

The NYPD Tapes - SuzyQT
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-tapes-inside-bed-stuy-s-81st-precinct/

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look_lookatme
Haven't read beyond the first page of the article yet... saving for later. But
I'll share an experience of mine.

I lived in the 79th precinct, adjacent to the 81st. It's less dangerous, but
not much -- still Bed Stuy and very block by block. I was there for about 6
months in late 2007.

The area is tense at times -- much of New York's prosperity over the last two
decades hasn't trickled down to the people living there aside from landlords
selling their buildings to gentrifies or speculators. There was an incident
around this time where an unstable young man was shot because he had a comb
the police mistook for a weapon in the dark. I wouldn't have been surprised if
it had escalated into riots. Gentrification is welcome by some, protested by
some, and many are indifferent to it, I think. There are very few nice places
to eat or socialize or even get groceries, but there are a ton of bodegas and
fried chicken/pizza places and dollar stores. It can be a very rough place,
which is too bad as I got to know some very nice people on my block.

Certainly there are institutional problems in the NYPD, but also I have the
suspicion that many rookie cops eventually get rotated into areas like this --
Bushwick, Bed Stuy, East New York and this contributes to much of the stuff
you will learn about in these tapes. The penis jokes, the confusion on what to
report and not gracefully handling tension within the communities -- I wonder
if it is inexperience.

Comparisons to The Wire are natural, but in the time I lived in Bed Stuy, the
only similarity I really observed was that the NYPD guys never seemed to
interact with the people of the neighborhood as if they too were part of that
community. Never said hi while walking their beats, never stopped to talk to
the kids or the corner boys, they mostly walked in twos or threes, chatting
with each other. I think for the people that live there and the cops that work
there, there is us and them and not much in between.

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smallblacksun
It's hard to blame the cops for not interacting with the community, though. I
lived in a similar neighborhood in Oakland, and saw 75 year old grandomthers
calling the cops "pigs" to their face.

Some of the hostility toward the police is justified, much of it isn't. But
whether it is or isn't justified, it exists, and it's hard to blame cops for
not going out of their way to be sociable with people who, more likely than
not, hate them because they are police.

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malnourish
It's an interesting cycle, really. The hate perpetrated by the civilian to the
servant is returned by aggressive actions towards the civilians and a less
hospitable attitude.

Ideally, civilians should respect the police, and attempt to make a connection
with those who are employed to serve them, while at the same time, the police
should be accommodating for their constituents and dignify them much as
civilians should.

The animosity can easily be attributed to the lack of respect and proper
protocol for both parties. Someone needs to step up.

Alas, one can only hope for a better world.

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faboo
The thing of it, to me, is that policemen carry an array of weapons. Mace, a
taser, a tonfa (a nightstick), and a gun. A person that heavily armed is a
force to be reckoned with. Intimidating, deserving of fear.

If you're the man with the gun, you must go out of your way to be respectable
and approachable, or you will not be - you'll just be a man with a gun.

~~~
malnourish
Absolutely. That is their job as _our_ servants (civil servants, that is). The
cop is supposed to be more respectful and willing, and they should be working
on that. They are people though, and as such we should afford them some
respect, not for the weapons they carry, but the way the act.

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hristov
Yeah this is the reality of police work after Guliani. Guliani discovered that
the best thing for a politician to do is to reduce crime so he tells his cops
"reduce crime or else" and the easiest way to do it is to cook the numbers.

The funny thing is that sometimes cooking the numbers works. That is if you
create a perception of lower crime you get gentrification and a lot of middle
class people move in and crime may actually go down. But nobody should confuse
the talk of politicians with actual reality, new york is much more crooked and
crime ridden than any of those "tough on crime" politicians would admit. Some
times that crookedness bubbles up to the surface, for example couple of
summers ago when cranes started falling from the sky and killing people and
destroying entire buildings.

I have to say that I feel bad for these cops. I was hoping that being a beat
cop was one of those rare fields of endeavour where one could do their job
well as driven by their own conscience and their own initiative and sense of
self worth and not have to go by some ridiculous metric, but alas even the
police departments have been invaded by modern MBA thinking. So apparently
even in the police force it is all about performance metrics and making your
numbers -- writing a sufficient number of tickets and stopping and frisking a
sufficient number of random people, while making sure not to notice too many
crimes.

Maybe in the end of the year the mayor looks at the numbers and sees -- wow,
we frisked 10 million people and brought in 5 billion dollars in fines, we
must truly have a fine police force.

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siculars
I dunno bout you, but I actually live in New York City and although the police
can be heavy handed at times, ok... a lot of the time, I can assure you that
new york is a lot safer than when I was growing up in Queens in the 80's and
90's. I specifically recall leaving for university in the fall of '96 and
returning summer of '98 to a completely different atmosphere. And for that I
tip my hat to Giuliani.

~~~
jamesbritt
Seriously. The NYC of the '80s and '90s was much different from that of the
'70s.

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hga
_Highly_ recommended reading in conjunction with this article:
[http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-
Reveals-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-
Arrested/dp/1556526377/)

E.g. note the item on page two of the Village Voice article on "points".

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CWuestefeld
_the true value of this "activity," the tapes indicate, was that it offered
proof that the precinct commander and his officers were doing their jobs_

Apparently cops have their own value of kloc metrics.

~~~
hga
Indeed. And that's why when a cop harasses someone, e.g. trying to provoke
them into something arrestable, it's often "nothing personal", they're just
trying to get enough points to keep their superiors happy, maybe get promoted,
etc.

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percept
I didn't read the full article but I imagine this illustrates the darker side
of CompStat.

Along the same lines, some book recommendations:

_Armed and Dangerous: Memoirs of a Chicago Policewoman_, by Gina Gallo

_Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District_, by Peter
Moskos

The second title covers the real-life setting for "The Wire."

~~~
javanix
If you want the real setting for "The Wire", read " The Corner: A Year in the
Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood" by David Simon and Ed Burns.

The depiction of one of today's most derelict inner-city neighborhoods is
heartbreaking and disconcerting.

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grinich
Here's the non-paginated version:
<http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/1797847>

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lutorm
Anyone else thinking "The Wire"?

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My2Cents4U
Welcome To The New World Police State

