Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/04/video-shows-plain-clothes-nypd.html
…
7 Likes
Yes parks were packed, but people were maintaining distances and almost everyone was wearing a mask.
Crap like that should be grounds for immediate firing and jail time.
18 Likes
The problem begins even before the arrest. The idea of using arrest as a mechanism for enforcing social distancing is a bad idea. At best it brings someone into contact with a cop or more, then puts them into jails currently filled with infected people.The fact that it is a minor offense means that people go from the pit of infection, back out into the community.
16 Likes
It would be great if calling attention to the vast inequity in all areas of our society accomplished anything.
But it won’t. We actually have to do something about it.
11 Likes
Unfortunately the odious inequity that is Qualified Immunity which effectively puts cops above the law means that the officer is unlikely to be charged despite blatantly committing aggravated assault on an innocent bystander for which any non-cop would be charged and convicted. Meanwhile the victim will have to pay for the expensive process of hiring a lawyer to contest the absurd bullshit charges against him.
The victim is literally going to pay for the crime the cop committed.
This is the Upside Down.
16 Likes
This is the police department best known for stop and frisk. I am not surprised in the least that white people can do whatever and black people get hassled and beaten up over this.
7 Likes
I really hope these cops are held accountable for their abhorrent actions sooner than later, but i can only assume these aren’t the only ones in their department that would do this sort of thing.
4 Likes
That’s as safe of an assumption as any, especially when hassling black people is official policy and beating them up is part of the culture.
3 Likes
Ahh yes, I heard that people in the Christopher St. area along the Hudson were being bad. I was at Central Park and Riverside, people there were much better behaved than this.
The kicker is that the Upside Down would be an America where people were treated equally and where racism was the exception rather than the norm. Unfortunately, what happened in New York this weekend has been the United States since 1619.
3 Likes
Instead, as the video states, the officer was “placed on modified duty”. I suppose this means he gets to sit around the station getting high fives from all the other cops for his accomplishment, then goes out for buddy-provided beers after hours.
2 Likes
Just another reminder that ACAB.
1 Like
—
6 Likes
And another…
Every damned day.
3 Likes
What? Cops like that should be put on the firing line?
Seems pretty extreme, but I guess that that may be the only way to solve such a deeply entrenched problem.
Oh, fired… Yeah, I’m sure they won’t just buddy buddy their way into the next precinct over.
2 Likes
And another.
I post only a small fraction of these that I see, because at this point it’s becoming nothing but trauma porn. If you don’t already understand that the USA is (and always has been) a brutally white supremacist police state, nothing more that I can do is going to get that through to you.
This is not about Trump, this is not about Republicans, this is not about red states, this is not about bad apples. More police training will not solve this. Body cameras will not solve this. “Vote blue” will not solve this.
3 Likes
And the violent occupation of Black & Brown neighborhoods is politically mandated, rewarded at every level of police & political hierarchy.
It’s not that there are other people in the department who “would do this,” as if it’s up to individuals’ nature/nurture – our policing & incarceration structures entice people, even those less prone to aggression or violence, to enact violence on racialized bodies.
It’s telling that other cops rush in to help assault a passerby. They don’t appear to have been close enough to know what’s exactly going on, but they see a cop buddy beating up a citizen, they literally jump on. Like, they don’t have to figure out if what another cop is doing is “justified” and not a violent overreaction & overreach; a fellow officer runs up to kneel on a random human’s back because a cop is already hitting them while they’re facedown on the sidewalk.
To me, this is a clear parallel to the other ways that cops back up each other’s lies and egregious misconduct at various stages of the “criminal justice” process.
