Another way of making Zandar’s point is to ask whether or not anyone would notice if the New York Police Department suddenly reduced its overall arrests by 66% and its issuance of traffic citations by 94%?
And, if not, would it be fair to say the following?
So your brilliant, devious plan is this: you’re going to show the people who believe that the NYPD is full of power-hungry bullies and paramilitary goons what for by displaying to the country exactly how most of the collars you make are in fact wholly unnecessary exercises of petty microagression towards the citizenry you hold in open and rancorous contempt.
Okay then. Go with that plan, guys.
The way I see it, if the police want to do somewhere between six and thirty-four percent of the work they normally do, then we ought to look very closely to see if it makes any discernible difference or not.
And, if it doesn’t, that’s a great argument for drastically reducing the man-hours of the whole department.
I assume they need to issue traffic citations to raise revenue, but it’ll be interesting to see if there are more traffic accidents or complaints about double-parked cars. Will the street cleaners walk off of the job because no one moves their cars on cleaning day?
The cops serve a vital purpose, but that doesn’t mean that most of what they do isn’t just obnoxious busywork that mainly serves to separate poor people from their money.
Let’s test it out.
Reduce arrests by a third and basically stop giving a shit what people do in and with their cars.
We’ll come back in six months and see how it went.
So its “time for some traffic problems” on the east side of the GWB then? Another “please proceed” moment.
Gee, revenues are down. Sorry guys, there will have to be some givebacks in that new contract!
They actually use patrol officers to issue parking tickets in NYC? If so, that’s an INSANE misallocation of resources, if not, then the NYPD hissy-fit isn’t going to amount to much.
Appears to be one of the ways the NYPD has been feathering its own nest. As very few parking citations are judgment calls, there is no reason why they should have declined at all other than LEOs getting paid for not doing their jobs.
Well, people could have been more careful or just used their cars less. It’s insane to own a car in NYC. Even if you drive to Long Island, say once a month, it’s cheaper to rent one for a day.
People “more careful?” “People driving less?” (although not clear on how that would reduce parking citations). It’s probably “insane to own a car” in most cities, but any look at the traffic jams in cities around the world reveals that the love of cars is high and sanity low.
More careful regarding disregarding posted signs.
Driving less because that means parking less (business or shopping parking).
I have driven in Chicago, Washington DC, New York, Boston, Orlando, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Cincinnati, Detroit, Columbus, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix and probably more if I try to recall.
New York is a whole different order of magnitude.
You write:
it won’t last 6 months.
It never does.
So-called “government shutdowns” or equally so-called “police strikes.”
Two weeks max before the news stories begin to remark on how little difference it makes to the general life of the country and back on the job go the strikers. Cain’t afford to lose their hustle, be it cops or lawmakers.
So it goes.
That old ’60s lick?
Like dat.
What if they closed a government (or a police force) and nothing happened?
What if?
More unemployed is all.
What if?
Another parasite class on the ropes.
So it doesn’t go.
Yup.
Watch.
Later…
AG
Like I said:
I repeat from he above:
Why?
Duh.
I repat from my original post:
Duh twice.
Add the entire justice system to that group. The number of jobs…relatively well paying jobs for relatively uneducated people, mostly…and amount of money that the U.S. police/court/prison system generates is a huge part of the economy.
As the Schwarzenator said:
Bet on it.
AG
Maybe a time out would do them some good. Go sit in the corner and chill out, dial back the aggression a couple notches and see if maybe they stop feeling so persecuted.
…and maybe let all those steroids you’ve been pumping yourself up with drain out of your bodies.
I fail to see any negatives here. Let’s test it out with the CIA and NSA, as well.
There is no agency that plays the budget game better than the CIA. Every time they screw up Congress votes them more money.
I think everyone who thinks a moment about this has the same reaction. This is what we want from the police in a free society… a very light touch. It’s not like they generally prevent major crime with all this nonsense. Are accidents and injuries prevented with by parking tickets and traffic stops? I keep thinking about that guy in SC who was shot by a cop while reaching into his car to get his wallet. He was stopped, allegedly, for not wearing his seat belt.
Can’t wait to see all the public intoxication during New Year’s Eve at Times Square tonight.
Cops are out of control.
http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/274312/speedreads-prankster-films-ellen-dance-dare-behind-nypd-c
ops-gets-literal-pushback
Some silly “prankster” gets all kinds of reactions when he “dances” behind normal people. The cops, on the other hand, throw him to the ground and cuss him out. What a country!
Under the circumstances that seems to be exactly the wrong action to strengthen one’s bargaining position. Unless one is trying to eliminate the stupid arrest quotas that drive cops to do stupid things; eating donuts and drinking coffee would be preferable to killing people for trivial offenses.
Occupy Sandy creasted self-organized community solutions to relief after Hurricane Sandy and showed up the failure that “professional” emergency relief of organizations like the American Red Cross and the state and local emergency management agencies had become.
There are wide open opportunities for communities that can self-organize (1) policing of the “broken windows” issues the old-fashioned way through the expectations of adults; (2) community-based mental health services with practices to deal with out-of-control persons without police and weapons; (3) community-based services to intervene and resolve domestic disputes and deal with domestic violence without having to call the cops; (4) community-based addiction treatment programs; (5) community after-school programs. All of these prevent people in the community from having to call 911 in the first place and reduce the community’s profile as a big-data geographical hot spot in the police department’s profiling. Which means fewer police encounters with the community and fewer opportunities for disaster.
If the NYPD officer want to catalyze this sort of self-organized community crime prevention that would be of great benefit to the citizens of New York, I think that the citizens should get to work and respond. And maybe there isn’t the need for so many police in New York after all. Maybe the City’s needs can be satisfied with resident cops (yes, I know the problems with that) and let the non-residents get employment in their suburbs. That could streamline the NYPD and reduce the load on taxpayers.
Even the Atlantic is noticing:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/the-benefits-of-fewer-nypd-arrests/384126/
Or just fire the lot of them. Has anyone in the NYPD lost their job yet? I sympathize with de Blasio, but I’m going to lose a lot of respect for him if some heads don’t roll.
No heads will be rolling. The police are more powerful than the mayor. They represent the .01% here, but de Blasio was elected by the rest of us in a surprise move. The .01% has turned much of this city into a gigantic upscale strip mall surrounded by high-priced living quarters for the people who work as managers in that strip mall and in the financial/tech/academic/media organizations that headquarter in NYC. They don’t want no people selling loosies or looking…odd….’round here. Bad for tourism, thus bad for business. I predicted a one term mayoralty when de Blasio won. He’s already a lame duck. Watch.
AG
Well, this is ultimately what mayors are for. I’m not saying he’d succeed, but in this crisis de Blasio does have an opportunity. Now that the cops are in open insurrection, he would be entirely within his rights–and really even his responsibilities–to take some pretty drastic steps.
I don’t know much about him, so I don’t know what to expect. But if it was my I would get the names of all the back turners and start the paperwork to put every one of them on unpaid administrative leave pending a review of their situation. And I would reach out to other community organizations around the city that could help keep order at least as well as the stormtroopers. And I would fire the ringleaders without further ado, and let all the back turners know that their future employment depends on a major attitude adjustment.
And so forth. I don’t know what de Blasio can get away with, but he’d better try. That’s the only thing worth trying to predict at the moment.
Not gonna happen. Every city union would back the cops and it could easily cause a total stoppage of the entire city. He can’t risk that because he wouldn’t be able to back up a play like this w/out bringing in the National Guard if it were to go left. Cuomo won’t back him and if push came to shove neither would Obama. He’ll backpedal and apologize just as does every other outgunned pol. he’s a little 4 year bump in the road for the .01%, just as was David Dinkins 20 years ago. The last NYC mayor who tried to confront a powerful city services usion…the Transit Union…was John Lindsay. In 1966…his first day in office…he went after the union because they went on strike. They kicked his ass and in doing so ruined any hopes he had for higher office. (He was being touted as a Republican presidential possibility at the time.)
AG
Perhaps someone needs to remind the NYPD that they don’t operate in a bubble. Their actions are garnering attention and their lack of consequential thinking may just relight the spotlight on pd’s across the country on how (excessive) ticketing fills the working coffers. Towns like Ferguson were already revealed to be abusing ticketing. Be careful what your narcissism brings home NYPD.
I thought that Jello Biafra had wanted to put cops in clown suits, but it was actually businessmen that he wanted to put in clown suits. But he does have an interesting idea about cops being elected:
Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t adapt the clown suit idea for the NYPD. Although clown suits probably aren’t quite the right thing for this case. If it was up to me I think I’d make all the back turners wear huge diapers over their uniforms.
Election hasn’t affected sheriffs. The popular sheriffs are some of the worst law enforcement officers in the country.
True. And the main thing really is to have the police more integrated into the communities, which doesn’t necessarily depend on electing them, or even requiring them to live in the community. For me the main thing is that community policing should be unarmed and on foot.
Well, there is also the issue with the cops being a little too well connected to some parts of the community as well. Who watches the watchmen is a real problem from a number of standpoints.
The last reform movement though professionalism and training would do it. The current state of police forces says that only improves their vocabulary and ability to do PR.
Remember the tremendous reservoir of goodwill almost all Americans in and out of NYC held for the NYFD and NYPD?
That reservoir is quickly being drained by the PD, with extreme prejudice.
After four months, the wingers are ramping up their offense.
digby, Hullabaloo: It looks as though the big, bad gummint has some friends
Bob Owens of Bearing Arms lets loose.
Owens is trying to provide enough HATE to keep GOP base voters (aka racists) away from the dangerous act of thinking. Hard to imagine he draws the tent entrance wider with that Mount Everest-sized bullshit.
Love his “there are too many newsrooms with Che and Mao pictures on the walls” bit. A Peak Wingnut moment there.
It’s quite a screed. I was curious to see if he provides any evidence for this lunacy, and I found precisely one shred:
That may or may not be true (probably not), but it would be understandable. At any rate it’s a poor substitute for examples of de Blasio overtly supporting communists who are targeting police officers for assassination. But since there aren’t any of those, I guess he has to make due with what he’s got.