NYPD Officers Defy Orders To End Marijuana Arrests

April 6, 2012

Disinformation.Org

By Disinformation

“Even though NYC decriminalized pot in 1977, that hasn’t stopped the cops.” –KTRN

Police officers in New York are “manufacturing” criminal offenses by forcing people with small amounts of marijuana to reveal their drugs, according to a survey by public defenders.

Under New York law, possession of 25g or less of marijuana [merely] brings a $100 fine. Only when the drugs are in public view are the police permitted to make an arrest for drug possession. One in three respondents said police had forced them to take the marijuana out of pockets or from under clothes and produce it into public view.

In September last year, Kelly issued an order to officers not to arrest people caught with small amounts of marijuana. But the number of those arrested increased after the order was made. In all, about 50,000 people were arrested in 2011 for marijuana possession.

Click here for the report.

NYPD Officer Thrown In Psych Ward By Superiors After Revealing Systemic Corruption

March 13, 2012

Activist Post

By Madison Ruppert

“Here is just one more example of the blatant police corruption in the United States. When and how are we going to get police offers under control?” –KTRN

Adrian Schoolcraft of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) 81st precinct in Brooklyn noticed some disturbing trends within the department and in response to his brave move to step forward, his superiors had him thrown in a psychiatric ward.

Schoolcraft realized that there was a pattern of the victims of crimes being caught up in bureaucratic hurdles which he thinks were deliberately put in place in order to make it harder to report serious crimes.

He then did his job and reported multiple incidents to investigators in 2009.

According to the Village Voice, in October of 2009 Schoolcraft met with NYPD investigators for some three hours, during which he detailed over 12 cases of manipulation of crime reports in his district.

Three weeks after this meeting, which was supposed to have been kept secret from his supervisors for obvious reasons, he was targeted.

Schoolcraft’s precinct commander and a deputy chief both ordered him to be forcibly removed from his apartment and locked up in the psychiatric ward of Jamaica Hospital for six days.

This is not the first time Schoolcraft has stood up to corrupt practices at the NYPD.

Click here for the full report.

TSA Discovery Prompts New York Bomb Scare – Six Hours Later

February 2, 2012

CNN

By Mike M. Ahlers

“Way to go TSA. You are doing great work.” –KTRN

A New York airport screener who removed two pipes from a traveler’s bag and set them aside Monday morning prompted a security scare six hours later when the next shift saw the pipes and feared they might be pipe bombs, local and federal officials said.

The incident at New York’s LaGuardia Airport began at 11:30 a.m. when a screener discovered unidentifiable items inside a passenger’s carry-on bag. The officer screened the item for explosives, determined them not to be a threat and cleared the passenger through the checkpoint, a Transportation Security Administration official said.

But the officer prevented the metal item from going through because of its “material and appearance,” a TSA official said.

When the next shift arrived, one officer saw the items and mistakenly believed they were test objects, used to check screener proficiency. When that officer later learned they were not test items, the officer alerted others, and the TSA contacted the Port Authority Police Department, responsible for protecting the airport.

“No one could give a good account of what it was, so we did the safe thing and called (the) NYPD bomb squad,” Port Authority Police Department spokesman Al Della Fave told CNN.

Click here for the full report.

NYPD Could Be Experimenting With Using Drones Over NYC

January 27, 2012

CBS New York

They’re used in war zones for surveillance and military strikes.

But are there plans to deploy drones in the Big Apple to keep an eye on New Yorkers?

More and more people believe it’s inevitable, reports CBS 2’s Don Dahler.

Drones are unmanned aircraft that can fly at low altitudes and shoot live video — or shoot live missiles.

Surveillance cameras already dot the city’s streets, but is the NYPD exploring the use of even more eyes in the skies, in the form of drones? Some evidence points to yes.

A website named Gay City News posted an e-mail it says it acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. It’s purportedly from a detective in the NYPD counterterrorism division, asking the Federal Aviation Administration about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles as a law enforcement tool.

And the following is part of a recent interview with Commission Ray Kelly that raised more questions than it answered.

“In an extreme situation, you would have some means to take down a plane,” Kelly told “60 Minutes.”

Drones are already being used by law enforcement in other cities. CBS 2 has obtained footage of a huge protest in Poland a few months ago, shot by a small drone that could fly a few dozen feet right over the heads of the crowd and the police. High-resolution cameras can capture every detail, including faces and license plate numbers. In this country, Miami and several cities in Texas are experimenting with such aircraft.

Click here for the full report from CBS New York.

NYPD Raids Studio Used By OWS Live-Streamers

January 6, 2012

RT

By RT

The New York City headquarters of a group cooperating with the Occupy Wall Street movement was swarmed by the NYPD on Tuesday in a raid that left half a dozen people involved with the Globalrevolution.tv website in police custody.

Cops entered the Bushwick studio used by Global Revolution on Tuesday after posting a notice on the door of the space occupied by the group the night before. According to authorities, the space at 13 Thames St in the Brooklyn, NY neighborhood hosted conditions “imminently perilous to life” and had to be vacated by all occupants, although failed to provide any details on what factors had led to such a case. When cops returned the next day and found a handful of people on the premises, they were arrested.

The space used by Global Revolution was the only one that was targeted by the police.

Global Revolution, a website that aggregates live, streaming content pertaining to the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement, was using the space as a production studio to manage the video output fed to the website.

Nigel Parry, an organizer with Global Revolution, tells The Atlantic Wire that the group had only recently moved into the space for production purposes. While details are scarce regarding the actual inhabitants of the space, Vlad Teichberg, one of the key figures involved with Global Revolution, was living at the site when he was arrested Tuesday. According to Parry, Teichberg had been a resident of the space on Thames St. for at least a year.

Click here for the full report.

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly Laughs at #OWS Police Brutality Accountability (Video)

December 20, 2011

We Are Change

By We Are Change

“The cops are out of control. They are part of this country’s problem. Not all of them – but many are seriously corrupt and full of egos and attitudes.” –KTRN

We Are Change randomly meets up NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly on the streets on NYC and asks him about the numerous incidents of police brutality during Occupy Wall Street. Recorded 12.16.11.

Click here for the original article from We Are Change.

NYPD Tapes 4: The WhistleBlower, Adrian Schoolcraft

December 5, 2011

The Village Voice

By Graham Rayman

“Wouldn’t it be nice is police officers actually did their job of serving and protecting?” –KTRN

Last Halloween, three weeks after he made allegations of misconduct in Brooklyn’s 81st Precinct, Adrian Schoolcraft’s career in the New York City Police Department ended in rather spectacular fashion.

On October 7, Schoolcraft had sat for three hours with an inspector, a lieutenant, and three sergeants with the Quality Assistance Division—the NYPD unit that monitors the accuracy of police reports—as they questioned him about his allegations that precinct bosses had refused to take criminal complaints and had downgraded crimes. They told him they would launch a substantial investigation.

After the meeting, Schoolcraft went about his normal work as a member of the 81st Precinct. Then, on the afternoon of October 31, he felt sick and went home about an hour early. Precinct supervisors appeared at his door hours later, claiming he had violated policy and demanding that he return to work.

One of his visitors was a deputy chief, who upbraided him while sitting on the edge of his bed. On orders from that deputy chief, Schoolcraft was then thrown to the floor, handcuffed, dragged from his Queens apartment, and taken against his will to a psychiatric ward at Jamaica Hospital. His forced hospitalization lasted six days. Police officers also removed papers from his home that documented his concerns about NYPD operations. Jamaica Hospital officials charged him $7,000 for his stay—and another $86 to obtain his own medical records.

Click here for the full report.

Mayor Bloomberg: ‘NYPD Is My Army’

December 1, 2011

Prison Planet

By Hunter Walker

“Wouldn’t it be nice if cops were respected – if they did their jobs fighting crime instead of handing out speeding tickets?  The NYPD is the problem – not the solution.” –KTRN

In a speech at MIT last night to discuss the packed sweepstakes to build a tech campus in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg said he prefers City Hall to the White House. Almost immediately after Mayor Bloomberg dampened recent speculation he’s eyeing a White House bid, he added fuel to the fire by explaining why a mayor would be the best person for the job.

Mayor Bloomberg’s recent criticism of President Obama for allowing the debt reduction Supercommittee to fail led many political tea leaf watchers to believe he’s eyeing a potential White House bid. To the dismay of those who hope he’ll mount presidential campaign, Mayor Bloomberg began his speech last night by discussing why City Hall is just fine by him.

Click here for the full report.

The Shocking Truth About The Crackdown On Occupy

November 29, 2011

The Guardian

By Naomi Wolf

“The cops love protests.  It gives them the opportunity to finally use pepper spray on innocent citizens.  Let us not forget what happened at Kent State.  Don’t think it can’t happen again because it can.”  -KTRN

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that “New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers” covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that “It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk.”

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on “how to suppress” Occupy protests.

Click here for the full report.

Journalists Arrested, Roughed Up As Police Clear Zuccotti Park Of OWS Protesters

November 16, 2011

Poynter

by Ben Doernberg

“Talk about living in a police state.  These kinds of actions from the cops are only going to make the protesters more upset.  The police are not helping the situation.  They are making it worse – like always.”  –KTRN

Journalists said they were shut out and roughed up as the New York Police Department cleared Zuccotti Park of Occupy Wall Street protesters in the early morning hours Tuesday. “I’m w/ a NY Post reporter who says he was roughed up by riot police as Zuccotti was cleared,” tweeted Brian Stelter of The New York Times. “He thinks violence was ‘completely deliberate.’ “ Julie Walker, a freelancer for NPR, and Jared Malsin were reportedly arrested. Josh Harkinson, a staff writer for Mother Jones, made it into the park and observed the police arresting protesters (which he described in tweets later), but said he was hauled out when he told a police officer he was working for Mother Jones. ”I decided it would be better to stay out of jail and keep reporting on what’s going on tonight, so I let him haul me out, arguing with him,” he tweeted. Josh Stearns, associate program director at Free Press, is updating his ongoing Storify of journalist arrests at Occupy protests. || Update: Several more journalists arrested when protesters returned Tuesday morning (Guardian) | Society of Professional Journalists says charges against journalists should be dropped (SPJ) || Earlier: Three-time Wisconsin ‘Photographer of the Year’ arrested during Occupy rally || Related: Occupy Oakland and news media coexist uneasily (The Bay Citizen)

Click here for the report.

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