9 Frightening Things About America's Biggest Police Force

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/9-frightening-things-about-americas-biggest-police-force



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1. “I Have My Own Army”

Last fall, Mayor Bloomberg famously bragged, "I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world." So far he's refrained from imposing military rule on the city, at least in the white neighborhoods, but the department nevertheless boasts an impressive arsenal.


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2. Relentlessly Expanding Their Global Presence

Whether you’re overseas or across the river in Jersey, there’s no longer any need to watch "NYPD Blue" for a glimpse at the famed officers. You can simply walk outside. The force operates in 11 foreign cities, including London, Lyons, Hamburg, Tel Aviv and Toronto. This year they added Kfar Saba, Israel, to their list of conquests -- there, the NYPD has its own office complete with a department insignia and a banner inside which reads, “The New York Police Department. The Greatest Police Department in the World.”

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3. Spying on Muslims and Fabricating the Results

In a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative series the AP revealed a NYPD surveillance program that makes the FBI and CIA look like civil liberties crusaders. To recap: for years, the department has been monitoring mosques, restaurants where Muslims eat, Muslim student organizations, and combing through the electronic communications of Muslim students at more than 13 colleges. Their investigations revealed such insightful observations as the fact that adherents to Islam pray 5 times a day.


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4. Targeting Activists

“They said they’d make me a deal,” Diego Ibañez, a 23-year-old Sunset Park resident, tells AlterNet. The deal, barked at him while he was in handcuffs, was that he erase the footage he’d captured of the cops arresting two young African American boys in the subway or that he could join them in jail. The “Cop Watch” initiative, in which New Yorkers exercise their legal right to film the police, has grown in response to increased police brutality, but the NYPD has been targeting anybody who tries to hold them accountable.

[joeybee12]

1. KNR

[2on2u]

2. Seems to me that most activity that could be photographed by cell phones could also

be photographed by webcams and or surveillance cams that are liberally sprinkled throughout our great land. It would be sort of difficult for the police to determine who is linking to a webcam where they may be doing something less than admirable.... the footage could be saved and no one would be the wiser until it was published to Youtube or elsewhere. Seems like we need to use their own surveillance technology on them and see how they like it. You could call it, coppercam and Mitt might even approve, the phrase could be, "Coppercam cuz these tan lines don't run".

[DiverDave]

3. Only 9?

I bet its alot more.
fascists.

[avebury]

4. Just another reason why to never go

to New York City. I would rather do to London any day. Yes the Brits have cameras all over the place but, in all of the time that I have spent in London, I never felt like I was visiting a police state like what NYC is portrayed as.

[barbtries]

5. why would the police for a city

be all over the world?

[JoyBugaloo]

8. I was thinking this myself....

...and I live in NY - I've never heard that one before - it would make no sense and they would have absolutely zero jurisdiction outside of NYC...

I'm a bit leery about this "report"...

[xchrom]

9. from New York magazine

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_8286/

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There are now New York City police officers stationed in London working with New Scotland Yard; in Lyons at the headquarters of Interpol; and in Hamburg, Tel Aviv, and Toronto. There are also two cops on assignment at FBI headquarters in Washington, and New York detectives have traveled to Afghanistan, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, and the military's prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to conduct interrogations. Members of the department's command staff have also attended sessions at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

[Zalatix]

16. Consultants?

[HiPointDem]

13. ask them why.

[Earth_First]

6. We just started a CopWatch program here in Rochester, New York after a string of questionable ordeal

nt

[LiveNudePolitics]

7. You may be surprised

to learn that most New Yorkers are under the impression that we do not have enough police officers on the job.

[starroute]

11. It's quite possible that there aren't enough cops on the streets

Policing, walking a beat, standing on a corner and keeping an eye out for trouble -- the cops did all these things when I was growing up in New York City. When I was little, my mother told me that if I ever got lost and couldn't find her, I should go up to the nearest cop and he'd see I got home.

Now -- I would think not so much.

[sabrina 1]

17. That's because they are busy trashing the Constitutional Rights of protesters. You might

be surprised to learn that an overwhelming majority of NYers opposed the brutality of the NYPD towards OWS.

So I can imagine why people feel that they are not doing their job. They are busy apparently travelling the world, bringing their special brand of corruption to other cities. Do the tax payers in NYC know that their civilian PD is traveling the world on their money rather than doing the job they were hired to do?

There is also the fact that they faked the Crime statistics to try to make themselves look good, but were exposed by a Whistle-blower in yet another corrupt endeavor. They kidnapped the Whistle-blower from his home and deposited him in a mental hospital.

But again, apparently not too bright as they have proven again and again, they were caught trying to silence the Whistle-blower and the tapes of their misdeeds proved him to be correct.

Supposedly they were then forced to admit that there needed to be an investigation into this blatant corruption, but so far, we are still waiting for the results of that investigation.

[Cherchez la Femme]

10. New York's Finest

From Hero's to world-wide thugs in just eleven years.

Must be a record. How proud they must be!

[HiPointDem]

12. kr

[bvar22]

14. I wonder how the NY taxpayers feel about funding....

...a police presence overseas when they don't have enough cops on the streets in New York.

[Zalatix]

15. Destroy their funding. These cops won't bully people for free.

Let's see the FBI throw me in prison for advocating THAT. LOL.