NYPD Cop's Threat to Resident Filming Him: Don't Make Me Fear for My Safety
No matter how often it's brought up, it can't be stressed enough how toxic police unions are to the arduous task of rooting out misconduct in any given police department.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) probably hasn't seen this much sustained critical press since Giuliani was in charge in the 1990s—though the relative absence of coverage of the Akai Gurley shooting shows just how lacking "sustained" coverage can be. Gurley's killer, for example, contacted his union rep before bothering to call for medical assistance but this horrific detail is nary mentioned in the press or by your garden variety liberal protesters who have so attached themselves to the issue of police violence in the last few months.
Some of the leadership at the NYPD understand that they need to at least make an effort at improving their image. The chair of the NYPD's civilian review board, for example, wants cops to avoid foul language. He's not going to like the latest video from M. Logic, a New York City resident who films cops, as is his right and a service to all New Yorkers. Logic was documenting two cops who were patrolling the Bronx on foot to hand out parking tickets and decided to talk to some of the police's sources of revenue that night.
Watch below, the video is queued to the start of the incident:
It ought to be unbelievable that a cop in New York City, with anti-police violence protests ongoing, would have no problem making an implicit threat to shoot someone on camera. Given the very generous job protections offered cops by their contracts, this kind of behavior isn't surprising. There's literally no substantive consequences for it, caught on camera or not.
Some people say that the anti-police violence protests across the country "look like what history looks like." I like to consider myself an optimist but I just see a lot of posturing, signaling and agenda-hijacking, demands for the conversation to be about race to the exclusion of everything else. The protests may be useful for the protesters' sense of self-worth of duty but they're not doing anything to stop the system from producing bodies and not much in the way of slowing that system down either.
Body cams and more independent investigations are important components to reducing police violence. But without a disciplinary regime that offers serious consequences for all misconduct (a broken windows approach to policing the police, so to speak), and police unions thwart just those kinds of regimes from being imposed, other solutions are largely reactive and not actually preventative.
Hopefully I'm wrong. At the moment, New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is deciding whether to sign a bill that hands more of the power to discipline cops to police union, a bill that passed overwhelmingly in the Democrat-controlled state legislature. Cuomo's ultimate decision (don't hold your breath and him making the right one) will be a good indicator of the shape of police reform efforts to come.
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What, he’s to chicken to just say Because Fuck You, That’s Why? I’m concerned about the the level of bravery exhibited by NY’s “Finest”.
Not understanding why police or other unions for “public” employees are more concern than other “special interests”. Blah blah blah SOCONZ and law skewl.
Just getting that out of the way to save some time shitting up the thread.
hth
/botard
Thanks for that. Those hairs aren’t going to split themselves.
Let’s take care of another one while we’re here.
Hey, you try going without cops for a week and report back to me.
/stevietard
i lol’ed out loud
garden variety liberal protesters who have so attached themselves to the issue of police violence in the last few months.
They haven’t attached themselves to police violence, they’ve maintained their attachment to anti-racism and identity politics, that’s all.
To the progressives, it’s not the police violence that’s the problem, it’s the violence against blacks that just happens to be perpetrated by rogue agents of the total state, agents which the progressives themselves have identified as being the only people who should be authorized to carry guns or more than ten rounds in a magazine.
None of these protests occurred when Kelly Thomas was beaten unrecognizable while lying unarmed and prone on a city sidewalk. And Thomas was HOMELESS for Chrissakes– supposedly one of progressivism’s favourite go-to populations.
If you can’t tell, I’m done with progressives and almost anything they stand for.
Kelly Thomas was a white male. From the point of view of progressives, his death was a good thing.
Do not question your overlords! Order must be maintained at all costs! Oh and FYTW
Once again this shows the the last thing law enforcement cares about is enforcing the law. Their job is to force people to obey under pain of death.
I’m curious–what do you think led to this particular type of mentality in law enforcement? I’m young enough that this is really the only way I’ve ever most cops act, but there had to be a time before all this when cops were decent, right?
Prohibition regimes do this. Look up the history of Alcohol Prohibition.
But we’ve had prohibitions a lot longer than this “type of mentality in law enforcement”, so that’s not the reason. Somehow in recent time an attitude of “us vs. them”, such as has been common in, say, Latin Amreica, crept in.
I don’t know what the cause is, but I’m afraid part of the cause might be something as insidious as the mass media and some positive feedback. That is, the police as a superior class, not subject to the usual legal constraints, has become an expectation, normalized by the very fact that a substantial # have acted that way. And by “expectation”, I mean by the members of both this superior class and the inferior class.
I dunno. I figure they’ve always been like that. I don’t believe power necessarily corrupts, but rather that power is a magnet for people who should not have it.
What has changed is the proliferation of criminal law that makes anyone a potential target. Guilty until proven innocent with a search and a warrant check. That and when departments get revenue from the tickets they issue and the property they steal, it creates an incentive to treat everyone as a target.
Combine the incentives for assholes to seek out the job with the power to hurt anyone who doesn’t kiss their ass, and this is what we get.
Funny how the result you describe is one of those unintended consequences.
I think its lots of things. Unions and qualified immunity make it almost impossible to punish bad cops. But I also think its a symptom of an even bigger problem, the absolute lack of respect in our society for individual rights. Cops are just the enforcers for the state, and in a state that doesn’t recognize individual rights, its the cops who will violate those rights directly. That’s what leads to prohibition and over criminalization. Add in the fact that PDs can help themselves to money any time they feel like it through tickets and asset forfeiture and the fact that the people who are supposed to have oversight on the cops are too close and dependant on them and you get a pretty toxic stew.
Regarding oversight, look how important the FOP endorsement is to political candidates. For alot of folks that endorsement is a good thing, not a sign of an unholy alliance.
Maybe that will change with some of the current anti-cop backlash. Can’t imagine too many elected officials in St. Louis wanting to run on the Copsucker platform in the next municipal elections.
But respect for individual rights has been lacking a much longer time than this problem, and many countries that are much more collectivist than the USA have much tamer police.
I think its a lot of things, all driving a change in cop culture generally.
I’m curious–what do you think led to this particular type of mentality in law enforcement?
In no particular order:
Union contracts which slowly turned what would have been fireable or criminal offenses into administrative issues.
Aggressive recruiting and creating an image of police work of rolling through doorways, kicking in doors and firing your gun in the air and yelling “aaaarrghh!”
A pan-prohibitionist climate that stretched the drug war from heroin into areas such as cigarettes, trans-fats and every corner of life that politicians like to call “quality-of-life” issues. Issues and offenses which give officers carte blanche to stop, cite or arrest almost anyone for anything.
I’d like to think it was the War On Drugs that turned things, but the reality is the police used to be a nigger-beating job and if you were white the conduct toward you was completely different. Plenty of racists have the attitude “the only thing worse than a nigger is a white kid shitting all over his opportunity.” An excuse to beat the living fuck out of poor whites/redneck white trash. Simply classism instead of racism, which is equally wrong.
Now, instead of being pure racism or even overt classism, the state couches its hatred in “victimless crimes” rather than outright racism. So you don’t get systemic torture for being black or poor, you get systemic torture for hurting the feelings of the elites.
My home town in southern Illinois is known, I’ve learned, by the blacks in St Louis as a red neck town to be avoided. Which upon reflection, isn’t actually surprising.
On a recent visit to my dad, I heard how a bus had a flat tire, and the local cop made all the mostly black passengers exit the bus and stand in the rain while the tire was changed. No reason, just pure racism.
Pure small town red neck racist cop shit in the 21st century.
But this kind of thing doesn’t happen anywhere outside of The South. It’s Prog Canon Law and you utter blasphemy if you contend otherwise.
No, it happens outside of the south. Though it is probably worse there. But there is just as much racism in many Northern cities/counties.
This has been pretty damn informative. Thank you all.
Nope.
Do yourself a favor and read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Obedienc…..+authority
Or Balko’s “Rise of the Warrior Cop”
All of what everyone else has said plus 2 real world events.
The 1997 North Hollywood Shootout where 2 gunmen wearing body armor and carrying fully automatic weapons engaged in a gun battle with LAPD for 45 minutes after robbing a bank
Then 9-11
Those 2 events more than anything else lead to a change in tactics and equiptment that police used to be more what you would expect from a military than a civilian police force
But Europe’s had a lot more violent incidents like those, yet their police didn’t get that way.
I’m curious–what do you think led to this particular type of mentality in law enforcement?
It’s inherent in law enforcement.
Law isn’t reason or persuastion, it’s force and ultimately the law comes down to FYTW.
I do side with the idea that it’s largely inherent and has always been part of police tactics. We have the image of the friendly cop strutting down a quiet street, but that mostly comes from fetishizing the idyllic 50s suburbia. Perhaps those cops existed and still do to some degree, but urban cops have always been a state-sanctioned mob, going back to the 19th century. And it’s always about displaying your power, demanding obedience.
/said as someone about your same age
this mentality is ingrained from the first CJ class you take. i know i wanted to be a cop when i was a kid, i thought it was a noble profession and that I was going to be the one to reform it by only enforcing the law as i saw fit. it took about 2 weeks of the class before i quit in disgust, we had literally been being trained from day one, “its us (the police) against them (the people) serving and protecting doesn’t get you home safe at night gentlemen, stopping the threat by any means necessary does” – Officer Taylor of the NY state police to a freshman class of criminal justice majors
“there had to be a time before all this when cops were decent, right?”
No. Read up on the history of police riots in Chicago and New York. This kind of corruption has always been there. It is worse when cops have internal review and unions.
You could write a PhD thesis on this.
Lots of cops like having authority; that’s why they become cops. Put a bunch of authoritarian guys together without sound methods for restraining them and their authoritarian tendencies will become more pronounced.
Also, the purpose of policing is easily corruptible. Instead of protecting the sovereignty of the individual, they’ve reverted to the four-thousand-year-old standard of protecting the sovereignty of the state. After all, they are the state, so they often see the state as sovereign.
I wonder if any of the resident boot lickers will be along to defend this one.
Shorter Dunphy: [completely unrelated cop story featuring body cams]
Booyah body cams!
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Nicely done!
Don’t make me fear for my safety. The new stop resisting.
Also, did he call the one cop European? Ouch.
The local conservative morning dj is a cop fellator. On Fridays, he has a guy on who is a former cop. The two of them this morning talking about this stuff was just vomit inducing. Brown and Garner basically offed themselves. Don’t judge all cops by a few bad apples. Only 1 % of arrests lead to any sanction of a cop, which to them meant 99% good “customer service”. The host even said that he does not believe that police cause crime. Yeah, I don’t know what that means either. Three minutes of these two saying “thou shalt not criticize police, EVER” was all I could take.
The cliches and stereotypes are so deeply embedded that I don’t see any of this leading to real change.
The local talk radio round here has a cop sit in when one of the two hosts is out. I’d rather listen to NPR than that bullshit.
Jeff Chidester on 96.7 out of Rochester NH ?
GHRT on 101.3 out of Bangor, ME.
Maybe this is part of the trend. It’s not enough the media fellates the cops, let’s let the cops themselves host these shows.
It’s not enough the media fellates the cops….
Mark Levin Syndrome……tragic!
The host even said that he does not believe that police cause crime.
Since committing crimes is causing crime, I think its pretty obvious he’s completely wrong.
This guy has also said, “some people believe marijuana smoke is good for you”. He’s fond of strawmen.
(though your point is technically correct…the best kind of correct)
Well, some people definitely believe that.
Quite a few people, many of whom have prescriptions for marijuana, in fact.
That girl whom abated her epilepsy with marijuana isn’t thinking straight since she stopped convulsing.
I used to listen to a local conservative morning show–until one fateful morning. They have a standing interview every week with one of the cops here in town. I think he’s in some position of authority, but I don’t know exactly what he is. Anyway, they had just done a DUI checkpoint a few days prior, and some (awesome) guy called in to say that they’d tried to stop him. He basically argued his way out of it on the grounds he didn’t recognize their right to stop him at a random stop like that. There was a lot of “Am I being detained?” and “Am I free to go” involved.
Arguments ensued, and the djs went back to copsucking after the guy got off the line.
Agreed. and 1% is actually a high number to incur. Back in the day when phones ran on copper wire, it was not unusual for each business phone to have 25 pair or 50 pair wire cables running to them. An office with fifty phones, each with fifty pairs of wires, each with at least 4 connections/punch downs means a minimum 10,000 connections. A 1% error rate there would mean 100 errors, and would have gotten me fired.
I realize that human interaction is a bit more complex, but this concept that some error is acceptable and for which they are not culpable is bullshit and would never cut it in the private sector.
The Ferguson thing and all of it’s baggage, along with the immigration and CIA torture stories on heavy rotation in political media outlets are definitely making quick work in showing the ideological divides between conservatives using small government rhetoric and orthodox libertarians.
Then that part of our brains which has evolved to see patterns in everything keeps whispering to me: “maybe that’s the whole point of them being on heavy rotation.”
Anyway, more and more the thing the Tea Party has evolved into sounds a whole lot like “Don’t Tread On Me! Tread On THAT guy!”
I call them “copsuckers”. It’s a nice play on words that gets the point across and really pisses off the assholes. Probably because they recognize themselves.
Interfering with police duties is a felony in most jurisdictions. There was a traffic stop, and then the police returned to their car to write the ticket, when the individual with the camera engaged the stopped driver. The police duties were still in action (the ticket had not been served and the driver released), nor did the individual with the camera simply film from a distance.
Should the officer have implied the use of deadly force? Probably not. Should the officer instead have simply arrested the guy for interference with police duties? Absolutely.
How, exactly, was he interfering with police duties, again?
Explain to me how filming someone and talking with someone while the cop is in his car is interfering with the cop?
What about the process of issuing a ticket was impeded in any way?
What about the process of issuing a ticket was impeded in any way?
The apprehension and intimidation that goes with sitting and waiting in the car alone. You’re supposed to be sweating, not having a conversation with a stranger. So the guy was interfering in the psychological warfare aspect of the ticket.
Because the delicate little Edelweisses on the police force can’t take the glare of scrutiny while doing their jobs. It hurts their feelz and distracts them form the super important business at hand.
Well, Officer Skylar never lost a T-ball game.
Triggers….
Should the officer have implied the use of deadly force? Probably not.
You’re too kind. “Probably not” on the deadly force? So talking to someone during a traffic stop might be cause for a death sentence.
That is exactly what you’re saying when you say “probably not”.
Let’s be fair…it’s really really really difficult for some people to say, “the policeman was wrong”.
Like that thread the other day when someone pointed out that poor people don’t make bad decisions, they were just “running with a bad crowd”…there is always a reason, always an excuse, always a rationalization. Because the truth (a cop can murder you without consequence) is just impossible for them to process.
Until you read a police report on something you witnessed, you will have no idea of how dishonest cops are.
When you are dealing with a policeman, remember that if you piss him off he could shoot you dead on the spot, call up his union lawyer, concoct some false narrative to excuse his act of murder, and then nothing else will happen.
That’s not true, if it is really egregious and there is video evidence that gets leaked to the media he might lose his job
…and then go get a new job as a cop in the next town over.
So if there was a passenger in the car and the driver carried on a conversation with him while the cop wrote up the ticket, would that be interfering with police duties too? If not, how is it any different if the conversation is with someone outside of the car?
Because “Officer safetyzzz”.
I just see a lot of posturing, signaling and agenda-hijacking, demands for the conversation to be about race to the exclusion of everything else.
That’s how history starts.
That is EXACTLY how the Iranian Revolution began. The hostage takers were just derpy pissed off students with no idea what they really wanted. Eventually, opportunists took over the situation and changed the goal, failed, then other opportunists took over changing the goal again, etc. until it turned into something the populace sorta supported.
In the US we usually get tired of it so the police have nothing to worry about in a few years. But if they let the short term hassle get to them and up their hatred of the citizens, then it’ll be their own undoing.
Don’t make me fear for my safety
Sounds like an admission by the cop that he was engaged in illegal activity that would be exposed by someone videoing him.
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I am far from a cop apologist but something about this video doesn’t sit well with me.
First off the words of the narrator don’t match the words heard on the video. At the 3:00 minute mark the fist cop recorded says, “do me a favor and get away from there”. The narrator replies, “what do you mean get away from there” ?
In this instance the guy with the camera instigated everything that happened. He then procedes to deal the victim card for the entire neighbor and how that person who double parked the SUV is too poor to pay the ticket. Huh ? You’re driving a gas guzzler in NY and you can’t afford a parking ticket and must resort to crime to pay it ? He says seeral times that everyone in the neighborhood has to resort to crime to pay the tickets on their cars ? That the police force cause all the crime by writing tickets ? And black and brown people should not have European cops in their neighborhoods ? Why, are they prejudiced against white people ? So ladies and gentlemen if we are to take this videographers word for it, it is European cops who are responsible for all the crime and everyone in the neighbborhood’s rap sheets by writing traffic and parking tickets?
This video is the UVA rape story with regard to police brutality and he is the Lena Dunham of police brutality.
The “don’t make me fear for my saftey” was definately over the top but it is not wise to instigate such a scene and not expect the cops to get nervous about what the fuck you have in mind. Who in their right mind would do so unless they have an agenda and who the fuck knows what that agenda is while the situation is unfolding ?
When the first cop said ,”do me a favor and get away from there”, he should have at least until they were through with their business.
This is not a police brutality video that sheds light on police brutality like the homeless guy they beat to death. This is a video of a guy who started the shit and he is lucky he didn’t get shot. It would have been wrong but he would still be dead. This is not a case of a citizen minding his own business getting brutalized by cops.
OneOUt, your comments make perfect sense if you believe or are willing to accept that cops should act like paranoid goons.
Someone who isn’t a paranoid goon isn’t going to feel threatened by anything on the video. Its the cop who instigates and escalates, because the videographer has a perfect right to do what he is doing. The cop could reasonably ask for some space to finish the ticketing, perhaps, but unless and until the videographer actively interferes with the ticketing, he hasn’t instigated anything.
The cop going off task to deal with someone who isn’t interfering with their job is on the cop.
Uh, the point isn’t that the guy making the video is awesome and right about everything. The point is that the cop acted like a goon and basically threatened to shoot the guy for being annoying.
in the cops defense, it would be nice to shoot people who are annoying
The cop didn’t act like a goon, he is a goon, and he threatened the photographer’s life. If the photographer had shot the cop dead for that, I would see it as self defense.
This is a situation where everyone is an asshole.
I’m still shaking my head about the “European” cop and “Hispanic” cop. Not just the hilarious racism, but the fabulous ignorance of geography.
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Auxiliary police!?! Not even real cops! I didn’t even know the auxiliary police could write tickets.
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You’re right, that cop was looking to jack you up. But, you’re wrong, it would have made no difference if you were white. Finally, you were obviously instigating.
A serious case of mental discord, lefties protesting against the police, but don’t anyone dare do anything to reduce the power of the police unions that shield bad cops from discipline or dismissal.
Police forces across the USA would have a better reputation if they really would police themselves and kick out the bad individuals.
A cop that gets bounced from one agency for doing things he or she shouldn’t have done should be nationally blacklisted from being able to get a job as a police officer or even a security guard. That includes campus “police” and any other pseudo-police who don’t have real law enforcement authority – but often act as though they do.
They should get ONE and only one chance to redeem themselves by starting from the bottom at a police academy where the SERVE part of “To serve and protect” is heavily emphasized.
If they screw up again, then it should be a permanent lifetime blacklisting.
This video dude seems like he got in the face of the cop pretty quickly.
I don’t think he was very polite to the officer.
Cops on foot patrol don’t have flashing lights.
The cop asked him to move away from the car.
Once the video-dude started talking the encounter proceeded
in a bad way. At that point isn’t he interfering with the cop
doing his job? Couldn’t video-dude have just shot the video with
out hassling the police guys until they finished writing their tickets?
I don’t like cops or anyone else “exceeding their authority”.
I think video-dude exceeded his authority in this situation.
Keep recording, but be respectful. It’ll help the situation, not make it worse.
Wow, the pig actually went off and essentially said, “No talking, no talking!”
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Did it stick in anyone else’s craw that the cameraman kept referring to the white cop as the “European” cop? (rolls eyes)
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I can’t even imagine that happening today, anywhere.
Oh, it happens. But it’s selective.
Several years ago I wrecked a car while driving home from the bar in a snow storm. When the cop radioed in my information, the sergeant in charge recognized the address as that of my stepfather who I was living with at the time. Since my stepfather sells the department their cars, the sergeant instructed the officer to “Go easy on him.” He gave me one simple roadside test and pronounced me good to go.
It all depends on who you are and who you know.
Rule of man, bitches!
Yes, I think that’s part of it: so-called “realities” that aren’t, because everybody on TV is acting whether they’re professional actors or not, but then it’s perceived as reality and emulated.
~20 yrs. ago I heard that the practice of police routinely handcuffing people in custody came about because they saw it being done in TV & movies. It didn’t use to be routine for someone taken in or making an appearance in nonviolent circumstances to be physically restrained, but then they started handcuffing, and later the started handcuffing people behind their backs instead of in front as had formerly been practiced.
Life imitates art.