deBlasio Over Delivers To NYPD, Undercuts His Promise To Voters

http://gothamist.com/2015/06/23/de_blasio_cops_budget.php

In deBlasio's 2013 campaign there were implicit promises made regarding police reform and an implicit promise with Dante deBlasio being the face of the most effective campaign ad, that Bill deBlasio would be a mayor that understands and empathize with people of color. His recent turn around on policing and a double down on Commissioner Bratton's and PBA President Pat Lynch's desire to turn the city's open society (nearly anarchistic culture) into a police state with unchallengeable and criticism-free police officers.

In a democratic and free society, the individuals not only has a right to challenge authorities but an obligation to constructively criticize authority and those that implement the policies that were supposed to the will of the people in the first place. If the people demand that the local constables harrass and bully their youth, then constables should follow that course. On the other hand if the only the privileged want the unprivileged to be harassed indiscriminately the unprivileged have the right to redressed their concerns to their government through their elected representatives, which is the intrinsic campaign promise deBlasio ran and won with in 2013.

deBlasio may be campaigning nationally on a income inequality message, but this most recent reversal is undercutting whatever progressive cred he may have had as a candidate. I would also want to remind everyone that it was deBlasio and his campaign manager Emma Wolfe that strong armed robbed the WFP nomination on behest of Cuomo despite never intending to hold Cuomo to his promise to deliver the State Senate back into Democratic control; as Cuomo had already promised Senate Majority leader that he would retain the Senate chamber.

Complaints Regarding Ferguson Were Unmerited And It Is A Cesspool Of Racism? WTF

Ferguson And Benghazi's Troubling Parallels

Earlier this week, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen attempted equivocate the conservative delusional belief there was a scandal associated with the September 11th 2012 attack on American diplomatic post in Benghazi and the systemic often violent interaction between police officers and the communities of color they are sworn to protect. 22 other Diplomatic outposts throughout the Arabic speaking world were alerted to possible threats to security on September 11th's 12 year anniversary, and the disloyal opposition party chose to be opportunistic on a tragedy that had actually played itself out ten times under George W. Bush while he was in office. But to stipulate that the people of color and their allies who are outraged that police routinely overstep their duties of enforcing the law and become bullies with badges is not the same as an internationally held belief throughout the Arabic world that America is the "Great Satan" and routinely has American consulates under attack. The facts be damned is what is central to anyone that finds some especially scandalous about the handling of the September 11th 2012 attack on Benghazi, this I agree with Cohen, to also believe that the scandal of the American police nationwide frequently escalate situations into violence is not fact-based fully detached from reality. Below are a couple excerpts from Cohen's article that I find contradictory:

Did the Justice Department later find that Ferguson’s police force was a cesspool of racism, incompetence and corruption? Yes. 

...

A grand jury studied what happened and did not indict Wilson. Eric Holder’s Justice Department reached the same conclusion. Let me offer another conclusion: If Brown was not criminally shot because he was black, then possibly the cop was accused because he was white. Who was the stereotyped individual here?

The emphasis on Cohen's 'if'' was my own, as I believe that the St. Louis county prosecutor Robert McCulloch sought to exonerate Officer Darren Wilson with a landslide of extraneous evidence and witnesses that were not qualified nor vetted by Mr. McCulloch, and was characterized by Cohen's colleagues at the Washington Post as being an unusual approach in the Darren Wilson grand jury process. McCulloch also heavily relied upon Witness #40 who he later admitted "clearly wasn't present when this occurred", the only witness that  corroborated Officer Wilson's testimony based her entire testimony on media reports of what Darren Wilson claimed had occurred. Ferguson is the shorthand of the outrage left, while the Benghazi is the stand-in for those on the right? Except the rage targeted around Benghazi had the investigation carried out by exactly the people that wanted to claim some horrible calamity that would make President Obama (better yet Secretary of State Clinton) culpable, the Republican controlled House of Representatives concluded that all wished upon claims of malfeasance were unfounded. The targeted rage of the left that police routinely and criminally culpability treat unarmed people of color with a disproportionate level of force that goes unchecked because those responsible for prosecuting do not wish to punish law enforcement officers of any act of violence, resulting in McCulloch in St Louis and Donovan in Staten Island doing whatever was within their power to fail in getting an indictment from a grand jury. Grand juries not returning an indictment are rare, rarer still are those possibly being indicted testifying to the grand jury as if they are cooperating witnesses. If that sort of privilege was extended as matter a of common practice then we would never see anyone but those that confess to their crimes be indicted!

Cohen falls into the extremely lazy and prevalent practice of punditry and self-appointed intelligentsia claiming that both left and right are equally guilty in an attempt to be neutral. If sports reporters were ever to follow political "opinion makers" such as Washington Post columnists, we would never know who won football games or if basketball players beat the shot clock since we would have sports columnists interview both sides and declare that they both had a "great game" and that both sides "did the best they could" along with other pablum that fills locker room post game interviews. Neutrality isn't the goal and nor does it serve the reading audience and the general public; neutrality is not a synonym for objectivity. Objectivity is able to provide context to a narrative, neutrality is banal and is offensive in exactly how it tries not to challenge of offend the general public with new facts.  New facts, are going to be offensive to those that have gotten cozy with their demonstratively wrong old "facts", and it is up to those employed by the news media to offend the people want to desperately hold onto their moldy old-erroneous-perspective regardless to how the world has changed or even if the world had never been congruent with their worldview.

NYPD: Well If We Don't Get Unchallenged Authority, We'll Just Take Our Ball And Go Home!

"Sure, if police start refusing to arrest murderers and rapists, things will probably get really bad, especially since most of the residents in New York City have been disarmed. But this lawlessness would likely be a temporary reality. As we’ve seen with the economic collapse in Detroit and the subsequent lack of government policing, solutions like the Threat Management Center arise, which provide a more efficient and much more peaceful means of societal security.

As Reason Magazine’s Scott Shackford said, presumably, next year, after this all dies down, the NYPD may note a big drop of crime in December entirely because they stopped finding reasons to charge people with crimes.

Police unions could use the experience to decry all the petty, unnecessary reasons they’re ordered to cite and arrest people in the first place, but that’s not going to happen because they love the drug war and the money that comes into the departments from fighting it."
-Matt Agorist

The vast majority of murderers and rapists that get arrested tend to be known by the victim, for example murder is usually a crime between husband and wife, so the labor intensive (routinely harassing members of preordained identifiable "likely" misdemeanor criminals) part of the police's job might be proven to be thoroughly unnecessary in a work slow-down/stoppage of the NYPD. Pat Lynch and the PBA should be wary that if it lasts too long they will be seen as largely obsolete not in the NYPD's entirety but in it's current numbers of the tens of thousands, which is the worse thing for a labor leader (other than besides a mascot to the NY Post, which Pat Lynch is still a labor leader). If you can go by without doing your job, you are placing a huge bet that the job you were doing was so necessarily that removing yourself will grind some sort of core competency to a halt. This is the central concept to all labor strikes; GM can't roll out any Chevys if all the workers in their factory picket the factory (preventing scab workers from taking their place). If the NYPD attempts to do a work place action and no one in the city can tell, or worse acknowledge that the NYPD work stoppage is more desirable than actually working, the game is over for Pat Lynch and the NYPD's PBA. You can't threaten to withhold public services and then have your constituents prefer you withholding said services since that would have the constituents come to the self-evident truth: that we don't need a heavy handed police force.

The PBA, for their own benefit, should come to this conclusion before the largest American city comes to that conclusion because having a light touch constabulary is something like toothpaste for once it gets out no matter how hard you try you get it back in. If the work stoppage does last long enough for residents to take notice, the next step may be imbedded undercover police within street protests, agitating far outside the consensus of the committed non-violent activists. But I'm sure I am just spouting off things that makes deserving a tin foil hat:





Oh, right! There has already been police officers that escalated protests to violence.
 

Bratton Press Conference about NYPD killing an unarmed black person in Public Housing Projects of his girlfriend.

Broken Window Theory, How About Implementing Broken Mirror Theory?

Imagine if for every infraction of the law police committed they were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law

The "Broken Window Theory" is that small crimes being let to continue in a community without a response from law enforcement will eventual create moral hazard and an escalation to more significant crimes. So hundreds of thousands of law abiding citizens are routinely harassed (overwhelmingly represented by young men and boys of color) for the sake that they don't progress into a life of crime or their criminal activity ends with marijuana possession; it is counterproductive to destroy the potential future of huge swaths of the young men and boys of color for the sake of those that may only have the the only victim-less crime of smoking pot. If it was the best strategy for the community to cracked down hard on the slightest little crime, then wouldn't it beneficial to so for every police department? Shouldn't we expect that police never speed without getting a speeding ticket (their squad cars could equipped with GPS devices)? Every incident of improper arrest, search, or other on the job action could be a strike on their record, three strikes and they off the force without their pension. If we can only assume that citizens should always be within the law, shouldn't those that are entrusted to enforce the law also follow the law and the committed to remain within stated department policy? Shouldn't even the smallest infractions of policy be rooted out from every police department, shouldn't there zero tolerance for every police officer to remain true to purpose of the Broken Window Theory be held to the same standard?

It is expected throughout American society, that cops because their jobs are given a certain amount of leeway (more likely that they simply take it and rationalize it afterwards), but if the police are free to cut corners of the law for the sake of pragmatism or laziness then they abdicate any benefit of the doubt when their integrity is called into question. Police brutality as an issue has always been with us, but only has been brought to the light in recent years due plethora of cameras both surveillance and individuals' mobile devices has captured a larger portion of everyday life. For people of color police brutality and the assumption of guilt has been part of daily life. To have police operate under the presumption that the communities of color if they were leading lives wholly within the law, should have nothing to hide when they interact with law enforcement is logical farce and couched in systemic bigotry. No American citizen has any obligation to persuade the government, its agent, or any law enforcement officer that they are innocent of committing a crime, the onus is entirely on the government every step of the way to enter the lives or even cause the smallest disruption of life.

If police officers and police departments want to intrude on anyone's person or personal possessions, without the presumption of innocence either work to repeal the Fourth amendment or seek out a new live of work. Even if the fourth amendment was repealed (as unlikely as that is) the benefit of the doubt for the public employees doing the right thing on a day-to-day basis would need to be won back. Law enforcement officers who would want to maintain getting paid would have to above reproach, and be held to the highest possible standard; absolutely zero tolerance for breaking even most minor infraction and traffic violation on or off duty. If the hegemony would become transformed from the assumption that cops the country over are lax when they fudge the law to the belief out of consistent observed reality that they pay parking tickets, speeding tickets, and are assumed that if there is an accusation against them that there fellow officers will ferret out the truth and never reflexively defended regardless of the situation of their "boy in blue."

Some will read this as being far too critical of the local policeman, but that innate sympathy is misplaced, because currently in most American police forces there is no threshold where 'bad apples' are undeserving of rounding up the wagons to protect one of their own. Independent of the facts of individual situations, the 'bad apples' of law enforcement agencies are very rarely called to be held responsible for their questionable actions therefore either every cop has nothing but good intentions in their day-to-day policing or those that do have good intentions (and I'm referring to the vast majority of police) are throwing away their integrity for the sake of the bullies with badges. If even the supposed good cops can't proceed with their job while remaining well within the rules, then there is no hope for the citizens they attempting to police.

One police officer is one too many that needs to be educated about the law they are supposed to be enforcing. This cop is schooled about his legal obligation to have a marked car unless operating undercover, which he admitted he was not.

If you get caught with small amounts of marijuana better be in Brooklyn

Newly elected Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson has stated going forward prosecutions of low-level marijuana possession will cease due to giving more resources and higher priority of prosecuting other crimes. NYPD police commissioner Bill Bradley has stated that would not affect NYPD policy of arresting individuals with less than an ounce of marijuana in Brooklyn; basically the NYPD is fully aware that they will be wasting beat cops time and therefore tax-payer money to harass Brooklynites all for the cause of keeping up the appearances in the futile "War on Drugs."

For those that think this policy change is going to turn Brooklyn into The Wire's Hampsterdam, fret not, since leniency will only be granted to those without a criminal record and no violent charges that coincided with the arrest. What was the impetus for this policy change? Last year over two thirds of the marijuana possession arrests were dismissed by the judge (at least those that met the criteria DA Thompson has set as policy going forward). If a vast majority of those arrests weren't ever going to get convictions, why put forward the limited resources of the DA office to prosecute victim-less crimes? I believe we are going to be on the verge for some prosecutor seeking out jury nullification for low level marijuana possession charges akin to what actually occurred during the Prohibition Era. What will the ever increasing militarized police do when fewer and fewer of their arrests get prosecuted or when the prosecutor seeks out jury nullifications?

The question you may have is that if carrying 1-2 ounces of marijuana is the law, then why does the local prosecutor get the ability to not enforce the law? It is because since the late 1970's it is legal in New York State to carry up to 2 ounces of marijuana as long as it not openly carried. So the police seeking to meet their quotas or arrest goals (stop & frisk is intrinsically tied to these bunk arrests) beat cops routinely demand their suspicionless stop & frisk victims to turn out their pockets which if they are in possession of a joint to comply with the cop's demand they have to break the law, which is the reason that it is NYPD policy not to reach into the pockets since that would not incriminate the targeted individuals.

Aldous Huxley letter to George Orwell, comparing their two divergent dystopias

Wrightwood. California.
21 October, 1949

Dear Mr. Orwell,

It was very kind of you to tell your publishers to send me a copy of your book.

It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much reading and consulting of references; and since poor sight makes it necessary for me to ration my reading, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is.

May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ultimate revolution?

The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution — the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology — are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf.

The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it.

Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful.

My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.

I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.

Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers
and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government.

Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations.

Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism.

This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years.

But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World.

The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency.

Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.

Thank you once again for the book.

Yours sincerely,

Aldous Huxley