Add yet one more reporter to the long list of those getting arrested in New York! The chair of McGill's daily publications society board of directors, 21-year-old Aaron Vansintjan, might be interested in Occupy Wall Street, according to his Google+ profile and Facebook, but he actually got arrested for climbing a hill to go visit the Cloisters as a suspect in a made-up robbery, in one of the best New York City cops-gone-wrong stories in recent history¹. Miranda rights? WHAT ARE THOSE? On his tour through New York City's holding cells, he got to see the city's ugly secret: everyone else being held was African-American [...]
Today would be a good day to take a pass on attending Occupy Wall Street's "General Assembly" at 7 p.m. (although the 6 p.m. meeting on "Organizing Effectively Without Hierarchy" sounds cool and the 2 p.m. Structure Working Group meeting is a blessed thing). Because tonight, you're going to find out who's a cynic and who's naive, and it's going to get heated consensus-style, as the group addresses Mayor Bloomberg's demand to come in and "clean up" Zuccotti Park, starting tomorrow. The park's landlord's letter to the NYPD, dated Tuesday, asking for help, is full of practical, liability-insurance-based complaints but also has plenty of nonsense, and it's the [...]
"So even as the members of Occupy Wall Street seem unorganized and, at times, uninformed, their continued presence creates a vexing problem for the Police Department." That's the New York Times today, recounting how Occupy Wall Street is "VEXING" the NYPD, which is a BIZARRE take on what's happening. (To be fair! Much of the NYPD is being friendly and good-humored about the ongoing protest downtown, as is their way. I like New York City cops!) But there are some cops who need to be fired and/or prosecuted. Like lady-macer Anthony Bologna. Hey, a word of advice to New York City's government and police department? When you [...]
Who runs the NYPD's secret terror investigation unit? NO ONE KNOWS. They won't tell you! But how does finding terror among us work? It's easy! They came up with a makeshift solution. They dispatched more officers to Pakistani neighborhoods and, according to one former police official directly involved in the effort, instructed them to look for reasons to stop cars: speeding, broken tail lights, running stop signs, whatever. The traffic stop gave police an opportunity to search for outstanding warrants or look for suspicious behavior. An arrest could be the leverage the police needed to persuade someone to become an informant.
It's worth watching this pretty horrifying video of arrests today at the New School, from City Room, to find out that: 1. The chief spokesman for the NYPD is an outrageous liar, as he claimed that no teargas or pepperspray was used and, 2. The president of the New School, Bob Kerrey, should resign immediately, and, 3. Things with the NYPD haven't changed that much since… oh right, sinceprettymuchnotever.
“There’s all this talk about stop-and-frisks, whether it’s racist or harassment, but the public totally misses the game,” a Brooklyn cop says. “You know all the guys in the neighborhood, and usually when we roll up they frisk themselves. That is, if it’s a night they don’t feel like being bothered, they just lift up their shirts when we stop, and then they move on. If they feel like making a point to the boys they’re hanging with on the corner, they won’t do it. But the people who carry guns and shoot each other where I work are not white. There are no white people to begin with! [...]
I have had an NYPD-issued press pass twice. In New York City, the press is "credentialed" by the police department, independently of the City, at its discretion. The process is slow and you have to go downtown for quite a while. Both times I have been very careful to play their game. You have to bring published clips, among their required materials, that prove you need to deal with things like "robbery scenes, fires, homicides, train wrecks, bombings, plane crashes, where there are established police or fire lines at the scene." Now I'm by no means a real reporter's reporter, but I succeeded both times by bringing past stories that [...]
"While a couple of witnesses said that officers used pepper spray to clear the streets, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that one officer 'possibly' used it." Well, now we're all a "couple of witnesses" to last night, dear Times reporters. Welcome to the modern age! Turns out everyone can see these things now! So I would describe that event as not at all "possibly" and also "indiscriminate baton-beating and macing." (As would the Fox 5 news team, who got it in the face.) It makes it really hard to retain sympathy for New York City's cops, who do a hard job under often [...]
In 2009, "490,000 blacks and Latinos were stopped by the police on the streets, compared with 53,000 whites." 6% of those stops resulted in arrests. In Brownsville, "Men between 15 and 34 in the area were stopped an average of five times"—that means that "the police made over 52,000 stops between 2006 and 2010 in one eight-block neighborhood with a total population of only 14,000."
All those stops have previously gone into "The '250 Database,' so called after the UF-250 form that officers use to file stop-and-frisk reports," which is effectively "a record of the names and addresses of most working-class youth in the largest American [...]
Oh, the constant see-sawing of Michael Bloomberg from hero to villain! Remember how we were loving him again just last month when he made that big old matching donation to Planned Parenthood? Well, a lot has changed in a month.
• The hand-holding visit to Goldman Sachs, followed by the trip to Shake Shack with Goldman co-CEO Lloyd Blankfein, in the wake of the resignation-by-op-ed of Greg Smith? That went over quite poorly. Dude: you already held their hand, in the form of tens of millions of dollars in concessions. Also, the City even gave them the address of 200 West Street, which should have been 201 [...]
On Saturday I left the Brooklyn Zen Center at about two in the afternoon, went down to the waterfront park with my friend Jacob, and smoked a joint. “We should go check out that Occupy Wall Street thing,” I said.
We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and at Zuccotti Park we leaned against a railing and watched protesters pick through a heap of discarded signs in a scene reminiscent of the Rainbow Gathering—tattered tarp structures, five-gallon-bucket drum circles, puffs of smoke rising from clusters of people wearing earth tones. One woman in fishnet stockings held a sign that said “You are Loved.” Some signs condemned the lynching of Troy Davis; [...]
The latest non-scandal that will not be catching on is "NYPD CAUGHT BOOTY-DANCING"—at the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn, over Labor Day Weekend. (Or as World Star Hip Hop put it, "Daggering on the Parkway," LOL.) The best is the Postdescribing the videos: "The women then back up into the officers’ crotches and rub their buttocks up against them as the cops grind in return, gleefully waving their arms in the air." (The Post confirms "an investigation," which, again, I say LOL.) I'm sorry, white people, have you ever been outside? I personally performed this move as recently as Saturday. Have you ever been to a [...]
It's a trifecta! The Post, the Daily News and the Times have all besmirched the now-cleared name of New York police officer David London, who was pronounced not guilty by a jury yesterday, despite a video that shows him using his baton to beat a person's head in, a person who was prone on the floor at the time. In his trial, the officers was accused of assault, and three charges related to filing false police reports about the incident. Today, the newspapers all just can't seem to believe it he is not guilty.
