Is there a conspiracy in the NYPD?

[Admiral Loinpresser]

Major caveat: I am shooting from the hip. Snark invited.

Two of the most egregious examples I have seen of police conduct: 1) Early on, perhaps on Monday after the first weekend, a young man passively lay on top of a tarp protecting communications equipment from the rain. A policeman threw him from the tarp so that he landed on his face and then he was arrested. The numbers in Liberty Plaza were much smaller at that point. The policeman was in uniform, including a white shirt.

2) Saturday when there were a lot of people in the street a well-known video shows two young women talking to/shouting at police officers. They were clearly behind an orange barricade strip used to corral demonstrators. They do not appear to be threatening in any manner. A policeman walked up from the police side of the barricade and maced both women and then walked away. The policeman was in uniform, including a white shirt.

I have seen it asserted that the white shirt indicates superior rank (sergeant?, lieutenant?). This seems credible to me. The white shirted officers appeared older than the rank and file. There are many less of them. These are both likely indicia of superior rank.

Is this coincidental? Higher ranked officers committing worse acts than those of blue shirts? Or is there something behind that? How does one go about investigating that possibility?

The intent of higher ups could be to engage in a limited conspiracy. Order your blue shirts to be restrained and professional. Pervasive orders would likely get to the press eventually if you involved your lowest ranks. But the white shirts are career people and have a greater vested interest in complying while keeping mum. If the strategy is to use a measured amount of rough force to intimidate protesters and potentially prevent others from joining, but without the legal and PR issues involved with more extreme violence, then having a small, authoritative and loyal group implement the illegal strategy would seem to be the most effective route. Also people at higher rank would presumably be better able to withstand an internal investigation by say, Internal Affairs.

So that's it. I have no idea if there is any truth to any conspiracy. Perhaps there are simpler protocol reasons for the white shirts' action. Police engage in conspiracies every day. But whether this is such a case, I don't know. Perhaps the ACLU or the Lawyer's Guild should be aware of it when they are reviewing video. One would expect the pattern to jump out if it is more pervasive than two examples.

As I mentioned, snark is welcome. But any comments from those who have seen other incidents that cut for or against the premise (of white shirts playing a bad role) are perhaps more fruitful.

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. It is being said the rank of the whiteshirt to maced those women, is "supervisor".

To whom do "supervisors" report? From whom do they receive their orders?

[coalition_unwilling]

2. Out here in Los Angeles, it's often said that the LAPD is just another

'gang' (albeit one entrusted to act under color of authority) among the many gangs that operate here. Your post got me to thinking that perhaps the NYPD is the same and that, within its ranks, there are factions, one of which, when central command structures begin to fail, can go all rogue with very few consequences.

Flame suit donned. Cue the police defenders.

[SoDesuKa]

3. White Shirts Lack Experience in Politically Ambiguous Situations

Today's white shirts gained rank at a time when cops got more R-E-S-P-E-C-T than cops actually deserve. What we're seeing today is the police in a more politically ambiguous situation. The white shirts think everyone who's not with them is a bad guy.

The average blue shirt guy has recent hands-on experience dealing with the public. That's why they are behaving themselves better than the neurotic white shirts.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

4. Thanks.

Input from a New Yorker is helpful. Any idea where Supervisors fir in the hierarchy of rank?

[SoDesuKa]

8. Ordinary Citizens Rarely See White Shirt Cops

The only time ordinary citizens see white shirt cops is when something big is going down, like some all-out terror exercise. The large number of white shirts out on a Sunday(!) indicates to me that the all-high bosses were putting pressure on the lesser bosses to clamp down on the demonstrations before New York turns into Cairo, a fear the Mayor recently expressed.

Wrong move. Police misconduct attracts trouble-makers, the kind that NYPD stupidly figured they were up against this time out. They've mishandled the situation badly, and it will bite them in the ass big time. I'd like to see Raymond Kelly get fired, but I've had that opinion since Giuliani was Mayor. Kelly is the worst sort of pig cop there is - he's easily as bad as Darryl Gates, but he's also a sneak like J. Edgar Hoover.

If New York is going to turn into Cairo, police over-reaction will only speed it along. Police tend to have an overly binary view of the world, dividing it up between skells and non-skells. Anybody who challenges a cop's authority on any grounds whatsoever is automatically a skell. New York is a bigger town than Ray Kelly. He should walk the plank for getting many things wrong for many years.

[tama]

5. White shirts = lieutenant and upper

If the identification is correct, inspector Bologna the mace hero has a history of beat nark and Internal Affairs, currently top of a mass control unit.

IMO blue shirts deserve more flowers and friendly discussions about our common problems, certain white shirts if not all deserve all the publicity they can get.

[provis99]

6. here's why the white shirts act the way they do:

If you are a brutal, stupid thug, you get promoted in the NYPD to wear a lieutenant's bars and white shirt. Blue shirts haven't proven they are brutal and stupid enough yet to get promoted.

[Demeter]

7. I blame Bloomberg for Corrupting the Police

Using them as political enforcers.