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How the NYPD Weaponized a Curfew Against Protesters and Residents

HUSAN BLUE, his family, and his neighbors were having a cookout on the patio outside their apartment in Crown Heights. It was a warm summer night in Brooklyn. Little kids were running around and playing. People were talking and celebrating. Blue’s dad had just had a birthday, and a couple of the neighbors had new babies on the way. “It was a calm night,” Blue told me. “There was a lot of things to be happy about.” Around 11:30p.m., Blue made a run to the corner store. When the 30-year-old came back, a small army of police officers in riot gear were gathered outside his building. They were dressed, in Blue’s words, “for war.”

Blue asked his family and friends what was going on, and quickly learned that the police had ordered them to go inside. New York City was three days into a newly imposed curfew, the first in 75 years, announced in a joint statement by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a measure to restore order amid the protests and looting that followed the killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin. Blue had done his research, and he was fairly certain that the curfew, which was focused on public areas, did not apply to private property. Nonetheless, there was nothing to be gained in testing the New York Police Department. “Let’s clean up,” he said. “No need to get hostile.”

The officers piled on, driving their knees into Blue’s torso. They yanked his arms behind his back and zip-tied his wrists together. Blue had shoulder surgery just four days prior, his stitches were still in. The pain was excruciating.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NYPD To Deploy Drones For The First Time To Secure New Year’s Party

December 30, 2018

NYPD To Deploy Drones For The First Time To Secure New Year’s Party

In a world where pesky drones are becoming an increasingly greater nuisance – see the embarrassment that was last week’s Gatwick airport shutdown– the NYPD is taking the other side and is ramping up security for the city’s annual New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square with more than 1,200 cameras — some installed on high-flying drones — to protect the nearly 2 million expected revelers, police officials said Friday.

One of the camera-equipped drones will be tethered to the top of a building to prevent potential attacks on the party below, Police Commissioner James O’Neill said at a press conference quoted by the NY Post.

“This is the first time we’re going to be using it at a large-scale event,” he said. “It’s just going to give us an additional view of the crowd.”

Bloomberg reports that the drones are being put in place in an attempt to prevent another incident like the shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, in which 59 people who were attending an outdoor concert were killed by a sniper located in a hotel room overlooking the Vegas strip.

What about bystanders who decide to bring one of their own drones? That would be a bad idea because counter-terrorism cops will also deploy counter-drone technology to protect against attackers, or anyone else for that matter, with anyone caught flying a drone likely to be arrested.

“Don’t fly a drone that night… There’s no need to fly a drone,” O’Neill said. “And if you do fly one, there’s a good chance you’ll end up getting arrested.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘I Feel Like a Despised Insect’: Coming of Age Under Surveillance In New York

February 18, 2016

“I FEEL LIKE A DESPISED INSECT”: COMING OF AGE UNDER SURVEILLANCE IN NEW YORK

IN THE SPRING of last year, two New York women were arrested on charges of supporting ISIS, following a joint investigation by the New York Police Department along with federal agencies. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Queens residents Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui “plotted to wreak terror by creating explosive devices.” Central to the disruption of this “terror plot,” authorities boasted, was the work of an undercover police detective, although no concrete plan was ever hatched. Indeed, as The Intercept reported, the unsealed criminal complaint reveals the undercover officer’s role in pushing the two women to turn their controversial political sentiments into something more dangerous. In this sense, the arrests were similar to a number of post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions, half of which have involved the use of informants or undercover agents, according to a 2014 report co-authored by Human Rights Watch, which raised concerns over “questionable” and “discriminatory” tactics.

At Brooklyn College, where I teach, news of the arrests prompted a chilling realization among students on campus. Years earlier, this same NYPD officer had come to Brooklyn College, “converted” to Islam, and spent the next four years infiltrating student life. In November, Gothamist broke the story: “Malike Ser” was the cop’s alias; she was known by the nickname “Mel.” There were no links between Mel’s years on campus and the investigation and arrest of Velentzas and Siddiqui (neither of whom went to Brooklyn College or any of the city’s public colleges) — a fact the NYPD has since acknowledged. What remains unclear is what, exactly, Mel was looking for on our campus.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Acoustic Cannon Sales to Police Surge After Black Lives Matter Protests

August 15, 2015

Acoustic Cannon Sales to Police Surge After Black Lives Matter Protests

During a company conference call with financial analysts last week, Tom Brown, the chief executive of LRAD, a military contractor, informed investors that sales were rolling in, not just from Chinese government agencies and the U.S. Navy, but also from American law enforcement.

LRAD manufactures an acoustic cannon that can be used either as a mounted loudspeaker or as a weapon to fire deafening noises at crowds of people.

Over the last year, following a wave of protests over officer-involved killings of black Americans, LRAD has seen an uptick in inquiries from police departments around the country.

Brown told financial analysts in a May conference call about the “renewed interest” from police departments. “A lot of grant money starts to flow to law enforcement, and we’re getting a lot of inquiries” following protests, he said. One inquiry he mentioned came from the Maryland Sheriff’s Department following the protests in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray.

Speaking to investors, LRAD executives explained that their product was on site in Baltimore, on loan from Montgomery County, Maryland, though officers ended up not using it on demonstrators. But, the LRAD executives added, the New York Police Department used the cannon as a loudspeaker to order demonstrators in Union Square who were holding a solidarity protest in support of the Baltimore actions to disperse.

Videos of the NYPD using the LRAD cannon to manage the demonstrators were widely circulated on YouTube, company officials boasted. “So we have been getting good press,” Brown noted, adding, “depending on which side of the press you’re looking at, but we’ve been getting very strong press from law enforcement.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hard to Believe: Police are Treating Protest Movements Like They are Terrorists

February 15, 2015

Hard to Believe: Police are Treating Protest Movements Like They are Terrorists

But that’s not stopping activists from pushing back.

The New York Police Department has reportedly been giving young adults free tickets to screenings of “Selma,” and last month, on Martin Luther King Day, officers with the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood even drove a group of local teens to see the film, which depicts the historic march for voting rights. At the same time, however, the NYPD has sought to thwart, criminalize and defame the current incarnation of civil rights activism underway in New York, treating the Black Lives Matter movement as a threat on par with terrorism.

On Feb. 10, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton asked lawmakers in Albany to elevate resisting arrest from a misdemeanor to a felony. Arrestees going limp and forcing officers to carry them off to jail was a common tactic of the civil rights movement — which has continued to this day — and is considered resisting arrest by the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies. At the end of January, Bratton announced he is arming a new unit called the Strategic Response Group with machine guns that will “assist us in dealing with demonstrations.” Speaking at a breakfast organized by the Police Foundation, Bratton explained that the unit “is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NYPD Launches Plan to Deal with Protests – Arm Police with Long Rifles, Machines Guns and Extra Protective Gear

January 30, 2015

NYPD Launches Plan to Deal with Protests – Arm Police with Long Rifles, Machines Guns and Extra Protective Gear

Murders reached a historic low in NYC for 2014; overall crime was down across the board by nearly 5%; hell, even the holiday slowdown didn’t really lead to any additional crime. So clearly, now is the time when NYC really needs to implement a new anti-terrorism program which would empower a team of NYPD officers to roam around the city carrying machine guns. What could go wrong?

This new squad will be used to investigate and combat terrorist plots, lone wolf terrorists, and… protests. “It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris,” Bratton said, according to CBS.

– From the Gothamist article: New NYPD Anti-Terror Unit Will Get Machine Guns To Police Protesters

The morphing of “terrorism” and “domestic dissent” into an all encompassing and convenient category known as “domestic terrorists” or “domestic extremists” has been a long time coming. It has always been my contention, and continues to be, that the oligarchs who have funneled all of the wealth to themselves since the 2008 banker bailouts know exactly what they are doing. They also know that it will eventually result in severe domestic unrest during the next cyclical downturn. As such, the agenda has been to utilize the entirety of the intelligence-industrial-military complex created by the “war on terror” against the domestic population once it recognizes how badly it has been looted.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NYPD Put On High Alert After ISIS “Unleash Killings” Video, Feinstein Warns Of Terrorist Sleeper Cells

January 11, 2015

NYPD Put On High Alert After ISIS “Unleash Killings” Video, Feinstein Warns Of Terrorist Sleeper Cells

NYPD cops were put on high alert Saturday night after ISIS released a propaganda video urging the killing of “intelligence officers, police officers, soldiers, and civilians” in the US, according to The NY Post. This was then further fear-mongered by Senator Diane Feinstein who said Sunday she believes there are terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. that could carry out attacks similar to the ones in France – thoiugh not mentioning any specific threats. Of course, this heightened terror alert comes at the worst possible time, as AP confirms what we discussed previously, that NYC has seen a steep decline in the number of arrests amid a rumored work slowdown by NYPD cops on the heels of disillusionment with de Blasio.

As The NY Post reports, NYPD cops were put on high alert Saturday night after ISIS released a propaganda video urging the killing of “intelligence officers, police officers, soldiers, and civilians” in the US.

“Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents,” the vile video, released on Twitter by ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammad Al-Adnani, urges.

“If you are assigned to a fixed post, do not sit together in the RMP [police car],” members of the Sergeants Benevolent Association were instructed in an e-mail obtained by The Post.

“At least one officer must stand outside the vehicle at all times. Pay attention to your surroundings. Officers must pay close attention to approaching vehicles . . . Pay close attention to people as they approach. Look for their hands.”

Heightening the tension was last week’s terror attack in Paris, in which two of the 17 people killed were police officers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Now Eric Garner | KUNSTLER

December 8, 2014

Now Eric Garner | KUNSTLER.

The Beauty Shop had barely stopped smoldering in Ferguson, Missouri, when the Eric Garner grand jury decision came down on Staten Island — no probable cause to indict one particular cop for something — manslaughter? — in his choke-hold take-down of the 300-pound cigarette-seller. For my money, they should have indicted the whole gang of cops who were there that day, including the black female NYPD sergeant on the scene ostensibly “supervising” the action, at least for something like negligent homicide, since the infamous video shows them acting cruelly, stupidly, and indifferently as the poor guy just lay dying on the sidewalk.

Worse, the decision only muddied the public’s view of several events in recent years involving black people, police, and standards of behavior so that now a general opinion prevails that all black people are always treated badly for no reason. That was the same week, by the way, that a white Bosnian immigrant named Zemir Begic was bludgeoned to death by three black teenagers wielding hammers who were out beating on stopped cars on a St Louis street — a crime that was barely covered in the news media, and went unprotested outside the immigrant neighborhood where it occurred. It’s hard to blame the public for being confused about what may or may not be happening across the nation, but history will surely judge this as a tragic time for America.

If we can’t or won’t unpack the separate issues in these matters, the country is going to get into a lot more trouble. One issue is whether police forces in the USA are becoming goon squads. The decision by the federal government to offload tactical military equipment, including armored war wagons, on police departments far and wide was disgracefully stupid since it only gives the impression, when hauled out, that the police are at war with the citizenry. There ought to be public discussion of just flat-out taking all that stuff away from them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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