Salon.com > New York Police Department

The way to curb police abuse

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:03:00 +0000

The NYPD is mired in yet another scandal this week — one of many in the last 12 months — over Commissioner Ray Kelly’s participation in a controversial police training video.

Some politicians and policy analysts are calling for a new independent agency to oversee the NYPD — something Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the city won’t do.

MetroFocus looked at the problems with the NYPD’s current monitoring system and, for comparison, at how other cities have used independent government watchdogs to reduce corruption.

A Troubled Run for the NYPD

The most recent scandal emerged last week, when NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne admitted that Kelly had participated in the filming of the highly controversial police training movie, “The Third Jihad” — a claim Browne had denied just a day before.

The NYPD has discredited itself

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:30:00 +0000

In early stages of Occupy Wall Street, I sometimes encountered people who harbored a legitimate concern: Wouldn't prolonged media attention to altercations between police and demonstrators distract from the movement’s message?

This apprehension always struck me as misguided. What could be more central to Occupy's guiding philosophy than the idea that the rule of law has been subverted by corporate interests? In collusion with government functionaries and beyond meaningful accountability from the public, these interests have created a separate realm of law for themselves -- one that orients the financial and political systems in their favor, to the detriment of everyone else. If this is indeed true, and the law itself is marred by a systemic corruption, then law enforcement -- manifested physically in the form of police officers -- is an appropriate focus for a social movement seeking redress of grievances.

Last night at the Zuccotti barricades

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Just after 1 a.m. Tuesday Occupy Wall Street sent out an emergency text message that read: URGENT. Hundreds of police mobilizing around Zuccotti. Eviction in progress.

I hopped on my bike and rode over to see what was happening. Biking there turned out to be a lucky accident; when I arrived I saw on Twitter that the Manhattan-bound side of the Brooklyn Bridge had been shut down and some subway lines weren’t running downtown.

I tried to get as close to Liberty Square as possible, but the NYPD had erected a buffer zone of two or more blocks completely around the park. The resulting media blackout was well-documented this morning, and I couldn’t see any of what was actually going on as the police moved in.

The police began forcibly moving protesters gathered around the barricades north on Broadway with their batons held out, parallel to the ground. At one point about 30 people sat down on the sidewalk outside the Payless store as an act of civil disobedience. The police issued a dispersal order but didn’t move in, and the situation seemed to calm down temporarily.