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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.
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!
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.
Maybe because police are public servants and private citizens are not.
IMHO public servants should be publically scrutinized.
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
Unfortunately, for your simplistic, naive 'fair and balanced' BS, the relationship between police and non-police isn't symmetrical - the police have governmental backed power and effectively unlimited financial resources (taxpayer dollars).
WTF, no! It is not a "two way street". Police officers are equipped with privileges that allow them to use force and detain people. That's why public scrutiny of their actions is not just acceptable but necessary. This does not apply to other people, who do not have these privileges. Putting them on a "wanted poster" implies wrongdoing, so this is particularly unacceptable.
Are you seriously arguing that posting a wanted poster that includes the home address of two dissidents is funny?
The police care because recording them violates their deeply held opinion that they have the right to do whatever they want without any threat of punishment. That attitude permeates government from the top all the way down, and unfortunately has the predictable effect of corrupting nearly every person who gets the slightest bit of state-backed power.
Now that budgets are being slashed, the fascist tendency towards punishment and extortion through fines for small offenses has only become more engrained in our culture. How are they going to pay for their tanks and UAVs without making every deviation from total conformity illegal and expensive?
As my reply to an Anonymous Coward points out: They are breeding terrorists with these actions. I do not live in NYC and *I* feel violated. I can only imagine how the people being subjected to this shit feel.
Violating a person's "right" to not be molested for no reason by "authorities" WILL create a violent response. I guess random bombings and murders are better than random thefts and murders. One is terrorism, the other is crime. Not much of a difference from my point of view except that one has at least some sort of justification. :(
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
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.
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.
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.'"
...is good for the gander. Law enforcement is always telling the citizenry that they have nothing to fear if they have nothing to hide.
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).
The problem with your friend's analysis of the cost of healthcare is that while he may be able to absorb the true cost of *any* health problem his family might encounter (I'm assuming based on what little info you have and what little of that you've stated, that he could, for example cover an extended cancer treatment or a series of major operations as the result of an auto accident or something) many people who vote republican and consider themselves in the same boat simply aren't. I wouldn't consider myself rich, but neither do i depend on my health coverage to be the difference between receiving routine care and not. I certainly did, a year ago, when i had emergency surgery that ended up running in the $100k range. Now, it sounds like your friend would have been able to absorb that type of cost without disrupting his finances. I couldnt have, and i highly doubt that the majority of people complaining about the individual mandate could either. the individual mandate is about preventing situations where people are unable to pay for emergency care. or unable to pay for it without defaulting on other debts or obligations. And to the person who can absorb such costs without problems, why is the penalty for not having coverage an issue? pragmatically speaking, i understand that 'being penalized for managing my own business properly' must be a terrible scourge. I just think that it is kindof silly when people who would cry communism at the idea of socialized medicine *also* cry communism at a very straight-forward market-incentive social policy.
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
A lot of the problem stems from the 'good majority' silently abetting the bad few. If police were more willing to, dare I say, police their own, rather than holding the thin blue line, I think a lot of the animosity would go away.
Also, there's a fair amount of basic human psychology at play. 'Us and Them' always becomes 'Us Versus Them.' See the Stanford Prision Experiment. Abu Girab for a more recent example.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.