NYPD basically armed thugs
…On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin and two of the officers questioned and frisked him while the third remained in their unmarked car. Alvin secretly captured the interaction on his cell phone, and the resulting audio is one of the only known recordings of stop-and-frisk in action.
In the course of the two-minute recording, the officers give no legally valid reason for the stop, use racially charged language and threaten Alvin with violence. Early in the stop, one of the officers asks, “You want me to smack you?” When Alvin asks why he is being threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, “For being a fucking mutt.” Later in the stop, while holding Alvin’s arm behind his back, the first officer says, “Dude, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ arm, then I’m gonna punch you in the fuckin’ face.”
“He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down. So I’m going backwards like down the hill and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, it looked like he we was going to hit me,” Alvin recounts. “I felt like they was trying to make me resist or fight back.”
Alvin’s treatment at the hands of the officers may be disturbing but it is not uncommon. According to their own stop-and-frisk data, the NYPD stops more than 1,800 New Yorkers a day. A New York Times analysis recently determined that more than 20 percent of those stops involve the use of force. And these are only the numbers that the Department records. Anecdotal evidence suggests both figures are much higher.
Combine this with the stories coming out of Occupy Wall Street and it’s pretty clear that the NYPD needs a whole lot of shit cleaned out of it. This is not a police force, this is a group of bullying, armed psychopaths and it needs to stop. NYC cannot become a lawless city.
![Empire State shooting offers lesson in how guns work.
The Guardian:
Questions have been raised over the New York police department’s handling of a shooting near the Empire State Building after armed officers injured nine passers-by as they pursued a gunman who had just shot dead his former boss.
One of those injured by police told the Guardian that officers appeared to fire “randomly” as they confronted Jeffrey Johnson, 58, minutes after a workplace dispute escalated into a chaotic shootout in one of the busiest parts of Manhattan.
Reports suggest that while Johnson drew his gun when he was confronted by officers, he did not fire; all those injured appear to have been shot by police. The New York police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said officers had no choice but to act as they did: police discharged 14 rounds and the gunman died at the scene.
[…]
Robert Asika was among those wounded, shot in the elbow from a distance of around eight feet by one of the two police officers who confronted Johnson. He accused police of “shooting randomly”, and said he saw at least two others hit by police bullets.
“If you’re gonna aim try and aim perfectly. If you wanna aim at the target, you got to know what you’re doing because it’s the street,” Asika said. “I could have been dead right now. I could have been dead.”
Yes, he could’ve been. What probably happened was that an officer fired without thinking and immediately escalated a situation that might’ve been resolved without gunfire. After the police overreactions in connection to the Occupy Wall Street protests, this adds fuel to the question, “WTF is wrong with the NYPD these days?”
But it also offers a real world lesson in the way exchanges of gunfire actually pan out. The right likes to pretend that every mass shooting could’ve been stopped by one armed and clear-eyed citizen, cloaked in Second Amendment Glory. This argument is most often put forward by rightwing pundits who’ve probably never lifted a gun in their lives.
When you fire a gun at a target, you need to ask yourself these questions: what is the target, where is the target, is the target in the open, what’s behind the target? If you can’t answer any of those question, you do not fire. When you miss a target, the bullet doesn’t just evaporate. Depending on the the type of ammunition and weapon, that bullet could literally go for miles. And in a street fight situation, you will miss. As we can see demonstrated here, it’s guaranteed.
And we can also see that unless you can answer those questions before you start firing, bystanders will be shot. And that may mean getting shot at and not being able to return fire. Police are (supposedly) trained to assess the situation quickly, but some boneheaded NRA member with a concealed carry permit is not. NYPD fucked up big time here, but this is pretty much what you’d have to expect from a concealed carry nut “defending” his fellow citizens. All they’d do is make things that much worse.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9bka5pqi01qfengno1_500.jpg)
Empire State shooting offers lesson in how guns work.
Questions have been raised over the New York police department’s handling of a shooting near the Empire State Building after armed officers injured nine passers-by as they pursued a gunman who had just shot dead his former boss.
One of those injured by police told the Guardian that officers appeared to fire “randomly” as they confronted Jeffrey Johnson, 58, minutes after a workplace dispute escalated into a chaotic shootout in one of the busiest parts of Manhattan.
Reports suggest that while Johnson drew his gun when he was confronted by officers, he did not fire; all those injured appear to have been shot by police. The New York police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said officers had no choice but to act as they did: police discharged 14 rounds and the gunman died at the scene.
[…]
Robert Asika was among those wounded, shot in the elbow from a distance of around eight feet by one of the two police officers who confronted Johnson. He accused police of “shooting randomly”, and said he saw at least two others hit by police bullets.
“If you’re gonna aim try and aim perfectly. If you wanna aim at the target, you got to know what you’re doing because it’s the street,” Asika said. “I could have been dead right now. I could have been dead.”
Yes, he could’ve been. What probably happened was that an officer fired without thinking and immediately escalated a situation that might’ve been resolved without gunfire. After the police overreactions in connection to the Occupy Wall Street protests, this adds fuel to the question, “WTF is wrong with the NYPD these days?”
But it also offers a real world lesson in the way exchanges of gunfire actually pan out. The right likes to pretend that every mass shooting could’ve been stopped by one armed and clear-eyed citizen, cloaked in Second Amendment Glory. This argument is most often put forward by rightwing pundits who’ve probably never lifted a gun in their lives.
When you fire a gun at a target, you need to ask yourself these questions: what is the target, where is the target, is the target in the open, what’s behind the target? If you can’t answer any of those question, you do not fire. When you miss a target, the bullet doesn’t just evaporate. Depending on the the type of ammunition and weapon, that bullet could literally go for miles. And in a street fight situation, you will miss. As we can see demonstrated here, it’s guaranteed.
And we can also see that unless you can answer those questions before you start firing, bystanders will be shot. And that may mean getting shot at and not being able to return fire. Police are (supposedly) trained to assess the situation quickly, but some boneheaded NRA member with a concealed carry permit is not. NYPD fucked up big time here, but this is pretty much what you’d have to expect from a concealed carry nut “defending” his fellow citizens. All they’d do is make things that much worse.
Tony Bologna #OccupyWallStreet
Congrats, meathead. You’re a meme.
(via randomactsofchaos)
Police Violence at Occupy Wall Street Protest was the Result of Police Incompetence
We’re going to start right off with the ugly, just to get it out of the way. This was the scene last night in New York City, as the Occupy Wall Street protest once again turned into a police near-riot.
Fox 5, New York:
While covering the Occupy Wall Street protests on Wednesday night, Fox 5 photographer Roy Isen was hit in the eyes by pepper spray from a police officer and Fox 5 reporter Dick Brennan was hit by an officer’s baton.
The protests on Wall Street continued to grow all day. The rallies and their participants are showing no signs of slowing down.
In the evening, crowds surged past barriers and NYPD officers moved in to contain the protesters. By many accounts, mayhem broke out.
Officers, many wearing white shirts indicating supervisor rank, swatted protesters with batons and sprayed them with mace, video from the scene showed.
“[Fox 5 photographer Roy] Isen and [reporter Dick] Brennan were there and witnessed the chaos,” the report tells us. “At one point, Brennan was hit in the abdomen by a police baton and Isen got irritant in his eyes. Both journalists were all right and continued to cover the protests and arrests.”
I went with the Fox 5 report, because it demonstrates the indiscriminate nature of the police’s actions. It’s hard to believe that a local news crew was trying to pick a fight with the cops. Crowd control efforts shouldn’t have collateral damage. It’s not difficult to piece together what happened last night; police screwed up crowd control, then panicked and completely overreacted when confronted with the consequences.
New York Observer has a first-hand account of the lead-up to the violence.
Around 9 p.m., a cohort of marchers were cordoned off by police officers on Wall Street. It looked as though there would be mass arrests. The police ended up shuttling the protesters down Williams Street and directing them back toward the park. The strategy by the NYPD seemed to be erecting more barriers to limit where the protesters could march. The Broad St. J train was inaccessible, blockaded by the NYPD and metal fences on Exchange Place, Broad Street and Wall Street. A group of Wisconsin tourists who had a reservation at Bobby Van’s steakhouse were forced to turn back to Times Square.
More barriers, more people hemmed in, more pressure — like pinching down a hose. NYO again:
Who coordinated the barricade?
“Chiefs,” one blue-shirt outside the Broad Street Starbucks said. “Lots of chiefs.”
“Too many chiefs in the kitchen?” one of the techies asked. The police officer affirmed.
At this point issues of lawlessness or obedience are out the window. What we’re talking about is pure physics. You can only squeeze a crowd in so far before they won’t squeeze any more. And the crowd is big, by most accounts numbering thousands, so the people in the back can’t see what’s happening in the front. You can’t stop a crowd on a dime, which is what the cops seem to have tried to do.
And then the dam burst.
Gothamist:
It all started really peacefully, the march was fine and respectful. Once everyone got here, we tried to go down Broadway to march on Wall Street. There were literally thousands of people pressing up against the cops, who were blocking the entrance via Broadway. That’s when two protesters who broke the police line at Wall Street got pepper sprayed. I heard a rumor, but I didn’t see it, that an officer pulled out his Taser.
The two pepper sprayings were about 30 min apart, and in between those, a white shirt took out his baton and just started swinging everywhere. So then we went down on Reade street to find an alternate route onto Wall street, and all of a sudden there were dozens of cops of scooters. I turned to talk to a friend, then turned back, and two scooters were on the ground.
Three officers were on top of a 100 lb woman violently beating her. I mean they were really going at it, really hurting her. Two white shirts and one blue shirt. So we’re all yelling “stop!” and eventually they get off. She looked awful. I talked to someone at Legal Aid and they sent a medic down to the 1st precinct to check up on her because, as they told me, they were afraid she’d “come out worse than she came in.”
All of this could’ve been easily avoided. Protesters wanted to march down the street, so just let them do it. They’re all peaceful enough, so what’s the harm? It’s a traffic annoyance, sure. But it’s New York City — the whole damned place is a traffic annoyance anyway. By trying to contain them too much, police broke their own barricades, just like over-inflating a balloon. Their actions after that are inexcusable and unforgivable.
At this point, indications are that the crowds will grow bigger, not smaller. According to Fox 5, “What was once a protest of powerful Wall Street financial firms and banks is growing into a larger movement about the working class, employment, poverty, education, and more.”
As the crowds grow, incidents like last night’s violence could become worse and much more consequential. New York City police would be wise to remember what the crowd chanted at them yesterday: “Cops are the 99%.”
Failing that, they should realize that when law enforcement and the laws of physics bump heads, law enforcement will fail every time.
-Wisco
“My name is Kelly Schomburg. I was protesting at the Occupy Wall Street march yesterday..”
My name is Kelly Schomburg, I’m the girl with the red hair in these pictures. I was protesting at the Occupy Wall Street march yesterday when I and several other women were sprayed with mace and subsequently arrested. Many have already seen the video, which has been spreading like wildfire over twitter, Facebook, tumblr, and other video feeds, along with hundreds of other photos and videos. This is my recount of what happened.
Handy tip: pepper spray is oil-based, so water helps, but not a lot.
If you’re going to get into a big civil disobedience action, take a bottle of water and a little Johnson’s ‘No More Tears’ Baby Shampoo mixed. It’ll cut the oil a lot better.
(via purplegem)
