Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/03/nypd-officers-assault-associat.html
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That’s what you get when little Donny smallhands has been calling the Free Press the “enemy of the people” for 4 years.
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Fuck these guys. We can not have these guys now and in future. Remember this moment and let it burn in. Dump them. Dump them hard. They are animals and they don’t work for us. Fire them all. Put those that assault and murder people in jail. They are criminals.
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The ACLU is going to be very busy…
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NYPD also has one of the world’s largest intelligence services, with operatives around the globe. It admits to operating bureaux in Toronto, Montréal, Santo Domingo, London, Paris, The Hague, Lyon, Madrid, Tel Aviv, Amman, Dohu, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Sydney; there are almost certainly covert operations that are not acknowledged.
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If I were press covering the protests, I’d use my own money to buy several of those sneaky cameras assholes use to spy on people in Airbnbs and secure one to the front and back of each crew member. Set it up to stream to a secure server elsewhere, even if one of them has to wear a transmitter.
Then you’d get footage to document abuses no matter what the police do to your regular equipment.
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I am completely frustrated by how keyed into “broadcast quality only” the technology of news crews is on these protests - big heavy ENG cameras that are terrible in low light, meaning their high-quality signal chain is filled with trash that’s so bad it may as well have been shot on a $100 android phone. And as soon as they move, the camera has to be lowered.
That newsgatherers are years behind activists (and cops!) when it comes to bodycams, streaming, ultraportable rigs, etc., is one of the insistent unpleasant noises about the fundamental failure of media to capture the times.
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I also wish I was stupidly rich. I could buy lots of cheap phones set to stream video to a secure server and pass them out to protesters in every city. I (or more likely people I hired to cover enough) would ask them to film everything and pass the phone on to someone else if they leave. Or hire a bunch of low-on-work lawyers and law students and rig them up with recording devices and OBSERVER jackets (maybe leave that to them- could make them a target). I’d make contracts promising to pay medical expenses they incur from the work.
Then have people viewing the video to catch abuses as well as nice things, release the clips to a webpage for anyone to use. Send the videos with as much info as possible to the ACLU.
Yes. It is an elaborate dream that I have no way of fullfulling.
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“Who are you essential to?”
No, who are YOU essential to, mercenary?
Let the lawsuits begin!
ETA: Looks like I oughtta make a donation to the ACLU.
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These bulky rigs are also being used as a form of ID that legitimizes the carrier as “official” members of the “real” press. If CNN crews used small portable devices they’d be indistinguishable from everyone else recording on their phones, and would be treated as such.
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Then, ironically, half the time they end of putting low-res portrait video poorly ripped from twitter in their nightly coverage anyway.
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They obviously never read Snowcrash.
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The fact that signifiers of professional media do not protect them, and may even mark them for attack, appears not to be sinking in.
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There is no news coming out of Cleveland, and not only because things are supposedly peaceful now.
The downtown is under a strict cordon curfew and checkpoints have been established that let only people who work or live there (and can prove it) inside.
No citizen journalism allowed.
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It would be nice if one of the legacies of this period of shit would be that reporters would start to change how they report on police violence. Stop with the unquestioning credulity that accepts at face value the version of the story the police spokesman puts out there after violence. Stop with the passive voice (i.e. “the protesters were struck by rubber bullets…the suspect died after a knee was placed on his neck…etc”) Start pointing out illegal behavior when it comes from police to the same degree they do when it comes to others.
Maybe they look at it as a cautionary tale re: Lagos.
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The Met is not just the local police force for London, tho – in many respects it’s the de facto national police for the whole UK
Yes, somewhat larger than the NYPD too. The NYPD definitely has a big “where does all the money go? Ah it goes on tanks” edge.
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Seriously considered going to a local protest today but I don’t want to risk bringing Covid home to the fam. I may just kick some extra donations to Amnesty, the ACLU and the SPLC today instead.
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I wonder if FOX reporters will finally get the damn message that the cops are violent assholes and treat non cops like a separate species. I’d love to see them still try to defend their glorious ideas of “law and order”.
This is bullshit. Freedom of the fucking press needs upheld for a free society
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That did not stop one of their crews from getting arrested the other day… The police don’t give a fuck about press passes and big old cameras, because they don’t want what’s happening getting out.
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