
What I learned from an unfortunate incident with the NYPD - rdl
http://www.nickfarr.org/2014/02/what-i-learned-from-an-unfortunate-incident-with-the-nypd/
======
chimeracoder
> “Is that a Muslim or Hipster beard?” by a crew of three NYPD officers in
> Times Square.

I'm very curious to hear the full story behind this one.

On a separate note - I used to work in Chelsea[0]. Two or three days of the
week, as I was leaving the subway, I would see NYPD questioning and/or
frisking a young, black man or women. I saw this happen for months, and never
_once_ was the person being questioned/frisked white, east Asian, or any other
race.

Oh, and by the way:

> The main I didn’t file any kind of report or move forward at all was that I
> don’t have badge numbers.

NEVER ask a police officer for his/her badge number. Look for it and try to
memorize if you want, but don't let them know you're trying to learn it. I
know someone who ended up doing ~18 months in prison for doing exactly this.
(The official charge was "obstruction of justice" and/or "resisting arrest",
but that's basically all he actually did. Once it's clear to the cops that
you're looking to report them, they'll do everything in their power[2] to
punish and discredit you).

[0] Affluent, primarily white, gentrified (former) gayborhood, for those
unfamiliar with NYC.

[1] This is _not_ the same as the NYPD standing by the tables asking people to
let them look through their bags (which you _can_ refuse, by the way!)

[2] And possibly even things _not_ in their power

~~~
malandrew
We really need to redesign officer uniforms so that the badge number is
inconspicuous the same way numbers of football and soccer jerseys are
inconspicuous. It should be possible to identify a police office by their
badge number from any angle once you're within 10-20 feet (i.e. it should be
on the front, back and both sleeves of their uniform). Cameras should be able
to track officers the same way that officers can track the license plate
numbers of cars.

~~~
stoolpigeon
you mean conspicuous - inconspicuous means "not clearly visible or attracting
attention".

~~~
rdl
I thought he was being ironic.

"I want x to be subtle in the way that a shotgun to the face is subtle" i.e.
not subtle at all.

------
cup
This has been the third article on HN recently about the police. Historically
it has been minority groups that only see this side of police activity. Now
that upper middle class white individuals have experienced it though Its
interesting to read the comments people are leaving.

For the record: I believe his advice is terrible for any person of lower socio
economic background and especially for a person of colour. The number 1 rule
when interacting with police should be you have no rights. Only when you're
safely away from that policemen are your rights returned. Countless victims of
police brutality can attest to that.

~~~
kevinskii
> _The number 1 rule when interacting with police should be you have no
> rights._

As a former Los Angeles sheriff's deputy who agrees with the majority of
sentiments in this thread, I can confidently say that your broad statement is
nonsense. Everyone, not just upper middle class whites, should know and assert
their rights in police encounters.

~~~
enraged_camel
This only works if you assume that every officer is nice, reasonable and
believes strongly in upholding their duty to the public.

The sad fact of the matter is that a very large number of police officers are
simply bullies in uniform. Asserting your rights to them, or acting "uppity,"
will only get you in trouble.

~~~
kevinskii
A sizeable minority of officers are indeed bullies. But while I can't speak
for other police agencies, even the bullies are pretty well reined in by the
policies in Los Angeles. I can elaborate if you like.

~~~
enraged_camel
If by "pretty well reined in" you mean "given 30-day paid vacations when they
misbehave" then I suppose you are right.

What you won't see (or will see very, very rarely) is a cop losing his job and
standing trial for assault if they wrongfully use physical force on a
civilian. They can always get away with "well, I thought he was carrying a
weapon" or other such flimsy excuses. Combined with the fact that cops always
look after their own, it becomes very difficult to successfully and
meaningfully persecute a cop for abusing their authority.

------
rdl
Part of the irony here is that Nick is one of the most respectable, least
threatening, most "establishment" people I know -- he's worked in banking/gov
security, and his goal in life is to be a CPA for startups.

If someone like that is getting fucked with by the biggest gang in NYC, you
know there's a problem.

~~~
o0-0o
There are already too many cops, and they have to keep going back to the same
trough to feed themselves. Solving murders, rapes, and robberies doesn't pay.
Ticketing people for jaywalking, curfew, and traffic violations does. Also, to
further the problem, the police have cash bonuses paid to them for exceeding
their quotas with these tickets.

The police are there to preserve disorder, but they have lost sight of this.
Now, there are two types of cops; the protect and serve kind, and the us
against them kind. Sadly, the latter seems to be taking over. I'm afraid this
doesn't end well. The nightmare scenario is some kid walking up to a cop on
the 4th of July and asking for baseball cards with a toy in his hand that is
mistaken for a gun.

The real question here is what are we going to do about it?

~~~
harryh
Empirical research disputes your assertion that there are too many cops:

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/12/pol...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/12/police-
crime-and-the-usefulness-of-economics.html)

~~~
rdl
NYPD is 10x too big. NYC is really a special case of infinite budget, powerful
union, and external events (1970s/1980s crime wave, followed by 9/11) to
justify it.

Other places have too few (Oakland PD should be at least 2x and really 5x what
it has). The fundamental problem is poor places have less budget and also
higher need for policing.

Various transit agencies, universities, etc. should probably not operate their
own substandard police forces, but use non-sworn security and have a decent
working relationship with the local PD.

~~~
harryh
It looks like NYC has ~40 police officers per 10k people(1). If you cut that
by 90% to ~4 per 10k then NYC would have, by far, the smallest per capita
police force for any American city. So really you're asserting that police
forces are too large almost everywhere in the US?

EDIT: ~4 officers per 10k would also be lower than essentially any other
country in the world(2).

1\. [http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/law-
enforce...](http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/law-enforcement-
police-department-employee-totals-for-cities.html)

2\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_police_officers)

~~~
Glyptodon
But how many do they have per square mile?

~~~
harryh
35k officers / 468 square miles ~= 75 officers per square mile.

~~~
Glyptodon
Just as a comparison, Albuquerque has ~8 police per sq. mile, and Tucson has
~4.5 police per sq. mile. However, New York has ~27000 people/sq. mile, while
Tucson has ~2800 and Albuquerque about ~3000. So NY has about ~9x the
population density, but ~12x the police.

Now what I'm also curious about - would you expect high population density to
increase or decrease the number of police needed per capita? Off hand, I would
be inclined to think lower population density would need higher police per
capita, but here it seems to be the reverse (possibly reflecting the coffers
rather than the needs, though).

~~~
arg01
I also have your intuition but after thinking about a couple of the police's
jobs I do understand how it could easily go the other way.

You have the somewhat obvious want of a _visible_ police officer ranging an
area to deter criminal activity such as shoplifting/vandalism/mugging.

But you also want the police in an area to deal with domestic dispute type
crimes which you'd expect to increase at least linearly with density, possibly
more so as the closer you are to your neighbors the more you may see them and
the more their behavior may impact you. Which may mean that you need several
more cops to respond to concurrent incidents even if the average rate of
incidents is lower than what a single cop could deal with.

That's without getting in to any other issues such as bureaucracy needs/wants
of larger departments. Or the odds of more dense areas being more culturally
diverse/allowing higher differentials in income against distance.

So after that I think it would be quite hard to judge what would be required.

------
shubb
Very interesting video - a law professor and a police officer explain how to
deal with law enforcement in the US, mostly by not saying very much. I learned
a lot watching it.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

------
spiritplumber
Cops should be treated like muggers.

Move slowly, make your body language indicate that you are not wanting a
fight, speak clearly and ask the other person to also speak clearly, and be
ready to bolt if the opportunity arises.

American cops must be dealt with using de-escalation techniques.

~~~
cryoshon
Yeah, no kidding. Also, keep your hands out of your pockets and make sure you
are not holding anything lest they "mistake" it for a weapon, which would
justify your death to both them Anything else and they go into a rage and
you'll end up in jail.

It's especially tough because their only training is to escalate further at
any provocation.

------
herbig
I'd like to create a mobile app where users can input a badge number.

If the number already exists, you get the existing profile, if it doesn't, a
new profile is created, from which you can upvote or downvote the officer, add
a name or picture, and write a review. Other users can upvote or downvote
reviews as well.

The other part of the app would be a top 10 list of the best officers in NYC,
and a top 10 worst officers.

I'm pretty alright at Android, but know nothing about iOS. We'd need a really
great and simple design. The whole backend could be done with Parse.

Anyone interested?

~~~
schackbrian
Like this?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RateMyCop.com](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RateMyCop.com)

~~~
herbig
Yeah, but a mobile app with better design.

------
stox
Welcome to the Police State.

Avoid contact with the Police at all costs, otherwise you are going to have a
bad time.

Justice means nothing, quotas mean everything.

------
amagumori
i'm inclined to agree with the first comment on the article. if the author was
not a privileged, professional-looking white guy, his outcome could have quite
likely been much worse. i disagree with his naive conclusion (based on a
sample size of one instance of getting arrested for an extremely minor
infraction) that the NYPD are largely "good people charged with bad policing
tactics". the treatment of minority groups such as chicanos, african-
americans, and muslims by the NYPD is well documented and does not reflect a
police force full of good people. :-/

~~~
nickfarr
I'm actually going to take you to task on this once, precisely because the
NYPD is set to become a "minority majority" force if current hiring trends
continue. I've had many, many more interactions with the police than these two
incidents in a variety of different contexts and I believe they're decent
human beings who want to do the right thing. The systematic mistreatment of
all underprivileged groups (including poor whites and the mentally ill, btw.)
is, when you look at it, the bad cops getting the outsized share of attention.
There are lots of cops who do the right thing when they can, I see it
happening all the time even beyond the patina of the blue line of
intimidation.

~~~
amagumori
i don't live in NY, so i'll concede to your actual experience with NY cops.
BUT, i think your assumption that a lack of mistreatment of minorities results
from a more diverse police force is naive. in my experience, i have seen abuse
against ethnic minorities at the hands of police who are themselves ethnic
minorities - sometimes even the same ethnicity as the victim. perhaps in many
cases police brutality falls along racial lines, but only by correlation. i
think it is probably more of an issue of class, and groupings like "people who
look like thugs to me". either way, as a professional-looking white or asian
dude, you can usually escape being classed as a "thug" sight-unseen just for
your appearance.

i would also offer that due to the fact you're a successful guy, you have
probably not had police interactions in, say, east new york. police attitudes
and behavior are highly variable based on where they work. if you're in a
shitty neighborhood, you will have much worse interactions with cops no matter
your race. in nice neighborhoods, cops are nice.

------
ted7780
I have lived in nyc for 23 years. The police used to be much cooler. The would
chat with parade goers, joke around and compared to the harness bulls in
Chicago they were great. After 9/11 the department changed. Meaner more
suspicious and unfriendly. 10 citations a month is pretty low. One every three
days. You could write that in ten minutes in the intersection outside my
window. My dad was a cop. It's a hard fucking job. Keep that in mind.

~~~
nickfarr
I know it's a hard job...that was part of the point that I think got lost in
the whole article. That being said, this intimidation strategy (along with the
rampant drug war incarceration of anyone who isn't 100% clean) has "cleaned up
the city". Once the crime rates start going up again, it's going to get a lot
worse.

Beat cops aren't just supposed to write traffic citations. They're supposed to
get a litany of these "pink ticket"s, which account for all the quality of
life violations that the Broken Window theory goes after.

------
r00fus
De Blasio unfortuantely hired back Bill Bratton, who defends stop and frisk:

[http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/02/25/bill-bratton-
nypd](http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/02/25/bill-bratton-nypd)

------
joesmo
"The NYPD aren’t tasked with policing, the act of maintaining law and order."

Exactly. That goes for all police. Their _only_ job duty is to make arrests.
_Only._ It is a fallacy to think that the police are there to help. They're
not even required to help by law and have no duty to do so. Once this fact is
realized by someone, not interacting with police and other smart actions start
to make complete sense. It's just too bad that children are wrongfully taught
otherwise. It's one thing that parents can be squarely blamed for, as they
usually believe the lies themselves.

------
jrockway
Regarding the beard incident... ah yes, never go outside when there is any
major event in NYC. The cops are unusually crazy. They bring in a bunch of
auxiliaries who have no business doing crowd control or even wearing a badge,
really.

[http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/careers/auxiliary_police.s...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/careers/auxiliary_police.shtml)

(Regarding the park incident.. to be fair, most parks in the city close at
1AM. I've seen people asked to leave, but I've never seen anyone get a
summons. I usually try to get an extra lap around Prospect Park in as it's
closing, and haven't had any problems, but I do keep an eye on the time.)

------
igl
They stopped him before checking for a suit??? Bastards.

------
ph0rque
Love the idea of a stop and frisk app:
[http://www.nyclu.org/app](http://www.nyclu.org/app) A more general "I'm being
forced to do something against my will" app would be real handy, I think,
especially on the 2nd or 3rd generation of google glass.

~~~
avalaunch
I love the idea of the app too.

I found this odd though:

 _Shaking the phone stops the filming._

That seems like a bad idea given that police brutality might cause the film to
stop when you most need it to be filming.

The one really positive thing I could see coming out of google glass is a
shift of power from the police force to the citizens.

~~~
ctdonath
Why stop filming at all? I'd want something that kept on recording until the
battery was dead, regardless of any action that an app can resist by any means
publishable.

------
conformal
fuck the police. they are just another gang and do little to stop real crime
in most urban areas. i would venture to say that police actually facilitate
more crime than they prevent on the average.

in chicago, i have never received anything from a police officer besides
disrespect and questionable tickets.

i am very excited for the next 20 years since i predict we will see the end of
human policing and instead have robotic law enforcement.

~~~
NAFV_P
> _i am very excited for the next 20 years since i predict we will see the end
> of human policing and instead have robotic law enforcement._

[http://jeremiahlambert.deviantart.com/art/ED-209-June-12-Dai...](http://jeremiahlambert.deviantart.com/art/ED-209-June-12-Daily-
Art-Jam-Day-18-309511163)

------
wudf
I read it, but I still don't understand why you plead not guilty.

~~~
nickfarr
Bear in mind, I didn't get a ticket from the Stop-And-Frisk incident, I got
one for trespassing in Central Park a few months prior.

I plead not guilty because I was TOLD by the Police Officer that the ticket
would get thrown out. I assumed this meant that the officer would not appear
were I to appeal it, and when the officer appeals it gets thrown out.

What I didn't know is that the "ACD" option--Adjournment in Contemplation of
Dismissal--was not offered to be at my arraignment. The first magistrate I saw
wanted my $25, and didn't say a thing about throwing the ticket out. Not
knowing my rights at the time (i.e. the ACD option), I plead Not Guilty.

Turns out the officer did appear and I was offered ACD. Had I continued with
the trial, I would have made a point of the officer's statement saying that
"this ticket would get thrown out as long as you appeared".

------
whatevsbro
The correct answer was "Hipster beard", then.

> In the nearly six hours I spent in court on two separate dates, I saw around
> a hundred people plead guilty and pay fines for a variety of different petty
> offenses

This is plea-bargaining in action, and related to:

    
    
        Q: “How many citations have you written since you saw my client?”
        A: “Maybe 40 or 50. We’re required to write 10 citations a month.”
    

They're "manufacturing prisoners". One reason for that is the prison-
industrial complex with the for-profit prisoners demanding "customers" and
bought politicians delivering them. Another might have something to do with
the burgeoning police state in the US.

------
kimonos
Great tips in here! Thanks!

------
ihuman
Why is this on HN? What does this have to do with technology/startups?

~~~
paulannesley
“On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” —
[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Then again; “Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, […]”

~~~
rdl
I posted it because it's Sunday and there wasn't much going on. I wouldn't put
it up as one of the finest HN submissions ever, but I think there's some value
in "this could happen to you" and "this is what you should do if".

The piece itself was well written and relatively apolitical and non-
threatening.

The "tech" aspect is the "fsck the police" part -- I think Nick is going to go
into some ways to use technology to 1) help the police do what they should be
doing, better 2) help the police not do what they shouldn't be doing 3) help
users/clients/customers/victims of the police. And so should other HN people.
Video recording seems like the lowest hanging fruit -- figuring out how to do
that both safely and reliably is a good problem to solve. If I were GoPro, I'd
donate $25mm or so to developing best practices for this, and then make
another $5b selling GoPro-Police cameras over the next decade.

~~~
nickfarr
I didn't put it in the article precisely because I didn't want the shift in
focus--but this incident made me think a lot harder about wearing my Google
Glass again.

That being said, there's absolutely no reason that cops should not have a
camera on them at all times. It's more for their benefit than ours.

As far as technologies that reliably work, the stop-and-frisk app is actually
quite good, but requires practice like anything else.

I'd also be all for photographing cops out of habit. I stopped short of
recommending that...but, hell, there's plenty of fodder here for a good
month's worth of posts.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> That being said, there's absolutely no reason that cops should not have a
> camera on them at all times.

True. This would be a major positive change to our system.

> It's more for their benefit than ours.

False. Everything is already all the cops' way. They have nowhere to go but
down. Their court testimony is legally privileged over yours (this really
galls me in the face of the idea that "all are equal before the law"). They
don't like being filmed _because it hurts them_. In this case, what we have is
a case of "good for us _because_ it's bad for the cops".

------
pagekicker
Another whiny "rules don't apply to me" hipster story. Becoming a tired meme,
pls. stop upvoting.

~~~
schoen
The original poster seems to have acknowledged that he broke the curfew law,
and also acknowledged that he was treated differently by the police in the
other case because of his appearance, and that the police and judges treat
poor people and minorities more harshly than they treat him. Is there some
other kind of acknowledgement you'd like to see from him? Would you like him
not to have been surprised when he saw the criminal justice system treating
people badly? Or is there something else you found offensive or annoying about
his approach to the situation?

