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NY Couple On "Wanted" Poster For Filming Police
Hugh Pickens writes "Ben Fractenberg and Jeff Mays write that the NYPD has created a 'wanted' poster for a Harlem couple who film cops conducting stop-and-frisks and post the videos on YouTube — branding them 'professional agitators' who portray cops in a bad light and listing their home address. The flyer featuring side-by-side mugshots of Matthew Swaye and Christina Gonzalez and the couple's home address was taped to a podium outside a public hearing room in the 30th Precinct house and warns officers to be on guard against them. The couple has filmed officers stopping and frisking and arresting young people of color in Harlem and around New York City, which they post on Gonzalez's YouTube account. They said their actions are legal. 'There have been times when it's gotten combative. There have been times when they [police officers] have videoed Christina,' says Swaye. 'But if we were breaking the law they would have arrested us.' Swaye was part of a group of advocates including Cornel West who were detained at the 28th Precinct in Harlem in October for protesting the stop-and-frisk policy which Mayor Bloomberg strongly defends. "
It's amazing what we let what amounts to State employees get away with.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
From the article:
The only reason they would consider legal options would be because it would bring awareness to their (admittedly excellent) campaign.
If they want to record the cops doing what they believe is wrong, I honestly don't see why the police cannot publicly post a warning to other officers in what seems to be a mostly harmless joking way.
Listen, public embarrassment and notice is a two way street. If you want to publicly post the actions of the police, I don't see why you should feel others couldn't do the same to you.
I'll hang it next to my Angela Davis poster.
the Police arrest YOU.
Well obviously the Harlem residents must be guilty of something, otherwise the police won't stop and frisk them...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Sounds like libel, especially since they are not making any money off it. They should get in contact with the ACLU.
Also, very classy of the NYPD to do a public smearing of people who show their abuses to the public. They'll happily invade your privacy at random, but don't you dare film them while they abuse people on your dollar!
Seriously, why would the police care if the police are doing nothing wrong? Are the videos revealing operational secrets that will make these "stop and frisk" actions less useful? Whatever their reason is, I would like to use that reason against them when they are requiring the same of me.
Which brings me to a question: How is "stop and frisk" not a violation of rights? It seems to be CLEARLY a violation of the 4th and perhaps even the 5th.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Where have I heard this before:
"If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of."
Dead or alive?
It's already long dead. If you want Communism, I'm afraid it is Fascism you are going to have to kill or co-opt first.
In the real world, the difference between Fascism and Communism is about as significant as the difference between Coke and Pepsi.
Until we start arresting cops and the rich and powerful for their crimes, they are going to continue to trample on the rights and liberties of everyone else.
We need to become a nation of laws, not men-- which we most certainly are not now.
So?
Should file suit against the filmers for violating their civil rights.
Since the courts have been throwing out any evidence gathered from "stop-and-frisk" as being illegally acquired, just what is the point of this heavily defended policy anyway? Other than pure harassment. Shouldn't the police be trying to build relationships with local communities rather than alienating them? Oh sorry, that is so 70's thinking.
There's a big difference between what people do in their capacity as private citizens and as government employees. Police are acting as government employees; that gives them both specific powers, and it imposes additional responsibilities on them.
For example, I have a constitutional right to discriminate against you based on your race or religion in my private life; police violate the law if they do the same in their work.
Except now they're called "NYPD." This is how my grandfather ended up in a Siberian gulag.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Isn't the saying that law enforcement likes to use, when spying on citizens... something like "If you've got nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about?"
Looks like the police are hiding something to me. Perhaps the police should start leading by example instead of being corrupt fuckers?
That police are simply thugs. If they are doing no wrong, then they should welcome public oversight like this.
Any cop that is against being recorded is a dirty cop that needs to be removed and put in jail.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Actually, each party is happy to raise taxes on the other party, they just don't call it raising taxes.
Democrats are happy to raise taxes on rich people who are unlikely to vote democrat. The individual mandate is an example, as well as the fight over raising taxes during the budget struggles last year.
Republicans are happy to raise taxes on poor people. This is what ending welfare and reducing EITC do. They call it ending subsidies or socialism or welfare instead of raising taxes, but they're happy to do it.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
If it were up to me, police would *always* be recorded while on-duty. Cameras, or at least microphones, in the car and on the person, both recording to a tamper-resistant medium and broadcasting online (with a time delay).
Why? Because the police are supposed to work for the government, and the government is supposed to work for the people. The people have a *right* to know what they are doing, to ensure that they are actually working properly.
And if the police are doing their jobs properly, it will actually help them. They'll have video evidence of any crime they witness. That would be more than a little helpful.
Of course, if it were up to me, we'd have nuked North Korea flat decades ago, so maybe it's good that I'm not actually running the country. But I still think my "record the police" idea is a good one.
Listen i distrust cops i got my reasons and kudos to the couple for the filming BUT and a big but. They should go to jail for publishing the cops home addresses. They have innocent children,wife,mothers that live there and its criminal to put them through the bullshit they will have to put up with.
Jack of all trades,master of none
But, you see, that is a fact. That won't play well on Slashdot, where coming up with a conspiracy theory that attacks anyone who dares question the police will, it appears, get you so many more mod points.
The cynic in me wonders if this couple is just trolling for an arrest for a big payout in a civil rights lawsuit.
As long as that is a valid tactic, that's a valid action. If you are so likely to get arrested for doing something that is not illegal that you stand a good chance of being able to do it, and it is so illegal that you stand a good chance of getting paid, then actually doing it is an act highly useful to society.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They are guilty of VVS in the worst way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
...is good for the gander. Law enforcement is always telling the citizenry that they have nothing to fear if they have nothing to hide.
The cynic in me wonders if this couple is just trolling for an arrest for a big payout in a civil rights lawsuit. Film cops stopping and frisking, get arrested, sue, profit! That would not really be a sure thing, though, so maybe that's not it.
Good for them if they get paid.
The police continually use financial sanctions to control our behavior with fines. As long as these pay outs cut into their operating budgets I'm all for it. As more and more of them are converted over to bicycle cops due to budget cuts, maybe that will correct some of the hubris.
Please find some reasons to RTFA or at least the summary properly. It is the cops publishing the couple's home address.
I just watched several of the videos on the linked youtube account. These people are obnoxious ignorant assholes.. I do agree with what they are trying to accomplish, but the way they go about it is completely stupid. Anyone should be free to film the police as they please, but I think the couple featured here are an embarrassment and waste of space.
Every video of "brutal violence" that they posted showed the cops making repeated effort to solve the problem without force but the idiots behind the camera and the other protesters were being unreasonably difficult and abusive. When the cops finally resorted to force I did not see it as excessive or at all out of line with what I see as acceptable behavior.
They are directing hate at the people who protect us and its just stupid. I realize that police brutality gets out of hand far too often, but their are also plenty of good cops who are just trying to do their job. Most of the videos on that youtube channel are of this woman shouting unwarranted abuse at cops that did nothing to provoke it. I understand hate at cops that are out of line but the blind hate in most of the videos is just obnoxious.
In fact, one could make the argument that one implies the other. Communism doesn't work in numbers above, oh, twenty or so without fascist control of the population. And a fascist government invariably finds themselves collectively managing and distributing resources.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
In the US, there is a separate division of the police department called "Internal Affairs," whose job is to monitor police actions. The IA is small, subject to bias, and monitors few events. The public is large, independent (subject to innumerable biases), and monitors many events. Police are already recording events and making selected recordings available. How those recordings are selected is an issue with substantial insider bias. Unless the right is taken away by law, the public already has a legal and even moral right to record those same events.
Nobody wants to be watched, the chilling effect is well known. When the police make the recordings, their superior or IA is in charge of releasing the video. When the public is making the recording, the availability is more independent. Usually, the "nothing to hide" privacy argument falls apart easily; when monitoring police action, as demonstrated in the Stanford Prison Experiment, independently watching the watchers is a necessary hardship. Thus citizen review boards and citizen videos. There are, of course, endless special cases; so like most everything in society, laws and policies can at best be general guidelines requiring community oversight.
With cheap recorders comes the ability to watch the watchers with fewer "he said, she said" problems. Fewer but not none, as with the selective editing of the Rodney King video. The above applies to police actions, not to the general public going about their daily activities (the recording of which is a different topic).
That is really funny.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I've never been to Harlem, but I have to wonder how it is that this couple has been on the scene of multiple stop and frisks. Are they really that common? Or is there something they know ahead of time that puts them there? Kind of like the groups that filmed confrontations with the police at the 2008 political conventions; somehow they always seemed to know when and where a police confrontation would take place.
I think that what the cop in your video did is just great - it didn't cost anything but reminded a couple of people on the scene (and 600k more on Youtube) that gods are just people like us and lowered the threshold to be in contact with them. However, if I were a cop, I wouldn't want to do that in front of a camera: I'd be scared shitless that it might cause a storm of "What?! A cop playing around? While in duty? On taxpayer money?!"
Since the courts have been throwing out any evidence gathered from "stop-and-frisk" as being illegally acquired, just what is the point of this heavily defended policy anyway?
They've said pretty clearly from the beginning that the primary point of the policy was to reduce the number of people in public with either drugs or weapons on their person on the theory that there is a direct relationship between violence in the community and the frequency with which people carry drugs or weapons in public in that community. This was to be done firstly by removing the drugs or weapons from individuals and secondly by discouraging people from carrying drugs or weapons out of the knowledge that they are now more likely to have them confiscated. Using the confiscated drugs or weapons as evidence in a prosecution is, at best, a secondary goal and not that important to the policy's primary purpose.
Whether the "stop-and-frisk" policy is a legal>/I> means of accomplishing this goal is a separate matter.
The parent post is not insightful, its just the usual excuses from the lazy who can't be bothered to take part in Democracy.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Let it continue to slide and Bloombergian New York will be the future American Police State.
Stop n Frisk
Police intimidation
Soda Bans
Smoking Bans
TransFat Bans
What is the old cliche... if you are not free to make a bad decision, you are not free at all. We need to stop looking to our elected leaders for solutions and start pushing them to set only minimum standards and allow us to find solutions for ourselves. Otherwise we will be laying down and inviting the boot to step on us
Turn the enemy against himself.
So the are branded "professional agitators." So now it is illegal to practice your first amendment rights?
I am coming to understand that feeling of the ownership of tragedy by watching our current local issues assume national significance. In this comment section, the majority of the discussion is about nebulous concepts like the role of a police force in a democracy, a public figure's right to privacy, what the law says and is intended to say, and so on. It is good that we can discuss abstracts like what does "unreasonable" in "unreasonable search and seizure" mean. But for us in Brooklyn, the issue is Michael Bloomberg and Ray Kelly and their pet policy. The policy is unpopular and ineffective and could be done away with by the current administration in a single day.
"What will happen if we allow this policy to continue?" is rhetorical - the policy will not lead to the erosion of rights because it already is the erosion of rights. We need to ask, "What can we do to end this policy?" I suppose the first little thing we each could do, if we're actually opposed to Stop & Frisk, is contact the offices of Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg on a daily basis to remind them of the racist crime they are committing against the people of this city. That is definitely not something you need to live in New York City to do :)
I can leave a city or country so I guess saying you have to deal with the government is bogus. Try escaping MicroSoft, which is still free to abuse its monopoly position after caonviction.
My experience has been that government employees behave better than corporate employees. They both behave better that corporate executives and elected government officials. Of course I would probably think differently about the NYPD if I was a young, male, person of color, with no credit rating and substandard education, residing in one of New York City's less fashionable neighborhoods with no social connections to a more promising environment.
Communism doesn't work in numbers above, oh, twenty or so without fascist control of the population.
That would have been quite a shock to Stalin, who spent the 1930s and 40s fighting a bitter - and very successful - war to the death with fascism.
(Oh, you meant "vaguely scary sounding authoritarian totalitarianism", not "an economic third way ideology between communism and capitalism which rose to power in the losing states of post-World-War-I Europe characterised by a cult of national honour, military fetishism, a nostalgic longing for past imperial glory and sentimental images such as "the people" and "the homeland", mass mobilisation of the disenfranchised middle class, rabid hatred of communism, and a limited form of socialism based on national and racial unity with common cause made between government, unions and corporations in direct opposition to the class warfare ideology of Marxist Bolshevism?" Then why didn't you just say so?)
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I'm a recently converted Anarcho-Capitalist. What I've come to understand is that the very concept of government - an institution with the monopoly on the right to initiate force - is horribly flawed to begin with.
We sanction this institution with the right to use force against peaceful citizens with the pretense that it creates social order. Nothing but chaos can come from forceful coercion.
No person should have the right to use physical force against another or their property except in self-defense. This is the principal on which a fee society must be founded. All transaction should be voluntary.
All necessary government services can be provided by the market. Solving social problems with violence never works.
How pissed of are you guys going to get before you see the fallacy of statism?
This is no way a wanted poster. It is simply a notice of these people are because they try to get attention. Please stop giving them attention.
> That would have been quite a shock to Stalin, who spent the 1930s and 40s fighting a bitter - and very successful - war to the death with fascism.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Film the filmers!!!
As a police officer in Los Angeles, I'm bothered by all the anti-police sentiment and posts portraying cops as fascist brutes just waiting to violate people's rights.
Are there bad/corrupt cops? Yes. However, I can say the vast vast majority are out there trying to do a good job and follow the law. There is no ulterior motive where we go around looking to piss off people or violate their rights. As far as people videotaping us, it happens ALL the time (at least in LA) and I've never worked with anyone who did anything about it or even cared that much. Sometimes it's annoying as the people videotaping assume we're assholes looking to beat people but we don't worry about it because we know our law and policy and do what we're supposed to do.
Most police vehicles have cameras with microphones attached to each officer. We don't mind as it overwhelmingly helps us against bogus complaints or allegations. It gives us documented evidence that we didn't have before.
And yes, I believe in privacy and our 4th amendment rights. I don't want police powers expanded at the expense of an individual's privacy and I do not believe that people have nothing to hide if they're innocent. Many cops feel this way, we're normal, thinking, people too. I went to college and majored in computer science, grew up reading slashdot etc etc. I'm a lot like everyone else here except when I go to work I wear a uniform with a badge and gun. Do I use force when necessary? Yes, but I'm not interested in hurting someone and I'll do everything i can to avoid a use of force, as a lot of us would.
I can't comment on the NYPD's practice of conducting their stops, I'm not familiar with it. In LA of course we do Terry stops routinely and again, we don't do it to unnecessarily harass people. We have to have reasonable suspicion...this usually takes the form of seeing someone in dark clothing, with a backpack (commonly carried by burglars), walking around a residential neighborhood (which has a burglary or car burglary problem) at 3am, who crouches behind a car as I pass by. Will I stop him , identify him, and see what's going on? Yes. I don't think that's so ridiculous and if I lived in that neighborhood I would expect the cops to do their job and talk to that individual.
Anyway, I just wanted to give a different perspective.
are you kidding? Communists and fascists were bitter enemies since 1920's.
As is coke and pepsi even today.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
its only logical to watch those who are in power
F*ck such police
"boy"? You racist fuck.
Right there is a HUGE difference between the average repuke and the average Democrat.
and most of the time it offers a only choice in false dualism. You may not remember the Clinton-era Democrats branded themselves "New Democrats" for a time, signifying their new pro-capital focus; on economics, they were determined to be Republican Lite (conservatives without the siege mentality or tactics employed by Newt Gingrich and those who came after him). The result is that the "New Democrats" drifted in the Republicans' wake as the latter engaged in a war with the non-wealthy.
Despite having ~50% support in the polls, Walker was able to outspend his opposition by more than 7-to-1. Wisconsin was flooded with pro-Walker propaganda and other means of support by wealthy corporatists (and to add insult to injury, his out-of-state funding was 62% compared to Barret's 26%). That election had record turnout and the overall result is that it produced political gridlock. Should the public be impressed? Are we apathetic, or disillusioned?
Going back to the 2000 presidential race we had a news media with a reconfigured ownership profile, essentially representing Wall St. banks. Their coverage of Gore was so laden with disdain, ridicule and misinformation that any appearance of impartiality was out the window.
We have a system that is designed to manufacture consent -- to give plutocracy a veneer of democratic respectability. It keeps the public awash in myths, fear and insecurity, with just enough misinformation to hold onto power and some sense of credibility at the same time. The public can only have a chance at representation in the wake of a massive failure of the establishment (as in 2008) which pierces their credibility, and having that kind of occasional, punctuated surfacing of public interest is no way to run a society because it is largely not representative.
If you're going that route, then explain why in most situations humans do NOT act the way people did in that experiment? Because the fact that it's so far outside our experience shows that circumstances can change people.
But you go on about a "perfect system." It's not that any system can be perfect, which is of course a red herring, but rather that perverse incentives in a system can be identified and corrected, or at least mitigated. That's something very different.
Citizens all angsty about your police policies being unconstitutional? Don't worry: the Supreme Court's got your back!
1) Pass a law mandating individual compliance with arbitrary stop and frisk
2) Include a $10,000 penalty for refusal to "voluntarily" comply with stop and frisk
3) Claim the penalty is a tax, or that stop and frisk is somehow commerce-related (whichever the Court prefers). There's no need to keep a straight face at this point.
4) Profit from your now-Constitutional law! No amendment needed!
Land of the not-so-Free and especially brave. They should start a lawyer defense fund and sue.
Pick up that can.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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That we got the kind of government that we deserve.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If they *can't produce the video* from all interactions with the suspect (every stop, search, arrest, etc.), the case should be dismissed. That's the only way to prevent them from just "losing" the video whenever its contents are inconvenient for the police.
It's similar to evidence that is "fruit of the poisoned tree" -- courts throw it out because otherwise, the cops will just break the rules to get evidence. The only way to properly incentivize cops to follow the rules is to punish them (by throwing out the evidence, or the entire case) when they don't follow the rules.
You should start your own channel on you tube and make it where everyone who has video of cops behaving badly can upload it. WE SHOULD ALL be doing this, we should have cameras mounted in car to record cops as well as video cameras for field work. GOOD JOB.
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1: Toss current tax system. Do a either a fair income tax, everyone pays the same % of their income or a flat rate tax on every transaction. No loopholes, they just proliferate and lead to corporations...Corruption.
2: Make government and corporate leadership criminally and civilly accountable for the actions of their employees and agents. In this case the leadership of the NYPD would be facing charges for allowing officers to harass this couple.
3: Change term limits to two terms, after which the elected official must return to their home state and work in a non-government career for a time equal to the time they held office.
4. Move 3 the Senate to Washington State, the House to Texas or California, and The Supreme Court to Colorado. Alternately, move the different bodies to different states every 4 years. This will help break up the ivory tower that The Capitol has become and keep the branches of the government divided.
Government is held to a higher standard than a private company when it comes to respecting your privacy. I'm not a lawyer in NY, but call one and see if NY has a rule against invasion of privacy by the government. If they do and they've been filming you, try to sue. Attorney are cheap right now.