Tag Archives: New York City Police Department

NYPD: It’s too hard looking for gay-bashers

NY-Knicks

I would suspect that some members and officials of the NYPD have the same mindset as the alleged gay-bashers, hence their original statement that it would be “too hard to find them”...

America Blog

Two gay men were reportedly attacked, apparently for walking arm in arm, outside a New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in NYC on Sunday.

The police originally told the victims, one of whom suffered a broken nose, that it would be hard identifying the suspects since so many people were wearing Knicks shirts at the time.

Once word got out about the crime, the NYPD changed its tune and announced on Tuesday that it was looking for the suspected gay-bashers.

I’ve witnessed this kind of behavior before from the police in Washington, DC.  They have ample incentive for trying to get you not to file a crime report.  First, there’s an incentive to have crime go down, and one of the easiest ways to have crime go down is not to file a report at all.  So you’ll have police finding crafty ways of trying to convince victims not to file a

Two gay men were reportedly attacked, apparently for walking arm in arm, outside a New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in NYC on Sunday.

The police originally told the victims, one of whom suffered a broken nose, that it would be hard identifying the suspects since so many people were wearing Knicks shirts at the time.

Once word got out about the crime, the NYPD changed its tune and announced on Tuesday that it was looking for the suspected gay-bashers.

I’ve witnessed this kind of behavior before from the police in Washington, DC.  They have ample incentive for trying to get you not to file a crime report.  First, there’s an incentive to have crime go down, and one of the easiest ways to have crime go down is not to file a report at all.  So you’ll have police finding crafty ways of trying to convince victims not to file a report.

Another reason police don’t like to file crime reports is that if they catch a suspect, the paperwork, and the time it takes to get them in the system, and process them, is also a pain.   If you don’t catch the bad guy, you don’t have to work extra hours processing the bad guy.

And finally, if they’re going to through all that extra work to process arrestees, they’d rather do it for a “real” criminal, a murderer, rather than someone who beats the f out of gays.

In big cities, the system, and its incentives, sadly can work against victims (and against good police officers themselves).

Fortunately, NYPD seems finally interested in working on this crime.

(h/t Liberaland)

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NYPD’s Ray Kelly: Blacks “understopped” by police

NYPD's Ray Kelly: Blacks

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly (Credit: AP)

Really Mr. Kelly?  Really?

Salon

Echoing what Joan Walsh called Mayor Bloomberg’s “ugly” defense of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practice, police commissioner Ray Kelly asserted Wednesday night that African Americans are “understopped” by police. During an interview with ABC, the commissioner and the policing tactic’s greatest defender, said that “African Americans are being understopped in relation to people being described as perpetrators of violent crime.”

While Mayor Bloomberg has been mayor, the NYPD has carried out over 5 million stop-and-frisks. Analysis by the ACLU of official police data found that over 86 percent of the stops were of black or Latino individuals. The analysis of police data also revealed that 88 percent of the stops did not result in an arrest or summons (and of course an even smaller proportion ever lead to a prosecution, or conviction). The number of innocent people stopped alone serves as ample riposte to Kelly’s suggestion that any demographic is “understopped.”

Kelly suggests that since 75 percent of violent crime victims describe the perpetrators as African American males, it is therefore valid to treat millions of black young men in New York as criminals without grounds. The fact that many perpetrators of violent crime in New York have been African American does not in turn mean that per se African Americans in New York should be assumed violent criminals. The logic is not only flawed, but perpetuates a policing system that, through quotas and targeting certain communities, confirms its own bias about who gets to be a criminal.

And, while we’re at it, here are a few relevant facts to challenge Kelly’s “understopped” claim: The number of stop-and-frisks carried out yearly since 2003 has nearly quadrupled. However, the number of weapons recovered from stops each year has remained pretty much constant. Meanwhile, marijuana arrests have spiked (while suspicion of drug possession is cited by police in less than 1 percent of instances as the reason for a stop). Federal statistics also consistently show that marijuana use is more prevalent among young white people than young black people. So: more guns are not being recovered, more young black men are being arrested for marijuana possession, while more white people are users of the drug. And yet, says Kelly (with malleable stats at his finger tips), African Americans are being “understopped.”

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Filed under NYC Stop & Frisk, NYPD Police Abuse

Cops Pepper-sprayed 5 Month Old Baby, Mom Alleges in Lawsuit

Photo Credit: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Alternet

A mother is suing the New York Police Department (NYPD) after cops allegedly pepper-sprayed her three little children.

A mother is suing the New York Police Department (NYPD) over what she says was an instance of police brutality where cops pepper-sprayed her three little children. Courthouse News Service reports that the mother, Marilyn Taylor, made the claims recently in court about the alleged August 9 incident.

Taylor says that police officers pepper sprayed her three children, who are 5-months old and 2 and 4 years old. She claims that as she was on her way to board a Manhattan-bound L Train, officers stopped her and her husband and accused them of trying to skip a fare. Taylor was pushing a stroller with her two-year-old through a service door rather than the regular turnstile.

That’s when the police officers allegedly pepper sprayed Taylor, and the spray hit her children. The lawsuit claims that “the pepper-spray caused the children to scream out and choked the two-year old, who went into fits of vomiting.”

Taylor was arrested, and she said that cops pushed her down the stairs so harshly that the handcuffs bruised her wrists and lower back, according to Courthouse News Service. The officers who carried out the alleged brutality are named in the suit: Maripily Clase, Suranjit Dey and Jermaine Hodge.

Taylor’s husband, named Dehaven McClain, had to get all three children home by himself.

A day after the incident, Taylor says she “received an adjournment in contemplation of a dismissal, meaning the charges would be tossed if she did not get arrested again within a certain time,” according to the news outlet.

The lawsuit provides more details on the aftermath of the attack. “After the attack, mother and father suffered ongoing eye injuries and all three children suffer emotional harms, and are now afraid to ride the subways and become afraid when they see police officers. The four year-old cried herself to sleep for weeks, and after the incident the two-year-old began waking up in the night crying for her mother,” the complaint reads.

Taylor has said that the officers have continued to harass her since the August 9 event.

The family is seeking punitive damages for what they say were civil rights violations, assault, battery, negligence, and violations to the state and federal constitutions, according to the Courthouse News Service. The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment.

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Fresh Off Completely Sane Piers Morgan Interview, Alex Jones Says Mayor Bloomberg is Sending Crackheads to Kill Him for Speaking Truth to Mafia

Black helicopters,”Mafiosa”, “Goodfellows looking guys”and “Crackheads”.  That’s the world of conspiracy Alex Jones describes regarding his trip to New York to appear on the Piers Morgan Show.

Here he is again, explaining what happened in New York.  He wants to prove that he’s not crazy!

Gawker – Neetzan Zimmerman

(Ed. Note:)  Moments later Jones added this video to You Tube:

You have to admire Alex Jones.

If not for his tin-foil political views than at least for the breakneck speed with which he can spin a web of conspiracy so thick with heavy-breathed paranoia it makes Robert Ludlum look like a historian.

Just one hour after filming his instantly infamous interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Jones was on his YouTube channel claiming the “panicked” producers pulled the plug early and kicked him out with tears in their eyes, and he was now scared for his life because Mayor Bloomberg had sent undercover cops dressed as crackheads to kill him and his crew.

“The way this’ll work is, ‘oh, see here they were protesting gun grabs and some crack dealers shot them,’” Jones told his 344k subscribers. “If something happens to us, we’re killed by crackheads, it was the NYPD or the mafia [Bloomberg] hired.”

Hey, it’s not paranoia if the Bloomberg mafia’s army of crackhead cops is really after you.

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Thursday Blog Round Up

Liars!

Picture of the Day

Romney’s veepstakes heats up

Is Obama going to win in a landslide?

Americans Don’t Like the Political Media

Young Republicans Erase Lines on Social Issues

Romney Ad Bashing Obama in Ohio Used Oklahoma Footage

New York Times Photographer Beaten Up And Arrested By NYPD

Video: Ohio headed toward extra voting time for Republicans only

Gingrich Glorifies McCarthyism To Defend His Support Of Bachmann’s Anti-Muslim Witch Hunt

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Cops Detain 15-Year-Old Girl For 90 Minutes Over MetroCard Flop

alexis-sumpter-harlem teen handcuffed metrocard

Some might ask what does this post and a previous post about police brutality toward minorities have to do with politics.  Let me suggest to those who might ask this question that… it has everything to do with it.

News One

Alexis Sumpter, a 15-year-old Harlem girl, was detained by New York Police Department (NYPD) officers for more than 90 minutes because they thought she illegally used a student metro card, the New York Daily News reports.

On July 27, Sumpter swiped her MetroCard at the 125th Metro station in Harlem and sat on a platform bench as she waited for the A-Train to arrive. Several plainclothes cops approached her, saying that she illegally swiped the card because they believed she was over 18 years of age.

Sumpter told them that she was 15 years old, but could not provide ID because it was recently stolen at a party she attended.

The cops, she says, did not buy her story and cuffed her. Sumpter told The Post that the officers were quite aggressive:

“They called me liar,” she remembers. “Then they grabbed me by my arms and flung me up the stairs. I kept saying, I’m only 15 — why are you guys doing this?

“They said they didn’t owe me an explanation,” she said.

The officers on the scene called her father who vouched for her age, but they were not convinced. The teen’s mother, Marisol Sumpter, was then called. She raced to the scene with her daughter’s birth certificate and only then was the girl released.

Watch her video here…

The entire ordeal lasted 90 minutes, a fact that puzzles the teen’s mother.

“I definitely think it was over the top,” said Marisol Sumpter, 32, who works in real estate. “They used physical force that was not necessary.”

 

The Alexis was treated at a local hospital because she says the handcuffs caused swelling on her wrists. She no longer takes the A-train, hoping the change in travel will help her avoid the officers that detailed her. She was neither arrested nor given a summons.

 

“I don’t want to see them again,” she said. “I don’t want to have to go through that again.”

 The NYPD is investigating the case.

For more on this story, please go to the New York Daily News.

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Teen ‘Stop And Frisked’ More Than 60 Times Speaks Out!

stop and frisk police brutality

Getting stopped and frisked more than sixty times is outrageous.   Look at the following stats from the ACLU:

In the first three months of 2012, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 203,500 times
181,457 were totally innocent (89 percent).
108,097 were black (54 percent).
69,043 were Latino (33 percent).
18,387 were white (9 percent).

NewsOne

Stop And Frisk‘ is hailed by NYPD law enforcement officials as a life-saving police tactic that keeps guns off of the streets and prevents gun-related crimes from occurring.

But Tyquan Brehon (pictured) of Flatbush, Brooklyn, says that the tactic has made it impossible for him to walk the streets in peace. Brehon claims that he has been stopped by cops more than 60 times before his 18th birthday, according to the New York Times.

“Most of the times I get stopped, I’m walking down the block,” he says. “They never say, ‘This is why I’m stopping you.’ When you’re young and you’re Black, no matter how you look, you fit the description.”

Breton recalled a time when officers stopped and frisked both him and a group of other teens and lined them up against a wall. Breton asked why he was being stopped. An officer told him he was spraying graffiti on the wall. Breton in turn asked how could he possibly be spraying anything on the wall if it is Black and he only has a pink highlighter in his pocket.

Continue reading here…

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Bloomberg’s office admits to arresting journalists for covering OWS

New York City Mayor Bloomberg has been in office way too long…

RT.com

Arrests in the Occupy movement nationally have surpassed 1,000, with 177 being charged by the NYPD  [ a week ago Thursday]  in only the first few hours.

Now New York is admitting that journalists that they credentialed are among those that were cuffed by cops. In a statement to the press released from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office on Thursday, November 17, spokesperson Stu Loeser addressed the media about reports relating to the growing number of journalists who have been arrested by the NYPD during Occupy Wall Street protests, a now-international movement which began in Lower Manhattan two months to the day of Loeser’s memo.

“Like all of you, I’ve heard and read many reports of reporters who supposedly were wearing valid NYPD press credentials, yet allegedly encountered problems on the streets of New York,” writes the spokesman. Loeser goes on to direct recipients of the memo to a roster of reporters published by independent outlet The Awl that has chronicled the names and affiliations of journalists that have been arrested across the country so far, which as of this writing totals 26.

“Not being familiar with many of the media outlets for which The Awl says these reporters work, I had the list of ‘26 arrested reporters’ checked against the roster of reporters who hold valid NYPD press passes,” Loeser adds. “You can imagine my surprise when we found that only five of the 26 arrested reporters actually have valid NYPD-issued press credentials.”

With that sentence alone, Loeser manages to shoot himself in the foot. Twice.

Given his statement, Bloomberg’s office has indeed confirmed that at least five members of the media that were accredited by the City’s own police force were arrested while doing their job, a job that the Police Department has acknowledged and authorized. Secondly, Loeser attempts to discredit the media while at the same time exposing that he didn’t do his homework himself.

Maybe the reason that only five of the 26 reporters had NYPD-issued credentials was because not all of those 26 arrests occurred in New York.

Continue reading here… 

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Reporters For Right-Wing Publication Daily Caller Beaten By NYPD, Helped By Protesters

Apparently among the 99% partisanship does not exist…

Think Progress

The right-wing Daily Caller website has been anything but kind to Occupy Wall Street, even going so far as to condemn the protest movement as generating riots, murder, and arson.

But when a couple of Daily Caller employees were at Occupy Wall Street this morning, it was the very protesters they had been demonizing who ended up helping them out. Daily Caller reporter Michelle Fields — who faced off with actor Matt Damon earlier this year over education policy — and videographer Direna Cousins both claim they were attacked by the New York Police Department (NYPD) while covering the raucous protests in the Financial District today. Fields added that Occupy Wall Street protestersimmediately came up to her to offer their help:

“Direna had a camera in her hand and I had a microphone, and we were being hit,” she said. “When I fell to the ground I said at one point, ‘I’m just covering this! I’m covering this!’ And the officer just said, ‘Come on, get up, get up,’ before pulling me up by my jacket.’” “The protesters came up to me right away and asked if I needed any medical assistance. They were actually very kind and helpful. It was the police officers who were very aggressive,” Fields added.

Fields says that protesters right now are effectively “barricaded” in Zuccotti Park, which was the spot from which they were ousted from on Tuesday.

 

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Former Philadelphia Police Captain Joins Occupy Protesters, Gets Arrested

This is what Democracy looks like…

Common Dreams

Former Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis joined Occupy Wall Street protesters on Tuesday.

He was seen holding a sign reading “NYPD Don’t Be Wall Street Mercenaries.”

In a video interview with Livestreamers, he railed against the excessive power of corporate America and the wrongful eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park. He said if the occupations “continue to grow, you’re going to see a lot more of the FBI.”

This morning, taking part in the national day of action, Lewis was arrested. @OccupyWallStNYC tweets that there were cheers as he was taken away.

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