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Inside the NYPD's Attempt To Build Community Trust Through Twitter (backchannel.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the America's-most-tweeted dept.

mirandakatz writes: When the NYPD rolled out its Twitter presence a couple years back, it didn't go so smoothly: the @NYPDNews account tweeted a request: 'Do you have a photo with a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD,' and by midnight the same day, more than 70,000 people had responded decrying police brutality. At Backchannel, Susan Crawford looks at the department's attempt to use Twitter to rebuild community trust, noting that while the NYPD has a long ways to go, any opening up of communication is an improvement on the traditionally tight-lipped culture.
They're currently reaching about 10% of the city's population, tweeting pictures of "wanted" suspects and sharing information on recent criminal activity, as the police commissioner describes shifting their mindset from "warrior" to guardian.

11 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Here's a start to regain trust by rossz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Stop breaking the laws you are supposed to uphold, you fucks.

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    1. Re:Here's a start to regain trust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Stop breaking the laws you are supposed to uphold, you fucks.

      Sure, but you have to realize that institutional cultures do not change overnight.

      There have been big problems with many big-city US police departments, but if they are sincere about "... shifting their mindset from 'warrior' to guardian", that's something that'll unfold over time, not like a light switch.

      The fact is that it sounds like a move in the right direction. The fact is also that it's never going to be perfect, so if you are intend on finding problems, you will always have some to find. But degree matters. One-off isolated things are not comparable to systemic and ubiquitous problems.

    2. Re:Here's a start to regain trust by russotto · · Score: 2

      Sure, but you have to realize that institutional cultures do not change overnight.

      They can change in one direction slowly -- that's the direction towards maximum decay and corruption. Any other change has to be "overnight" or the institutional forces pushing the other way will defeat it.

    3. Re:Here's a start to regain trust by haruchai · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not to mention the law is already slanted heavily in their favor. All a cop has to do to literally get away with murder is say, "I feared for my life", case closed, all charges dropped. Evidence? it's easy enough to produce with the blue wall of silence and fraternal order of police.

      Saying "he grabbed my Taser" is enough. A mistrial was declared for the public execution of Walter Scott by killer cop Michael Slager *despite* video evidence that Scott was running away, quite slowly, when Slager shot him 8 times in the back AND PLANTED HIS TASER next to Scott's body

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  2. Wear the cameras by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It would be easier to trust them if they'd just wear the damn body cameras.

    1. Re:Wear the cameras by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

      Consider the alternative.

      There is NOTHING to keep the cops accountable when there is no camera.

      At least the video can be used to prove the cop was doing what he was supposed to be doing.

      The alternative of no camera is far worse.

  3. Re:70,000 responses by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 2

    70,000 contacts, over 5 years, for a police force with 34,000 uniformed officers? That's two contacts per officer. For 5 years.

    Want to try your comment again using your brain this time?

  4. Re: 70,000 responses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You haven't been paying attention at all. This has been going on since African Americans were granted rights as people.

    A good Red foxx joke I saw from the 70s citcom Sanford and son.

    Lamont: "Pop, did you know heart disease is the #1 killer of black men"

    Fred: "Really? I thought it was cops."

    That was in the 70s and African Americans all over America still feel the same way. It's sad, but it's true. And it's going to take a long time to earn back that trust. Especially given that cops are still killing unarmed black men at an alarming rate.

  5. Re:Stop randomly searching minorities. by BlueStrat · · Score: 2

    * Completely unrelated problem, nobody actually knows all the laws.

    That's a major problem with the US legal system. There are so many laws on the books that even when they spent millions of dollars and many months trying to catalogue and count Federal laws, they couldn't count them all.

    That's very dangerous for a supposedly free and open society. It allows police to arrest anyone as it's almost certain that some law can be found to have been broken. Often police outright ignore the laws, like the right of people to audio-record/photograph/video-record police. Most departments have informed their officers that being video or audio recorded and/or photographed is not against the law but they still arrest people, harass/bully them, and even assault them and destroy recording equipment on a regular basis and receive little or no meaningful consequences for their crimes.

    The other fairly recent phenomenon that drives distrust and hatred of police is this priority of "going home tonight" above anything else. It leads officers to shoot first and ask questions later because "officer safety" is priority #1.

    The job of police is to protect and serve. They cannot do either if they put their safety above anything else including innocent lives. It turns any encounter with police into a potentially deadly (for the citizen) situation. It changes police into a paramilitary occupation and pacification force, especially when they kit-out like they're going door-to-door clearing buildings in downtown Mosul, complete with armored vehicles and grenades. Talking to former military, I've been told that combat soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have stricter Rules Of Engagement than US police officers.

    Psychologically it tends to mold the officers' view of civilians into "the enemy".

    If the government really wants to improve police/citizen relations, these and other serious problems must be effectively addressed.

    Strat

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    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  6. Re:70,000 responses by haruchai · · Score: 2

    Jeez, you're making we old Slashdotters look bad.
    Just the department's own stop-and-frisk data show how very, very, very wrong you are.

    http://www.nyclu.org/content/s...

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    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  7. Re:Stop randomly searching minorities. by fafalone · · Score: 2

    If you think that's a problem, combine it with this: while ignorance of the law is no excuse for a citizen, it absolutely *is* thanks to our courts an excuse for the police. They can detain and search you even if what you're doing is legal but they believe otherwise. There's no consequences for the cop; just an innocent mistake, and you're entitled to no compensation, and anything they find as a consequence of their search is fair game. All thanks to our wonderful enlightened SCOTUS in Heien v. North Carolina where both sides once again joined together to piss on the 4th amendment.