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NYPD's Twitter Campaign Backfires
An anonymous reader writes "A NYPD community outreach campaign designed to show images of citizens with cops turned ugly quickly when a deluge of images depicting police brutality came in. From the article: 'The responses soon turned ugly when Occupy Wall Street tweeted a photograph of cops battling protesters with the caption "changing hearts and minds one baton at a time." Other photos included an elderly man bloodied after being arrested for jaywalking.' Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says, 'I kind of welcome the attention,' of the #myNYPD project."
...well, there were batons.
Well now we know of one more sociopath who is gainfully employed.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
...then they wouldn't consider this a failure. Truth and evidence should never be considered a failure. Identifying police brutality so that those individual cops can be punished, and thus hopefully prevent other cops from doing the same, should be considered a success. But obviously that's not how it works.
There are plenty of good cops out there, but by not punishing the bad cops it makes them all look bad.
One of these shows a police officer pinning a guy to the ground with his knee so that he can cuff him (presumably after the guy already did something wrong and tried to resist arrest.) That is hardly what I'd call brutality.
Also another one of these shows a guy laying on the ground screaming near a police motorcycle. I remember hearing about that, the motorcycle barely nudged him on accident and he deliberately dropped on the ground screaming like a 5 year old, way over-reacting to the incident. The guy (looked to be in his 50's or 60's) was acting like a baby trying to get attention and it was so cringe worthy that if I was there I would have been tempted to slap him and tell him to grow up for once in his life.
I understand that the police can go too far, but protesters and rioters certainly can and do go too far as well.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I keep seeing this referred to as "bad PR" or (as here) "ugly images" as though that's the problem. NO, YOU FUCKS! THE PROBLEM IS COPS BEATING THE CRAP OUT OF PEOPLE!
"There are plenty of good cops out there, ..."
I have heard of no evidence for there being ANY good cops. If there were any, it would be in the news that instead of various projects uncovering criminal behavior, it would be the cops, themselves, and it never seems to happen. There are cops who are murderers, rapists, thieves, and just plain thugs, and the rest of them are guilty of covering for the criminals. What happened to the NYPD officers who gang sodomized that Jamaican? The POLICE OFFICERS UNION pressured the city not to throw the SOBs in jail.
By that logic, the Nazis who killed Jews were just doing what they were hired for. Fuck you and your fallacious logic.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Can slashdot not find something better to do than repost news that we read two days ago on reddit? If I wanted another re-re-repost, reddit's already got me covered.
No, but you apparently intend to remain willfully ignorant of the whole point of what I was saying. Maybe you should start by taking a look at the case I mentioned?
Police corruption is a real thing. Even when there is incredibly strong evidence, detailing everything that happened, police still band together and cover each other when they fuck up. Sometimes, the result is that they get away with a minor offense such as a traffic violation, and other times it directly results in the death of another person. If you honestly think it is acceptable for police to behave in that sort of fashion, then there's something wrong with you.
willfully ignorant
He's obviously far better informed than you are.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Nice try revising history, NYPD. But clearly you underestimated us. I welcome honest attempts at community outreach, but your propaganda will have to be a lot better to be effective.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
It's still important and worthy of conversation. The US constitution was enacted a long time ago and has been reported on numerous times, so should we not worry about it anymore? Jeez...
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
A lot of strange AC stories seem to make it and then get flooded with more AC comments trying to have a smart "debate" or change "views" on sets of gov or legal topics.
It might be one person or a few people but the tone and flow is usually the same with the style of links.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Too bad for your retarded logic that for most Nazi soldiers the result of not doing what they were "hired" for was getting thrown in the prison camps as a Jew sympathizer.
Also, by his logic you should be blaming Hitler and other Nazi leaders for hiring soldiers and forcing them to kill the Jews. Way to fuck up a simple analogy, idiot.
Seriously not safe for work... or life. Highly recommend not clicking it.
Times that policemen got respect automatically are over. The enforcement of unjust laws, such as most related to the war on drugs, undermines public respect for the police, at least amongst a large minority. I think that it the greatest danger of unjust or ineffective laws.
The best thing the police could do to improve its image, would be to advocate the abolotion of unjust laws, even if these provide them with easy money.
You so completely missed his point that it's actually comical.
Actually, Gerhard Weinberg did some studying and found that, if a soldier refused to be brutal to Jews, they'd find him a new assignment and bring in one who would brutalize Jews. He found no cases where somebody was actually punished for refusing. (A surprising number of Germans willingly participated in such acts. A large number sent home photographs showing them guilty of war crimes.)
Of course, when the reassignment is to the Eastern Front, there's going to be some pressure there.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Good Cop: Oh no. It's scary to standing up to my fellow officers. I'm so helpless! You just don't understand.
How do those "good" officers think your average citizen feels when they run afoul of "bad" cops? Most US citizens, short of video shot by a third party, have literally no means to refute testimony of a police officer. No matter how absurd that testimony is. If police officers want to be respected by the public and seen as the "heroes" they think they are, they need to man up and fight corruption, police brutality, and protect ordinary citizens from the bad cops. Otherwise most people won't see them as anything but thugs with a badge.
Ah yes, the cop "assholes deserve to be physically assaulted" excuse. Why are you equating "asshole" with "dangerous"?
There are lots of people with warrants out that don't know it. My "proof" of that is the number of sites that do public record searches so you can see if you are "wanted". If wanted people were better informed, there wouldn't be a problem. But the only "notification" of a warrant is a sheriff knocking on your door and arresting you if you answer. Taking phone numbers, addresses, and sending out more warnings and notices would work much better. As it stands, most felony arrests are made from incidental contact with police (usually traffic stops, but statistics aren't clear how many of those are "innocent" passengers, and how many "illegal" drivers.
And yes, getting a traffic ticket and not following up properly can get you sent to jail. Yes, a $100 ticket can land you in jail and $2000+ in fines. And you'll never be notified of anything. The system assumes you know what to do to follow up properly, and heavily punishes you if you don't.
Learn to love Alaska
Why are cops in cities terrible?
Is it because of bad apples? ( Maybe, but even good cops still do jerk things)
Is it because they have a lot of legal protection for bad behavior (maybe, but in the US you can get some restitution, and they can get punished)
It's really because police are just giant revenue generating machines for the city.
In order for a police officer to advance in his career, he is measured by the number of citations, summons, and arrests he has achieved.
And if performance is based on the number of bad things happening in your area, all of a sudden you see bad things happening everywhere.
A police officer does not get promoted for the number of old ladies he or she helps cross the street, the number of kittens retrieved from trees, or having effective patrols that result in zero incidences. They only get promoted for getting the high stats of bad actions.
And if police departments institute quotas, then you feel compelled to find a sucker (usually a minority or poor person because they lack the resources to fight back) to harass and induce them to break a minor infraction to get them into the station or write a citation.
Take away the performance metric of citations, summons and arrests, and you will have a much better police force who is delegated to truly being servants of the community rather than the rich and powerful.