that clueless.
- klochner 14y ago
  related: https://twitter.com/notpolice https://twitter.com/notpolice
- tsumnia 14y ago
  > ...was on purpose to put people on notice they cared (like driving around a neighborhood to let people know they are watching, showing the colors as it were Police officers follow what is known as "force continuum". This basically outlines how much force they should be using in any situation. Without deviating from the topic, this is where the public gets upset when an officer oversteps their bounds to use excessive force on someone. The first 'level' of all continuum protocols is simply 'presence'. Knowing a cop is around does stop a majority of people who would do illegal activity. Think about how you act next time a cop is behind you on the road. It's a passive power-play move; they need to keep up this presence to ensure the public knows they'll be a moment's notice away if something happens. Moving cops to social media sounds perfectly logical to me. A lot of none-the-wiser people put this information on the internet, thinking its safe. By making an online presence known, they look to quell some people's actions. You could argue people will just find other ways to circumvent the system, but I'm reminded of the constant rat race between White and Black Hat security specialists; each party trying to top the other.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    At least in activist circles, this kind of situation has been around for years, and security culture evolves to deal with it. Of course, that's a bit more serious then a show, but it's the same basic problem.
    - nickpinkston 14y ago
      Ha, you're finally back on HN?
      - nickpinkston 14y ago
        LOL - people hated this comment, but I thought it was funny that Steve (a personal friend) came back to HN to talk about police abuse (a hot topic for him).
comex 14y ago
msisto, you appear to be hellbanned. > I remember being at a basement show in Allston when I was 18 that was broken up by the cops and thinking "This is so fucking cool". I mean, it's a pain in the ass and sucks for the bands. It can totally ruin your night, but for me it totally fanned the flames and made me love it even more. > What this article doesn't mention is that the cop who was using the Lemmingtrail board to find out about house shows kept posting even after being outed, eventually being somewhat-ironically accepted into the community. I regularly saw him at shows after he'd been exposed and he was always friendly.
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  It's hard being a cop who is into punk and going to one of these shows. For some reason, everyone hates you even though you're just there for the music. (Source: my cop hardcore punk friends in south florida)
  - scarecrowbob 14y ago
    Being a police officer isn't a job that you can just take off.... if you are willing to be an agent of state violence, don't be surprised when people who have problems with that situation have issues with you personally.
    - psgibbs 14y ago
      So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? Just like all developers are 'evil hackers'. If people realistically want the situation to get better, they need to embrace the 'good' police officers, rather than automatically ostracizing all police officers equally. Many still really do want to improve their communities.
      - shardling 14y ago
        Probably OP was using "state violence" in its sense as part of a socio/political theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence There's always been a strong connection between punk subculture and anarchist thinking (which is specifically opposed to this type of "legitimate violence"), so its actually a somewhat reasonable thing to bring up.
ghostDancer 14y ago
I suspect the phrase on the internet nobody knows you're a dog gets a new meaning now :-)
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  On the Internet, everybody knows you're a pig ;)
  - zalew 14y ago
    funnily, in my language we call policemen dogs instead of pigs, so it applies perfectly.
zalew 14y ago
well, at least those indies bothered to hide their time and location. this is what happened to tuners/streetracers in Poland recently on fb http://i1.minus.com/jbdZ3dwKcOnWYB.png http://i1.minus.com/jbdZ3dwKcOnWYB.png (translation: fb event "Nightly gathering of powerful cars. Tesco parking lot." Police: attending for sure :))
dustmop 14y ago
The same thing happened years ago to New Brunswick, New Jersey, a college town that produced some very successful artists in the past 2 decades: Lifetime, The Bouncing Souls, Thursday, Gaslight Anthem. Around 2006, the cops started scouring Myspace for shows and permanently shut down a number of popular house venues. Since then, the punks have responded by moving all info to the sneakernet; you can't find out any show details unless you're actually friends with someone who already knows a band or the house owner. Even physical flyers don't have addresses or exact times. It's effectively killed most of the output that this cultural hotspot used to produce.
- themckman 14y ago
  When I was a sophomore or junior in college, a friend and I drove the roughly 8 hours from central Indiana to New Brunswick for a show. A hardcore band we dug was playing their last show ever and we were like fuck it. Had an address and started east. Got into town and went looking for the venue. Was a little nervous we had the wrong address when somewhere along Hamilton St., there stood a house. All in all, one of the coolest shows I've ever been to. The show was in the basement and my friend, who is quite tall, actually had to duck in a few places to move around. The house threw a kegger afterwards that we hung around at for a little bit, talked to the band and generally had a good time. Some very drunk punk guy showed up who was promptly ejected (physically) from the house onto the street. Super cool and I certainly won't forget it.
- colbyh 14y ago
  Thanks for mentioning Lifetime, I think that'll be my soundtrack for the day. Had no idea things got that bad in NJ, it seems that living in Austin for a while spoiled me. The police using email for this sort of thing actually seems like a step backwards somehow. It's been well known for a while that the B9 board gets frequented by law enforcement (both for gang and show related activities) so going the direct message route seems like an unnecessary step. You're never going to be able to adequately integrate, why even try?
- mikeweiss 14y ago
  Hey There! I live in New Brunswick, NJ. Sounds like you were around a few years ago. I live in a show house and also put together a little show calendar app at http://nbshows.org http://nbshows.org which has been up for over a year now. It gets about 100 unique hits a day. There are never any address posted on it. Whenever someone emails staff@nbshows.org and asks for address's I am always careful about giving out info, I always google the email to make sure its not a throw-away. I am really excited that this topic is on HN today, because I am working on a personal project that will be at http://diyshws.org http://diyshws.org. Basically it will be a site where people can create show calendars for the small city that they live in if there is no central way to find out about shows. (other than Facebook)
largesse 14y ago
Wouldn't that violate Facebook's TOS and therefore the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
- victorh 14y ago
  No that's just for young adults downloading files that someone regrets making available publicly.
LandoCalrissian 14y ago
It's more disheartening that this is what the police are spending their time doing. There seriously isn't anything more important they could be working on?
- caycep 14y ago
  Arresting MIT students who wear DIY circuit boards, or download PDF's from JSTOR apparently
- Domenic_S 14y ago
  If you've ever tried to go to sleep and had loud neighbors you might feel differently...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - myke_cameron 14y ago
    Its one thing for neighbors to complain about loud and obnoxious people around them. Its a whole other thing for the police to preemptively break up shows. Some of the house spots that have been shut down in the past 6 months have been operating without complaint from neighbors for years. Beyond that, the crackdown has been felt the most in the shutting down of art and show spaces in Allston warehouses which are zoned appropriately. Granted, the proprietors of these spots don't bother with permits from the city / following fire code, and often encourage or engage in illegal activity beyond simply hosting loud music, but these venues are definitely NOT disturbing neighbors (the neighbors in this case are generally rehearsal spaces for punk bands and other similar performance spaces).
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      > Granted, the proprietors of these spots don't bother with permits from the city / following fire code The fire code is no joke. People used to die in batches of hundreds all of the time before those laws and reforms were put in place.
- 14y ago
bagosm 14y ago
But... why? First of all if it bothers the neighbours why can't they just arrive on the spot and bust the thing? Also, all this planning ahead and resources, why instead don't they just create one or two halls per area that are soundproof etc and let people rock out? Is the state really that stupid?
- edwardunknown 14y ago
  They might be raising revenue for the city with noise ordinance fines, who knows. I wish the reporter had included some possible motives. I never met a city cop who was interested in this kind of silly stuff. Lots of bored small town cops, sure, but for the Boston pd to (allegedly) put this amount of effort into busting basement concerts makes me think that money is somehow involved.
- hfsktr 14y ago
  Is that last question rhetorical? I suppose if you are into conspiracy stuff maybe they just make themselves look stupid so that you won't catch onto the real plans...
- saraid216 14y ago
  > First of all if it bothers the neighbours why can't they just arrive on the spot and bust the thing? Because these neighbors complained so loud that they passed a city-wide law on the matter. > Also, all this planning ahead and resources, why instead don't they just create one or two halls per area that are soundproof etc and let people rock out? You should itemize the budgets for both of these plans and compare them. I'm willing to bet that setting up "one or two halls per area" costs an order of magnitude more than what they're doing.
  - bagosm 14y ago
    First of all I'm sure they could find an unused estate to convert into what they want. The dudes are used to playing in houses, I'm sure they wont mind if its not a perfect concert hall. Also, taxes on tickets and stuff or other promotions or rent for the night could very much turn into a big profit. About the law, I don't have anything against the law, just that I can't understand why would they be so obsessed with preemptive action instead of on-the-spot
SethMurphy 14y ago
What is wrong about this is not that the police are on social media (I expect them to be), but they are assuming a crime will be committed before the fact. Playing music in your house with a few friends over is not illegal. If there are too many friends or the music is too loud, then shut it down after a crime has been committed.
- lmm 14y ago
  We're not talking about some kind of loitering with intent crap; these people had a clear, premeditated intention to break the law. If you announce publicly that you're going to commit a crime at a given time and place, don't be surprised if the police turn up to that place at that time and arrest you.
  - SethMurphy 14y ago
    Did they say things would get unruly? Did they say minors would be drinking? Did they say the neighbors would complain because the music is too loud? Did they say they would be breaking fire codes? What crime did they publicly announce? The police are making a lot of assumptions (right or wrong) before the fact.
  - _ak 14y ago
    You're making too many assumptions. And so does the police.
- koeselitz 14y ago
  I am no huge fan of the BPD, and I don't deny that their tactics here were silly. But there is real history behind this issue, and it's a legitimate safety concern. It was only a few years ago that the Station fire happened less than fifty miles away from Boston; a hundred people died that night, and people haven't forgotten it, nor should they. This is an area that has a ton of old buildings that aren't coded for large numbers of people. It's a very real risk to pack people in. And - fires happen fast. Between the moment a fire starts and the moment when people start dying, there generally isn't time for a neighbor to call the police and complain. This isn't a noise issue; it's a fire hazard issue.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
Congratulations, now you're officially worse than USSR. In USSR, independent bands had very hard time recording or playing on stage, but they could always gather on some flat and play music and nobody bothered them. (Don't know why, maybe it's actually illegal for police to enter your home, maybe it's just decency) And now it's illegal in the USA. All this does is destroying all the new music that isn't profitable/hot enough to afford real venues yet. Talk so much about innovation and garages.
- pessimizer 14y ago
  This isn't new. Depending on the town, time of day(or night), and whether you take money, house shows are often illegal. Not entirely unreasonable, if you think of it from the perspective of the neighbors. Of course, kids should always be trying to throw them, and cops and narcs should always be trying to shut them down. It's the natural order of the world:)
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    Did neighbors complain? No they didn't, or the police would not need their lame social networks act.
    - pessimizer 14y ago
      Not yet, but it might be illegal because they're charging for a show without being licensed, or a myriad of other reasons. There have always been narcs, though. The kids may find @notpolice funny because of their experiences online, but in the 90s I ran into that guy a lot on the street.
      - guard-of-terra 14y ago
        "it might be illegal because they're charging for a show without being licensed, or a myriad of other reasons" That's exactly what's the "worse than USSR" part is about.
burningion 14y ago
This is one of the larger, emerging problems with social media. Interested groups can create large amounts of dummy accounts to manipulate the group discussion. This is already happening on a large scale on reddit. What we need is machine learning systems to help us identify the astroturfers who run dummy accounts to influence the group discussion. The question is, who is going to build it?
- victorh 14y ago
  Sorry mate, it would be about one billion times more profitable to write a machine learning system to astroturf group discussions.
tathagatadg 14y ago
I'm not being able to find any reference to understand why this is considered illegal. (DIY + music) sounds very cool! Drugs? Too loud?
- LeafStorm 14y ago
  Too loud. (But if drugs were involved, that certainly wouldn't help.)
hluska 14y ago
This reminds me of throwing raves in the 1990s. At first, we had a culture where the DJs or promoters would invite you to the (usually illegal) location of the party. In response to busts, that evolved to where the DJs or promoters would invite you to a pick up point where someone would drive you to the actual (still illegal) venue. As promoters started making serious money, real entrepreneurs emerged and started booking big shows at legal venues. That increased costs, so promoters started charging for water and getting sponsors. Long story long, kids will always throw renegade events and police will always use whatever tools to stop these events. And, in response, kids will keep changing their tactics until they either find a line that police won't cross, or until they turn legal! :)
ehutch79 14y ago
It should be known that most of the places in this article are in densely packed, residential neighborhoods. (I've been to them) Some of these places share walls with their neighbors, so sound isolation is non existent at some 'venues'. Also no attempts are made at controlling sound levels outside. Also keep in mind many young punks are not exactly respectful of others. The word entitled comes to mind with a lot of their behaviour. I say this as an aging punk who had a basement where we held 50+ shows with nationally touring bands playing. We never had a problem with being shut down.
- adg 14y ago
  If the noise levels are too high, why not let the neighbors call it in? It seems like a waste of time to proactively try to find parties when they could just wait around at night for people to call in the noise violations.
careersuicide 14y ago
This is exactly the reason why pretty much every house show no longer gets its location listed on Facebook or on flyers where I live. Instead we just put "ask a punk" for the address. You have to be in the know or you won't find out. Unfortunately it's a bit of a turn-off for younger people and anyone who isn't good friends with someone already involved in the scene. The alternative is to have every show busted before it can even start.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
deleted 14y ago
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JonnieCache 14y ago
It's always the clean shoes at 5am which give the game away.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  Before others vote this down, many activists have been arrested by the pairs of shoes they're wearing, and many an attendee of an action has been deemed suspicious because of their shoes.
  - regerg 14y ago
    That has nothing to do with what JohnnyCache was saying. JohnnyCache was saying that cops put on a punk "costume" but forget to muss up their clean shoes, unlike actual punks who are out all night eating and drinking and running around and generally making a mess.
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      Ahh, that makes sense too.
brownbat 14y ago
I wonder how this interacts with the right to peaceably assemble, especially given the often political nature of punk music. Cities can police nuisances, sure, but they cannot craft statutes abrogating first amendment rights that are not narrowly tailored to the perceived harm. There were a few laws against public dancing in the late 1800s that got struck down under this sort of reasoning. I'm not sure what the current state of constitutional limits on nuisance laws are, but the Boston statute does seem very broad.

108 points by morisy 14y ago

What this article doesn't mention is that the cop who was using the Lemmingtrail board to find out about house shows kept posting even after being outed, eventually being somewhat-ironically accepted into the community. I regularly saw him at shows after he'd been exposed and he was always friendly.

youngerdryas 14y ago

Single page. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/03/boston_police_catfishing_indie_rockers_cops_pose_as_punks_on_the_internet.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/0... It wouldn't be fun if the cops approved, would it?

msisto 14y ago
I remember being at a basement show in Allston when I was 18 that was broken up by the cops and thinking "This is so fucking cool". I mean, it's a pain in the ass and sucks for the bands. It can totally ruin your night, but for me it totally fanned the flames and made me love it even more.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Presumably you could give these folks disinformation and check to see if the cops show up. I am not sure why anyone would think police on social media would be any more suave than police in real life. As far back as high school the attempts by law enforcement to get a jump on where the 'bad thing' of the week was going to happen were pretty transparent. I could never figure out if that was on purpose to put people on notice they cared (like driving around a neighborhood to let people know they are watching, showing the colors as it were) or if they were just that clueless.

klochner 14y ago
related: https://twitter.com/notpolice https://twitter.com/notpolice
tsumnia 14y ago
> ...was on purpose to put people on notice they cared (like driving around a neighborhood to let people know they are watching, showing the colors as it were Police officers follow what is known as "force continuum". This basically outlines how much force they should be using in any situation. Without deviating from the topic, this is where the public gets upset when an officer oversteps their bounds to use excessive force on someone. The first 'level' of all continuum protocols is simply 'presence'. Knowing a cop is around does stop a majority of people who would do illegal activity. Think about how you act next time a cop is behind you on the road. It's a passive power-play move; they need to keep up this presence to ensure the public knows they'll be a moment's notice away if something happens. Moving cops to social media sounds perfectly logical to me. A lot of none-the-wiser people put this information on the internet, thinking its safe. By making an online presence known, they look to quell some people's actions. You could argue people will just find other ways to circumvent the system, but I'm reminded of the constant rat race between White and Black Hat security specialists; each party trying to top the other.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  At least in activist circles, this kind of situation has been around for years, and security culture evolves to deal with it. Of course, that's a bit more serious then a show, but it's the same basic problem.
  - nickpinkston 14y ago
    Ha, you're finally back on HN?
    - nickpinkston 14y ago
      LOL - people hated this comment, but I thought it was funny that Steve (a personal friend) came back to HN to talk about police abuse (a hot topic for him).

comex 14y ago

msisto, you appear to be hellbanned. > I remember being at a basement show in Allston when I was 18 that was broken up by the cops and thinking "This is so fucking cool". I mean, it's a pain in the ass and sucks for the bands. It can totally ruin your night, but for me it totally fanned the flames and made me love it even more. > What this article doesn't mention is that the cop who was using the Lemmingtrail board to find out about house shows kept posting even after being outed, eventually being somewhat-ironically accepted into the community. I regularly saw him at shows after he'd been exposed and he was always friendly.

peterwwillis 14y ago
It's hard being a cop who is into punk and going to one of these shows. For some reason, everyone hates you even though you're just there for the music. (Source: my cop hardcore punk friends in south florida)
- scarecrowbob 14y ago
  Being a police officer isn't a job that you can just take off.... if you are willing to be an agent of state violence, don't be surprised when people who have problems with that situation have issues with you personally.
  - psgibbs 14y ago
    So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? Just like all developers are 'evil hackers'. If people realistically want the situation to get better, they need to embrace the 'good' police officers, rather than automatically ostracizing all police officers equally. Many still really do want to improve their communities.
    - shardling 14y ago
      Probably OP was using "state violence" in its sense as part of a socio/political theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence There's always been a strong connection between punk subculture and anarchist thinking (which is specifically opposed to this type of "legitimate violence"), so its actually a somewhat reasonable thing to bring up.

ghostDancer 14y ago

I suspect the phrase on the internet nobody knows you're a dog gets a new meaning now :-)

Samuel_Michon 14y ago
On the Internet, everybody knows you're a pig ;)
- zalew 14y ago
  funnily, in my language we call policemen dogs instead of pigs, so it applies perfectly.

zalew 14y ago

well, at least those indies bothered to hide their time and location. this is what happened to tuners/streetracers in Poland recently on fb http://i1.minus.com/jbdZ3dwKcOnWYB.png http://i1.minus.com/jbdZ3dwKcOnWYB.png (translation: fb event "Nightly gathering of powerful cars. Tesco parking lot." Police: attending for sure :))

dustmop 14y ago

The same thing happened years ago to New Brunswick, New Jersey, a college town that produced some very successful artists in the past 2 decades: Lifetime, The Bouncing Souls, Thursday, Gaslight Anthem. Around 2006, the cops started scouring Myspace for shows and permanently shut down a number of popular house venues. Since then, the punks have responded by moving all info to the sneakernet; you can't find out any show details unless you're actually friends with someone who already knows a band or the house owner. Even physical flyers don't have addresses or exact times. It's effectively killed most of the output that this cultural hotspot used to produce.

themckman 14y ago
When I was a sophomore or junior in college, a friend and I drove the roughly 8 hours from central Indiana to New Brunswick for a show. A hardcore band we dug was playing their last show ever and we were like fuck it. Had an address and started east. Got into town and went looking for the venue. Was a little nervous we had the wrong address when somewhere along Hamilton St., there stood a house. All in all, one of the coolest shows I've ever been to. The show was in the basement and my friend, who is quite tall, actually had to duck in a few places to move around. The house threw a kegger afterwards that we hung around at for a little bit, talked to the band and generally had a good time. Some very drunk punk guy showed up who was promptly ejected (physically) from the house onto the street. Super cool and I certainly won't forget it.
colbyh 14y ago
Thanks for mentioning Lifetime, I think that'll be my soundtrack for the day. Had no idea things got that bad in NJ, it seems that living in Austin for a while spoiled me. The police using email for this sort of thing actually seems like a step backwards somehow. It's been well known for a while that the B9 board gets frequented by law enforcement (both for gang and show related activities) so going the direct message route seems like an unnecessary step. You're never going to be able to adequately integrate, why even try?
mikeweiss 14y ago
Hey There! I live in New Brunswick, NJ. Sounds like you were around a few years ago. I live in a show house and also put together a little show calendar app at http://nbshows.org http://nbshows.org which has been up for over a year now. It gets about 100 unique hits a day. There are never any address posted on it. Whenever someone emails staff@nbshows.org and asks for address's I am always careful about giving out info, I always google the email to make sure its not a throw-away. I am really excited that this topic is on HN today, because I am working on a personal project that will be at http://diyshws.org http://diyshws.org. Basically it will be a site where people can create show calendars for the small city that they live in if there is no central way to find out about shows. (other than Facebook)

largesse 14y ago

Wouldn't that violate Facebook's TOS and therefore the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?

victorh 14y ago
No that's just for young adults downloading files that someone regrets making available publicly.

LandoCalrissian 14y ago

It's more disheartening that this is what the police are spending their time doing. There seriously isn't anything more important they could be working on?

caycep 14y ago
Arresting MIT students who wear DIY circuit boards, or download PDF's from JSTOR apparently
Domenic_S 14y ago
If you've ever tried to go to sleep and had loud neighbors you might feel differently...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- myke_cameron 14y ago
  Its one thing for neighbors to complain about loud and obnoxious people around them. Its a whole other thing for the police to preemptively break up shows. Some of the house spots that have been shut down in the past 6 months have been operating without complaint from neighbors for years. Beyond that, the crackdown has been felt the most in the shutting down of art and show spaces in Allston warehouses which are zoned appropriately. Granted, the proprietors of these spots don't bother with permits from the city / following fire code, and often encourage or engage in illegal activity beyond simply hosting loud music, but these venues are definitely NOT disturbing neighbors (the neighbors in this case are generally rehearsal spaces for punk bands and other similar performance spaces).
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    > Granted, the proprietors of these spots don't bother with permits from the city / following fire code The fire code is no joke. People used to die in batches of hundreds all of the time before those laws and reforms were put in place.
14y ago

bagosm 14y ago

But... why? First of all if it bothers the neighbours why can't they just arrive on the spot and bust the thing? Also, all this planning ahead and resources, why instead don't they just create one or two halls per area that are soundproof etc and let people rock out? Is the state really that stupid?

edwardunknown 14y ago
They might be raising revenue for the city with noise ordinance fines, who knows. I wish the reporter had included some possible motives. I never met a city cop who was interested in this kind of silly stuff. Lots of bored small town cops, sure, but for the Boston pd to (allegedly) put this amount of effort into busting basement concerts makes me think that money is somehow involved.
hfsktr 14y ago
Is that last question rhetorical? I suppose if you are into conspiracy stuff maybe they just make themselves look stupid so that you won't catch onto the real plans...
saraid216 14y ago
> First of all if it bothers the neighbours why can't they just arrive on the spot and bust the thing? Because these neighbors complained so loud that they passed a city-wide law on the matter. > Also, all this planning ahead and resources, why instead don't they just create one or two halls per area that are soundproof etc and let people rock out? You should itemize the budgets for both of these plans and compare them. I'm willing to bet that setting up "one or two halls per area" costs an order of magnitude more than what they're doing.
- bagosm 14y ago
  First of all I'm sure they could find an unused estate to convert into what they want. The dudes are used to playing in houses, I'm sure they wont mind if its not a perfect concert hall. Also, taxes on tickets and stuff or other promotions or rent for the night could very much turn into a big profit. About the law, I don't have anything against the law, just that I can't understand why would they be so obsessed with preemptive action instead of on-the-spot

SethMurphy 14y ago

What is wrong about this is not that the police are on social media (I expect them to be), but they are assuming a crime will be committed before the fact. Playing music in your house with a few friends over is not illegal. If there are too many friends or the music is too loud, then shut it down after a crime has been committed.

lmm 14y ago
We're not talking about some kind of loitering with intent crap; these people had a clear, premeditated intention to break the law. If you announce publicly that you're going to commit a crime at a given time and place, don't be surprised if the police turn up to that place at that time and arrest you.
- SethMurphy 14y ago
  Did they say things would get unruly? Did they say minors would be drinking? Did they say the neighbors would complain because the music is too loud? Did they say they would be breaking fire codes? What crime did they publicly announce? The police are making a lot of assumptions (right or wrong) before the fact.
- _ak 14y ago
  You're making too many assumptions. And so does the police.
koeselitz 14y ago
I am no huge fan of the BPD, and I don't deny that their tactics here were silly. But there is real history behind this issue, and it's a legitimate safety concern. It was only a few years ago that the Station fire happened less than fifty miles away from Boston; a hundred people died that night, and people haven't forgotten it, nor should they. This is an area that has a ton of old buildings that aren't coded for large numbers of people. It's a very real risk to pack people in. And - fires happen fast. Between the moment a fire starts and the moment when people start dying, there generally isn't time for a neighbor to call the police and complain. This isn't a noise issue; it's a fire hazard issue.

guard-of-terra 14y ago

Congratulations, now you're officially worse than USSR. In USSR, independent bands had very hard time recording or playing on stage, but they could always gather on some flat and play music and nobody bothered them. (Don't know why, maybe it's actually illegal for police to enter your home, maybe it's just decency) And now it's illegal in the USA. All this does is destroying all the new music that isn't profitable/hot enough to afford real venues yet. Talk so much about innovation and garages.

pessimizer 14y ago
This isn't new. Depending on the town, time of day(or night), and whether you take money, house shows are often illegal. Not entirely unreasonable, if you think of it from the perspective of the neighbors. Of course, kids should always be trying to throw them, and cops and narcs should always be trying to shut them down. It's the natural order of the world:)
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Did neighbors complain? No they didn't, or the police would not need their lame social networks act.
  - pessimizer 14y ago
    Not yet, but it might be illegal because they're charging for a show without being licensed, or a myriad of other reasons. There have always been narcs, though. The kids may find @notpolice funny because of their experiences online, but in the 90s I ran into that guy a lot on the street.
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      "it might be illegal because they're charging for a show without being licensed, or a myriad of other reasons" That's exactly what's the "worse than USSR" part is about.

burningion 14y ago

This is one of the larger, emerging problems with social media. Interested groups can create large amounts of dummy accounts to manipulate the group discussion. This is already happening on a large scale on reddit. What we need is machine learning systems to help us identify the astroturfers who run dummy accounts to influence the group discussion. The question is, who is going to build it?

victorh 14y ago
Sorry mate, it would be about one billion times more profitable to write a machine learning system to astroturf group discussions.

tathagatadg 14y ago

I'm not being able to find any reference to understand why this is considered illegal. (DIY + music) sounds very cool! Drugs? Too loud?

LeafStorm 14y ago
Too loud. (But if drugs were involved, that certainly wouldn't help.)

hluska 14y ago

This reminds me of throwing raves in the 1990s. At first, we had a culture where the DJs or promoters would invite you to the (usually illegal) location of the party. In response to busts, that evolved to where the DJs or promoters would invite you to a pick up point where someone would drive you to the actual (still illegal) venue. As promoters started making serious money, real entrepreneurs emerged and started booking big shows at legal venues. That increased costs, so promoters started charging for water and getting sponsors. Long story long, kids will always throw renegade events and police will always use whatever tools to stop these events. And, in response, kids will keep changing their tactics until they either find a line that police won't cross, or until they turn legal! :)

ehutch79 14y ago

It should be known that most of the places in this article are in densely packed, residential neighborhoods. (I've been to them) Some of these places share walls with their neighbors, so sound isolation is non existent at some 'venues'. Also no attempts are made at controlling sound levels outside. Also keep in mind many young punks are not exactly respectful of others. The word entitled comes to mind with a lot of their behaviour. I say this as an aging punk who had a basement where we held 50+ shows with nationally touring bands playing. We never had a problem with being shut down.

adg 14y ago
If the noise levels are too high, why not let the neighbors call it in? It seems like a waste of time to proactively try to find parties when they could just wait around at night for people to call in the noise violations.

careersuicide 14y ago

This is exactly the reason why pretty much every house show no longer gets its location listed on Facebook or on flyers where I live. Instead we just put "ask a punk" for the address. You have to be in the know or you won't find out. Unfortunately it's a bit of a turn-off for younger people and anyone who isn't good friends with someone already involved in the scene. The alternative is to have every show busted before it can even start.

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JonnieCache 14y ago

It's always the clean shoes at 5am which give the game away.

steveklabnik 14y ago
Before others vote this down, many activists have been arrested by the pairs of shoes they're wearing, and many an attendee of an action has been deemed suspicious because of their shoes.
- regerg 14y ago
  That has nothing to do with what JohnnyCache was saying. JohnnyCache was saying that cops put on a punk "costume" but forget to muss up their clean shoes, unlike actual punks who are out all night eating and drinking and running around and generally making a mess.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    Ahh, that makes sense too.

brownbat 14y ago

I wonder how this interacts with the right to peaceably assemble, especially given the often political nature of punk music. Cities can police nuisances, sure, but they cannot craft statutes abrogating first amendment rights that are not narrowly tailored to the perceived harm. There were a few laws against public dancing in the late 1800s that got struck down under this sort of reasoning. I'm not sure what the current state of constitutional limits on nuisance laws are, but the Boston statute does seem very broad.