Disinformation » Police

The Police-ification Of Schools

JacobSloan — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:08:02 +0000

The Guardian reports on the new public education model in Texas, in which police officers patrol school hallways, giving out hundreds of thousands of tickets to children each year and making arrests for criminal behavior such as leaving crumbs in the cafeteria, wearing inappropriate clothing, spraying perfume, and making sarcastic remarks in class. Poor children whose families are unable to pay the fines may be jailed for the nonpayment once they turn 17:

More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?

The charge on the police docket was “disrupting class”. But that’s not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck in class because other children were bullying her with taunts of “you smell”.

“I’m weird. Other kids don’t like me,” said Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight. “They were picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then the teacher called the police.”

The policeman didn’t have far to come. He patrols the corridors of Sarah’s school, Fulmore Middle in Austin, Texas. Like hundreds of schools in the state, and across large parts of the rest of the US, Fulmore Middle has its own police force with officers in uniform who carry guns to keep order in the canteens, playgrounds and lessons. Sarah was taken from class, charged with a criminal misdemeanour and ordered to appear in court.

Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing “inappropriate” clothes and being late for school.

In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 “Class C misdemeanour” tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.

“We’ve taken childhood behaviour and made it criminal,” said Kady Simpkins, a lawyer who represented Sarah Bustamantes. “They’re kids. Disruption of class? Every time I look at this law I think: good lord, I never would have made it in school in the US. I grew up in Australia and it’s just rowdy there. I don’t know how these kids do it, how they go to school every day without breaking these laws.”

The emphasis on law and order in the classroom parallels more than two decades of rapid expansion of all areas of policing in Texas in response to misplaced fears across the US in the 1980s of a looming crime wave stoked by the crack epidemic, alarmist academic studies and the media.

“Zero tolerance started out as a term that was used in combating drug trafficking and it became a term that is now used widely when you’re referring to some very punitive school discipline measures. Those two policy worlds became conflated with each other,” said Fowler.

The very young are not spared. According to Appleseed, Texas records show more than 1,000 tickets were issued to primary schoolchildren over the past six years (although these have no legal force at that age). Appleseed said that “several districts ticketed a six-year-old at least once in the last five years”.

Fines run up to $500. For poorer parents, the cost can be crippling. Some parents and students ignore the financial penalty, but that can have consequences years down the road. Schoolchildren with outstanding fines are regularly jailed in an adult prison for non-payment once they turn 17. Stumping up the fine is not an end to the offending student’s problems either. A class-C misdemeanour is a criminal offence.

UK Undercover Police Had Children With Activists They Were Spying On

Good German — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:46:57 +0000

Bob Lambert. Photo: CSTPV

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans report for the Guardian:

Two undercover police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring, the Guardian can reveal.

In both cases, the children have grown up not knowing that their biological fathers – whom they have not seen in decades – were police officers who had adopted fake identities to infiltrate activist groups. Both men have concealed their true identities from the children’s mothers for many years.

One of the spies was Bob Lambert, who has already admitted that he tricked a second woman into having a long-term relationship with him, as part of an intricate attempt to bolster his credibility as a committed campaigner.

The second police spy followed the progress of his child and the child’s mother by reading confidential police reports which tracked the mother’s political activities and life.

The disclosures are likely to intensify the controversy over the long-running police operation to infiltrate and sabotage protest groups.

Police chiefs claim that undercover officers are strictly forbidden from having sexual relationships with the activists they are spying on, describing the situations as “grossly unprofessional” and “morally wrong”.

But that claim has been undermined as many of the officers who have been unmasked have admitted to, or have been accused of, having sex with the targets of their surveillance.

Last month eight women who say they were duped into forming long-term intimate relationships of up to nine years with five undercover policemen started unprecedented legal action. They say they have suffered immense emotional trauma and pain over the relationships, which spanned the period from 1987 to 2010.

Until now it was not known that police had secretly fathered children while living undercover. One of them is Lambert, who adopted a fake persona to infiltrate animal rights and environmental groups in the 1980s.

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly Laughs at #OWS Police Brutality Accountability (Video)

Camron Wiltshire — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:56:38 +0000

Via We Are Change:

We Are Change randomly meets up NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly on the streets on NYC and asks him about the numerous incidents of police brutality during Occupy Wall Street. Recorded 12/16/11:

14-Year-Old Tasered By Police in Allentown, Pennsylvania (Video)

Join Or DIE — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:49:16 +0000

Via the Guardian:

CCTV footage shows a police officer pushing a 14-year-old girl against a parked car and firing a taser at her groin. Shortly before the taser was fired the teenager is seen raising her hands in surrender. She received hospital treatment after the incident in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Undercover Police Spied On Occupy Los Angeles In Search Of ‘Extremists’

JacobSloan — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:02:39 +0000

No word on how much fun undercover officers did or didn’t have during their infiltration of Occupy Los Angeles in search of terrorists. Reuters reports:

Undercover police officers infiltrated Occupy LA’s tent city last month to spy on people they suspected of stockpiling human waste and crude weapons for resisting an eventual eviction, police and city government sources said.

Authorities also used security cameras mounted outside City Hall, where the camp was located, and monitored publicly available Internet chatter and video on social-networking sites such as Twitter, sources said.

They insisted that covert surveillance of the camp was aimed not at anti-Wall Street activists exercising their constitutional right to freedom of expression but at those they considered anti-government extremists bent on violence. Civil liberties advocates said they were troubled by law enforcement’s infiltration of peaceful demonstrations, although the LAPD’s undercover efforts were not unique.

In the end, nearly 300 Los Angeles demonstrators were arrested the night police raided their encampment, nearly all for defying orders to leave but with little violence.

The City Attorney’s Office has so far filed formal charges against seven people arrested before the raid and accused of violations ranging from weapons possession, battery, assault with a deadly weapon and lewd conduct.

But police said a key concern about the eviction stemmed from some individuals in the camp identified as belonging to or affiliated with radical organizations such as Sovereign Citizens, which the FBI classifies as an “extremist anti-government group,” and the Black Riders Liberation Party, deemed a “domestic terrorist group” by the LAPD.

Should Pepper Spray Be TIME’s Person of the Year?

Good German — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:32:12 +0000

Slade Sohmer asks at HyperVocal:

What started out as a joke has become an increasingly real proposition: Even though it’s not a “person,” we must now begin to debate whether Pepper Spray should grace TIME’s most discussed cover.

No person, place or thing has come to define the absurdity of 2011 more than the “food product, essentially,” this suddenly ubiquitous lachrymatory agent/chemical weapon.

Pepper spray, essentially, gave birth to the national media’s recognition of the Occupy Wall Street movement when NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna cowardly pepper-sprayed some unwitting young women. Without his depraved indifference to the freedom to assemble and the freedom of speech, the national media, and by extension the nation, might never have begun to discuss income inequality in earnest.

The pepper-spraying incidents then moved west: The notoriously corrupt Tulsa police department doused some eyes while evicting the Occupy protesters in that city, then Seattle police sprayed 84-year-old Dorli Rainey as she checked out the protests there. Portland police continued the Pacific Northwest trend, and the instantly iconic image of a young woman taking it in the face went viral …

The Wind that Shakes the Parley: Police Voice Concerns about Being Used to Stifle Legitimate Protest

Liam McGonagle — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:25:16 +0000

This past week has tacked on more examples of politicians using law enforcement to stifle dissent among unsatisfied constituents. NY’s Mayor Bloomberg, for instance, was quoted referring to the NYPD as his “own army”. “But other facets of this story have been developing behind the scenes. Could Operation SHIELD and Ray Lewis raise the “wind that shakes the parley”? Chris Faraone writes in the Boston Phoenix:

As Occupy camps from coast to coast face evictions — and in many cases have already been pushed out of parks and plazas like so much human trash — it’s clear that the institutional response to the movement is escalating dangerously. Likewise, relations between police and activists seem to be deteriorating, as non-violent protesters continue to be arrested almost daily.

But as tensions build between Occupiers and Big Brother, what’s also true is that individual officers are increasingly concerned about their role in combating Occupy. Even in cities where the overall police response has been barbaric, there’s a growing sense that cops who’ve been charged with breaking camps are unnerved by such orders.

Earlier this week, Los Angeles authorities avoided a riot by working with protesters, and even thanking them publicly for demonstrating their right to free speech. On a smaller scale, last month in Oregon an officer was seen sobbing in his combat gear while raiding a Portland encampment. In October, Albany police — along with state troopers — refused to arrest protesters despite pressure from the city’s mayor and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

At least one Occupier believes that such sentiments are not anomalous. Calling himself Danny — he wouldn’t reveal his true identity — he created a movement-within-a-movement, Occupy Police (OcPo), designed to be an outlet for officers of all ranks, everywhere, to speak openly about Occupy.

Continued at the Boston Phoenix

Occupy Wall Street Electronics Destroyed By NYPD

JacobSloan — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:25:00 +0000

Via Motherboard, the police apparently took baseball bats to all of the property they confiscated in their Zuccotti Park raid a couple weeks ago. Was the goal to destroy devices that might contain documentation of the protests, or simply to punish the protests by breaking their possessions?

Don’t let the media have you fooled. This is what really happened to the protesters property after the OWS raid last week.

The NYPD smashed/broke laptops, camera’s, tents, all electronics, bikes, etc. and took $5,000 of cash from a man’s backpack. That was all the money he had left to get by. The cops are now facing legal charges for violating their own rules and not giving protesters receipts for materials “confiscated”.

Pepper Spray Is Harmful, Torturously Painful, And Can Be Deadly

JacobSloan — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:00:38 +0000

To sum up: the burning from so-called “pepper spray” is ten times more intense than that of the hottest peppers in existence, it can cause permanent respiratory, nerve, and eye damage, and in the mid-1990s was linked by the Justice Department to 70 deaths. Via Scientific American:

Aa American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville developed a scale to measure the intensity of a pepper’s burn. The scale puts sweet bell peppers at the zero mark and the blistering habanero at up to 350,000 Scoville Units. Commercial grade pepper spray leaves even the most painful of natural peppers (the Himalayan ghost pepper) far behind. It’s listed at between 2 million and 5.3 million Scoville units. The lower number refers to the kind of pepper spray that you and I might be able to purchase for self-protective uses. And the higher number? It’s the kind of spray that police use, the super-high dose given in the orange-colored spray used at UC-Davis.

But we’ve taken to calling it pepper spray, I think, because that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen.

But as pointed out in the 2004 paper, Health Hazards of Pepper Spray, written by health researchers at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, the sprays contain other risky materials:

Depending on brand, an OC spray may contain water, alcohols, or organic solvents as liquid carriers; and nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or halogenated hydrocarbons (such as Freon, tetrachloroethylene, and methylene chloride) as propellants to discharge the canister contents.(3) Inhalation of high doses of some of these chemicals can produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurologic effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death.

As the North Carolina researchers point out, any compound that can influence nerve function is, by definition, risky. Research tells us that pepper spray acts as a potent inflammatory agent. It amplifies allergic sensitivities, it irritates and damages eyes, membranes, bronchial airways, the stomach lining – basically what it touches. It works by causing pain – and, as we know, pain is the body warning us of an injury.

The more worrisome effects have to do with inhalation – and by some reports, California university police officers deliberately put OC spray down protestors throats. Capsaicins inflame the airways, causing swelling and restriction. And this means that pepper sprays pose a genuine risk to people with asthma and other respiratory conditions.

Pepper spray use has been suspected of contributing to a number of deaths that occurred in police custody. In mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Justice cited nearly 70 fatalities linked to pepper-spray use, following on a 1995 report compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union of California.

Undercover Cop Assaults Journalist at OWS (Video)

Camron Wiltshire — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:51:16 +0000

Via We Are Change:

Retired Police Captain Ray Lewis Discusses His Arrest at OccupyWallStreet (Video)

Camron Wiltshire — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:09:16 +0000

A followup to this post, retired Philadelphia police officer Ray Lewis discusses his arrest at Occupy Wall Street with We Are Change:

UC Davis Pepper Spraying Video

majestic — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:11:48 +0000

The police use of pepper spray on peaceful protesters at the University of California Davis campus on Nov. 18 has seen many column inches devoted to it this weekend, but it’s still shocking to see the video (thanks Miles Jaffe for sharing):

Occupy Toronto Says “Thank You” to Police?

cit.zen — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:35:36 +0000

This letter has been seen circulating amongst protesters at Occupy Toronto. As the camp faces the possibility of eviction, some of the occupiers have been seen toting stacks of letters and handing them out to police on the camp’s perimeter.

Some protesters are irked over the fact that the letter was not passed through any General Assembly while others are pleased to see “the viewpoint of the reasonable” achieve a seat of prominence in the public eye, as some mainstream news media have broadcast the letter on the 6 o’clock news.

The question to be asked is, does this letter help or hurt the movement?

Retired Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis Slammed NYPD Conduct on OccupyWallStreet (Video)

Camron Wiltshire — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 06:33:43 +0000

Supreme Court Troubled By Warrantless GPS Tracking

ralph — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:37:59 +0000

I guess the justices of the highest court in the land (a.k.a. the Supremes) realized that the U.S. government has the power to watch any of them without any legal action … Mark Sherman reports in the AP:

The Supreme Court invoked visions of an all-seeing Big Brother and satellites watching us from above. Then things got personal Tuesday when the justices were told police could slap GPS devices on their cars and track their movements, without asking a judge for advance approval.

The occasion for all the talk about intrusive police actions was a hearing in a case about whether the police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. The outcome could have implications for other high-tech surveillance methods as well.

The justices expressed deep reservations about warrantless GPS tracking. But there also was no clear view about how or whether to regulate police use of the devices.

The justices were taken aback when the lawyer representing the government said police officers could install GPS devices on the justices’ cars and track their movements without a warrant. To get a warrant, investigators need to convince a judge that there is reason to believe a suspect is involved in criminal activity.

Smile! Get Ready for Tiny Police Uniform Cameras

Join Or DIE — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:39:40 +0000

Via NPR:

The next time you talk to a police officer, you might find yourself staring into a lens. Companies such as Taser and Vievu are making small, durable cameras designed to be worn on police officer’s uniforms. The idea is to capture video from the officer’s point of view, for use as evidence against suspects, as well as to help monitor officers’ behavior toward the public.

The concept is catching on. The cameras have been adopted by big city police departments, such as Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., as well as dozens of smaller cities, such as Bainbridge Island, Wash., where the Vievu camera was initially tested by Officer Ben Sias.

“The only thing that really was different about doing business is that I’d tell the person that we’re being recorded,” Sias says. He sees the camera as a kind of insurance policy.

“In this job, we’re frequently accused of things we haven’t done, or things were kind of embellished, as far as contact,” he says. “And the cameras show a pretty unbiased opinion of what actually did happen.” That makes the cameras particularly appealing in cities where the police have been accused of misconduct.

More: NPR

Media Roots: Occupy Oakland — Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets

Abby Martin — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:43:27 +0000

Abby Martin of Media Roots was on the front lines of the war in the streets of Oakland during the aftermath of the Occupy Oakland general strike and shutdown of the port on November 2, 2011. Over 10,000 peaceful protesters successfully shut down the Port of Oakland, the fifth largest port in the country at 8 p.m. earlier that night. About two hours later, the anarchist “Black Bloc” came to downtown, smashing windows of banks and setting trash cans on fire. The Oakland PD in full riot gear lined up and marched toward the now out of control rally. They started firing smoke grenades and tear gas into the crowd of people, to which people starting throwing bottles and other objects back to the police. After the crowd scattered, the police lined up and starting to close in and arrest the remaining protesters at the Occupy Oakland camp:

Calling Out The Police For Hiding Their Nameplates

JacobSloan — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:16:22 +0000

The California Penal Code states that uniformed police officers must wear “a badge, nameplate, or other device which bears clearly…the identification number or name of the officer”. Feel free to remind the police of this when they forget:

Officer Hargraves of the Oakland Police Department is called out by a citizen journalist for covering his name tag with a strip of black electrical tape. Police lieutenant Hu removes the tape while the camera rolls.

The issue of “anonymous police” remains a serious problem. This is especially true for “riot police” who wear dark anonymous uniforms while firing rubber bullets, tear gas canisters and flash-bang grenades into the crowd.

NYPD Commonly Planted Drugs On Innocent People To Meet Arrest Quotas

JacobSloan — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:59:42 +0000

Ever watch that show Punked on MTV with Ashton Kutcher? The NYPD narcotics squads do something that’s kind of like that. The New York Daily News reports:

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as “flaking,” on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

“Tavarez was…worried about getting sent back [to patrol] and, you know, the supervisors getting on his case,” he recounted at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.

Anderson worked in the Queens and Brooklyn South narcotics squads and was called to the stand at Arbeeny’s bench trial to show the illegal conduct wasn’t limited to a single squad.

The city paid $300,000 to settle a false arrest suit by Jose Colon and his brother Maximo, who were falsely arrested by Anderson and Tavarez. A surveillance tape inside the bar showed they had been framed.

A federal judge presiding over the suit said the NYPD is plagued by “widespread falsification” by arresting officers.

Who Will Protect the Protectors?

Liam McGonagle — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:28:58 +0000

“What bullsh*t, Liam. If your lot really thought they [i.e., the police] were part of the “99%”, you’d be doing something to protect them, too,” Sorcha Nic Congail

Well, it has to be admitted that my cousin Sorcha has a point. A powerful point. Not the sort of thing that I would have been inclined to explore on my own unbidden. But that’s what friends are for, I guess. To prod you along some paths you would never have even considered, left to your own devices.

Here’s where the hole ugly mess began:

Photo, allegedly of the dog Parrot moments before being shot to death by police.

I received a copy of this photo last weekend from an FB friend and as a dog lover was immediately horrified. As a kid I grew up with dogs — lots of dogs. Probably the best, most loving and loyal animals on earth. I’d long ago come to see dogs as man’s natural companion and most trusted comrade. My nerves just could not handle the image of a so-called “law enforcement officer” crushing the spine of a beloved family pet. I blanched at the nightmare of a child discovering this photo haunt the web, eternally memorializing the brutal killing of his best friend — the best friend that would have done anything to protect him, but whom he himself was powerless to help in his hour of need.

The accompanying text was spare. It described this officer backing a frightened family pet named Parrot into a corner, pouncing on the hapless creature and applying the full weight of his body to the animal’s back before it was corralled to a concrete pen where another officer executed the creature at point blank range with his service revolver.

In the context of a stream of videos and text updates on the various Occupy protests throughout the company, I assumed (though was not told) that a protester had brought the animal along, either not wanting to subject the poor beast to the intolerable neglect and lonliness that his/her long absence would create, or maybe even as some stype of service animal like a seeing eye dog. This time the cops had gone too far, I thought.

Scott Olsen, victim of police violence

I know — this was a sick, sick notion. The whole world had seen a participant of Occupy Oakland, 24 year-old, 2-tour Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen shot in the face by overzealous police in California. You may well say, “What kind of pervert are you, Liam, that you care more about a mere DOG than a human being?!”

I don’t blame you or disagree with you necessarily. That is essentially true; my reaction was indeed a reflection of the bizarre, inverted distinctions I maintain in my various relationships with humans and animals.

Like I said, I grew up considering dogs to be my closest, most loyal friends. My father was an expert at picking family pets. My mother nicknamed Dad “St. Francis” because of the uncanny rapport he had with all sorts of animals. He really did radiate an almsot supernatural calm among them that could lead to the most anamolous sights you’re ever likely to see outside of a Pixar(tm) animation. At one point he had somehow trained our two Labrador Retrievers to calmly (if inquisitively) accept the unfettered prescence of a parakeet hopping about the living room floor. Believe it or not, those dogs NEVER molested the bird.

And this is precisely where the pardoxes enter the story of the photo above. Three paradoxes, really.

Read the rest of these menacing meditations at Dystopia Diaries

Wall Street Corporations Rent Their Own NYPD Unit From The City Of New York

JacobSloan — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:36:52 +0000

Did you know that for a measly fee of $37 an hour per officer, you can rent uniformed, on-duty NYC cops as easily as ordering a sandwich? Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani created the “Paid Detail Unit” in 1998 and Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange among others have been frequent customers recently. Counterpunch reveals:

The Paid Detail Unit allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye. The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest.

New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.

The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.

When the program was first rolled out, one insightful member of the NYPD posted the following on a forum: “… regarding the officer working for, and being paid by, some of the richest people and organizations in the City, if not the world, enforcing the mandates of the private employer, and in effect, allowing the officer to become the Praetorian Guard of the elite of the City. And now corruption is no longer a problem. Who are they kidding?”

Wall Street firms that are known to have used the Paid Detail include Goldman Sachs, the World Financial Center complex which houses financial firms, and the New York Stock Exchange.

Read the rest at Counterpunch.

‘It Never Ends’: LAPD Homicide Detective Tweets Photo of Dead Body

bluemana — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 21:53:43 +0000

Simone Wilson writes on LA Weekly:

Local arts blog LA Taco is fuming over the “callous” Twitter activity of LAPD Homicide Detective Sal LaBarbera. (As of December 2007, according to the Los Angeles Times, La Barbera was “a 20-year homicide veteran who heads the Watts homicide squad in LAPD’s South Bureau.”)

LaBarbera is certainly active on Twitter — throwing out RTs, #FFs and hashtags like he was born to the social-media generation. (The detective is also big on @ing journalists from local news stations and the Times.) His handle on the medium is pretty impressive for a weathered murder cop…

… and right out ahead of other police departments’ slow struggle to incorporate social media into their investigative work.

Letter To The NYPD On Evicting The Protesters From Zuccotti Park

JacobSloan — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:46:35 +0000

As of now, it appears that the forced removal and/or arrest of Occupy Wall Street protesters at Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s behest has been postponed. Via n+1, an open letter to the police concerning their possible marching orders:

Last night, we learned that because of the complaints of Brookfield Properties, the company that owns Zuccotti Park, Mayor Bloomberg has ordered the Occupy Wall Street protesters to remove themselves and their supplies from the Park at 7 AM tomorrow. If the protesters don’t leave, Bloomberg likely will order you and your colleagues to forcibly remove and arrest the men and women who have come there to protest the policies, politicians, and financial leaders responsible for the continuing economic crisis. As concerned citizens, we ask you not to follow this order.

Bloomberg and Brookfield Properties claim that the protesters must be removed in order to clean the Park. Anytime thousands of people assemble in a small space, it is not easy to keep things neat. The Occupy Wall Street protesters, however, have shown their desire to maintain a safe and sanitary environment. They have organized sanitation and medical teams to remove trash, clean blankets and sleeping bags, and treat the sick and injured …

JP Morgan Chase Donates $4.6 Million To NYPD On Eve Of Protests

JacobSloan — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 18:42:12 +0000

Wondering how much it costs to buy off the police department? JP Morgan Chase just gave the New York City Police Foundation the largest donation in its history. How the police show their gratitude will presumably determine whether they receive similar donations from companies in the future. Via Naked Capitalism:

No matter how you look at this development, it does not smell right. From JP Morgan’s website, hat tip Lisa Epstein:

JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing “profound gratitude” for the company’s donation.

“These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe,” Dimon said. “We’re incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work.”

Now readers can point out that this gift is bupkis relative to the budget of the police department, which is close to $4 billion. But looking at it on a mathematical basis likely misses the incentives at work. Dimon is one of the most powerful and connected corporate leaders in Gotham City. If he thinks the police donation was worthwhile, he might encourage other bank and big company CEOs to make large donations.

And what sort of benefits might JPM get? The police might be extra protective of your interests. Today, OccupyWallStreet decided to march across the Brooklyn Bridge (a proud New York tradition) to Chase Manhattan Plaza in Brooklyn. Reports in the media indicate that the police at first seemed to be encouraging the protestors not only to cross the bridge, but were walking in front of the crowd, seemingly escorting them across. Over 700 of the marchers were arrested, and the media has a rather amusing “he said, she said” account, with OccupyWallStreet claiming entrapment and the cops batting their baby blues and trying to look innocent.

We simply don’t know whether the police would have behaved one iota differently in the absence of the JP Morgan donation. But it raises the troubling perspective that they might have.

New York Times Alters Its Lead Story About Protests

JacobSloan — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:43:23 +0000

Tweaking the language to subtly provide a less accurate, more pro-police spin. The Occupy Wall Street protesters in fact did not force their way onto the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday — they were allowed, even encouraged, by police to enter, and then were arrested en masse. Who is this mysterious Al Baker who edits the news on behalf of the NYPD?

MSNBC On Police Brutality At The Occupy Wall Street Protests

JacobSloan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:00:50 +0000

It’s a shock to hear this kind of candid criticism and revealing of police misbehavior coming from a mainstream media outlet:

Police May Detain Photographers If Their Photographs ‘Have No Aesthetic Value’

JacobSloan — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:10:18 +0000

How are the police to distinguish between legitimate photographers taking pictures in public and terrorists-in-waiting conducting nefarious schemes? In Long Beach, cops’ duties now include determining what is art, and detaining picture-takers whose photos have “no apparent aesthetic value”. So don’t take an ugly photo like the one at right, unless you want to be carted off as a terror suspect. Via Techdirt:

Apparently the police in Long Beach, California, have a policy that says if a police officer determines that a photographer is taking photos of something with “no apparent esthetic value,” they can detain them. This revelation came after photographer Sander Roscoe Wolff was taking the photo.

The police officer somehow determined that there couldn’t be esthetic value there, and thus, the photographer had to be detained and checked out. The police are defending this policy, saying that while officers don’t have any specific training in what qualifies as “apparent esthetic value,” they will stop anyone photographing things they don’t consider to be something a “regular tourist” would photograph. I actually have to go down to Long Beach next month for a speaking engagement, and I’m now tempted to take a bunch of photographs that have “no apparent esthetic value.”

1st Circuit Appeals Court Upholds Right To Record Police In Public

JacobSloan — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:46:19 +0000

A resounding victory for the First Amendment. However, outside of the four-state jurisdiction of the First Circuit, the police state lives on. The Citizen Media Law Project gets giddy:

In the case of Glik v. Cunniffe, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has issued a unanimous opinion in support of the First Amendment right to record the actions of police in public.

For those of you not familiar with Simon Glik’s case, Glik was arrested on October 1, 2007, after openly using his cell phone to record three police officers arresting a suspect on Boston Common. In return for his efforts to record what he suspected might be police brutality — in a pattern that is now all too familiar — Glik was charged with criminal violation of the Massachusetts wiretap act, aiding the escape of a prisoner and disturbing the peace.

Unlike most arrestees, Glik, with the assistance of the ACLU, fought back against this treatment. Undeterred, in February 2010, Glik filed suit in federal court against the officers and the City of Boston under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act. Glik alleged that the police officers violated his First Amendment right to record police activity in public and that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him without probable cause to believe a crime had occurred.

The First Circuit ruled that “Glik was exercising clearly-established First Amendment rights in filiming the officers in a public space, and that his clearly-established Fourth Amendment rights were violated by his arrest without probable cause.”

Let’s see if we can find some more excellent quotations.

“[I]s there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.”

“Glik filmed the defendant police officers in the Boston Common, the oldest city park in the United States and the apotheosis of a public forum. In such traditional public spaces, the rights of the state to limit the exercise of First Amendment activity are ’sharply circumscribed.’”

“[A] citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.”

“Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’”

Man Faces 75 Years In Prison For Filming Police In Public

JacobSloan — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:37:23 +0000

Despite no criminal history, Michael Allison may spend the remainder of his life behind bars as punishment for recording his (unexciting) interactions with officers who stopped by his mother’s home, where he repairs old cars. (The concern was that some of the vehicles were unregistered.) After griping to the local police department about selective enforcement and presenting his recordings as evidence, Allison was charged with five counts of eavesdropping, a class one felony. Why jail him? To send the message that documenting the actions of public officials will not be tolerated.

NYPD Forms Social Media Unit To Monitor Facebook and Twitter

Join Or DIE — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 20:33:30 +0000

Rocco Parascandola reports in the NY Daily News:

The NYPD has formed a new unit to track troublemakers who announce plans or brag about their crimes on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. Newly named Assistant Commissioner Kevin O’Connor, one of the department’s online and gang gurus, has been put in charge of the new juvenile justice unit. He and his staff will mine social media, looking for info about troublesome house parties, gang showdowns and other potential mayhem, sources said.

The power of social media to empower both criminals and cops has been on full display in London this week, where riots and looting have been spreading dramatically. The rioters have been using Twitter and BlackBerry messages to choose targets for looting or burning – and to alert one another about police positions.