It's intimidation, imho. Classic scare tactics, scare off those who can be scared off - and no one cares about those who have nothing to lose (i.e. poor black people).
I've heard a lot of similar stories about NYC (less for NYS) and I am always wondering what the end game is for these guys. Do you feel like someone was trying to get you to bribe them or something? Absent that, I have a hard time understanding why they would be so persistent in going after you in such a chickenshit fashion.
Yep, doesn't stop NYPD from stopping and frisking random minorities (including a 3 star NYPD police chief who was not very happy about having guns pulled on him while sitting in his NYPD vehicle with a badge around his neck). Looks like this was local cops, never underestimate the desire of a cowboy to be a hero.
I think the only way to get rid of police harassment like this and in many other cases is to remove reasonable suspicion as a cause for stopping and searching people. It's clear to anyone who has ever had dealings with the police that the police are not reasonable and neither is reasonable suspicion. It's also clear from this article that New York (and undoubtedly many other places) have an excess of police if police are harassing law abiding citizens. The problem is that we give police way too much freedom to hurt innocent people, power which they do not need to be effective. The only way we're going to reign in this power is to change the fundamentals of our laws. Police will never voluntarily give up their power. We must take it from them. We must proactively shrink the needless police force. New York is a really great example of a city that obviously has orders of magnitude more police than it needs to enforce its laws as evidenced by the recent police refusal to do their jobs and arrest people not having a negative effect. It's still amazing to me how ignorant the majority of people in this country are to police actions, though to be fair, a lot of that ignorance is willful and based on racist notions. To me, it is unfathomable that people do not warn and teach their children to avoid and fear the police as they do in most of the rest of the world, despite us having one of the most despicable law enforcement and police forces in the world.
The slogan and program are a Department of Homeland Security thing, so you see it in a lot more places than just NYC. My guess is it's a string attached to some sort of DHS funding.
This only "seems like a net benefit for the community" in the ridiculously hypothetical and whitewashed world in which the NYPD always does right by its citizens, especially those of color.
So I've lived in NYC for 7 years now so have some personal experience with this. Note that I live and work in Manhattan so my experience is probably skewed and is only really anecdotal anyway.
My personal experience with the NYPD has been very good.
- As others have noted, heavy police presence in heavily frequented areas, particularly by tourists.
- During Sandy I was in the area without power. At night a police cruiser would go down my street every couple of hours (IIRC) with the lights on but no siren, I guess looking for looters.
- I had a car alarm go off at 1:30am early Sunday morning right outside my window. While I was figuring out what to do and calling 311, a police van turned up (around 1:50am) and broke into the car and disabled the alarm. I went out to speak to the officers and they said just call my local precinct and any unattended car alarm is cause for the police to come up (defined as >10 minutes).
That all being said, there's a pretty dark side to policing and the criminal justice system in NYC too, most notably in the treatment of minorities. Some examples:
- New York's ridiculous gravity knife law [1], which seems to be used by police selectively to target minorities. The New York legislature has now twice overwhelmingly passed reforms only to have this (now twice) vetoed by Governor Cuomo on thin justification [2]. One can only presume he's kowtowing to the law and order crowd.
- Alleged racial bias in pedestrian stops, seemingly often under the guise of seeking a mysterious African-American male suspect in his 20s who is 5' 10" (which can be pretty much anyone).
- The appalling case of Three Years in Riker's Island Without a Trial [3], as win-rate obsessed prosecutors use stalling tactics, the imbalance of power, the ignorance of suspects and plea deals to deny people due process.
- The arrest of James Blake [4].
- Chokehold death of Eric Garner [5] for a relatively minor offense.
I've lived in a few different major cities and NYC for the last decade, and I can definitely say I have never seen more broken, ineffective policing than here. It's truly ridiculous. Your experience, obviously, may vary.
Multiple instances of police openly threatening citizens. Phones ripped out of hands and smashed onto the ground, for the mere crime of filming an interaction. During the BLM protests, every single act of instigation and provocation that I witnessed was started by the police.
I don't know what the answer is. But it is very clear the police here are a paramilitary jackboot squad, and that the city and the strength of their union protects them. They have almost complete impunity, and they see normal, everyday citizens as the enemy. I fear that we're in for more trouble now that we've elected an ex-cop Mayor of the city.
(For background, I'm a tall, white man. I can't imagine how bad it would be if I wasn't.)
I've lived in NYC for almost 15 years. I've never seen a more corrupt and shiftless organization than the NYPD. It's almost comical. I grew up in a small, Midwestern town and was never anti-cop until moving here, and it got immeasurably and irreparably worse during the George Floyd protests. Every single time anything ever got accelerated or instigated, it was by the police and not by a single protestor. Between the kettling, the instigation, and disrespect it became clear that they're a glorified gang that has operates with almost complete impunity and it shocks me that anyone in the city respects them or considers them a friend to the common good.
The most common run-in I have with them is standing at a crosswalk or sitting in an Uber and watching them put on the sirens and move everyone out of the way just so they don't have to sit in traffic. I'd estimate seeing this happen, oh, I don't know, about a thousand times while simultaneously I have never once seen them pull anyone over for any kind of traffic or moving violation.
I can imagine some companies being afraid of pissing off the NYPD. If you have a presence in new york, a police department has lots of tools at their disposal to make your life miserable even if you haven't violated the law
What's amazing is how no one is honing in on the real reason this is happening, the DA's office combined with state laws make it hard to bail people and send people to prison. That's the decision made, and it's referred to as the carceral system. It's something viewed as urgently needing reform, and that's how the progressive DA's operate. Look at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA's program (https://www.manhattanda.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Day-O...)
If cops are standing around doing nothing, it's because it's pointless to engage with a suspect physically, risking yourself while by the way people around whip out their phones to video you, if the suspect will be released on their own recognizance on some lowered charge, if the charge isn't dropped anyway.
You can also add, if you want to criticize cops, that they're civil workers at the end of the day, and most are in for the benefits, such as pension and healthcare, rather than pretending to be superheroes or vigilantes.
Fuck you, NYPD.
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