Broken Windows, Broken Hearts

The NYPD famously used the “broken windows” theory of crime control to crack down on ‘quality of life’ crimes in the early 90s, as the inroad for ‘cleaning up our city’ and paving the way for expanded elite control of New York City via rising rents, Business Improvement Districts and open hostility with undesireable elements of street life like vendors or the homeless.

The Wonkster reported on an interesting study on the theory that showed ‘quality of life’ crimes encouraging other quality of life crimes, but very rarely more serious crimes.  The report demonstrates that the political popularity of the theory neccesarily derives from its protection of property owners who contribute significant sums to political campaigns and organizations like BIDs, rather than its relevancy as a serious crime-fighting technique.  Additionally, the Wonkster points out that just because broken windows lead to more broken windows, this does not support the conclusion that police need to ‘crack down’ on property crime – less incarceration reliant responses might be more sensible and cost less in terms of people’s lives.  Waging war on the folks that live on the street should not be the cost of a clean city.

Bikes Breaking the Rules

from operators are standing by's flickr

I fully support it.  Look, we have a whole transportation infastructure built up around the idea of moving people in cars, as fast as possible, in as large of numbers as possible.  And if people riding bike break those rules, so be it.  Streetsblog got it right when they said that cyclists need more safety protections – protections at the core of transportation infastructure, not just in helmet laws.  Helmets are important (I wear one), but they only protect you against minor, single person crashes, and not the catastrophic collisions that occur between cyclists and cars.

Considering the state of the world environmentally, every single policy decision – be it in infastructure, or law enforcement – needs to be directed at the cause of averting total climate crisis.  Cars, and the organization of transprotation in the city, crate a much more fundamental threat to wellbeing than rule-breaking cyclists ever could.

Calling Bullshit on the Obama NYPD Arrests

at Union Square. This was really fun. from RubyVroom's flickr

Perhaps the most heartening local item regarding the Obama win was the pretty decent sized street protests that arose after the win. Obama’s victory speech kicked off a night of celebration, and in New York, that means a night of dealing with the NYPD. A bunch of folks got arrested in Williamsburg, St. Marks and (I suspect) uptown.

At Union Square folks were climbing statues and lightpoles waving flags and cheering, bullhorns were broken out, but nothing wildly violent or interesting happened to justify the fairly substantial police presence hanging around.

Still, the cops came – and it wasn’t just in the name of ‘law and order.’ A friend got arrested at St. Marks around three a.m. after an officer snatched a flag-bandanna he was wearing off his face, and he chose to walk away from what amounted to an illegal stop (legal stops require reasonable suspicion, which there was none). As he left, an officer tackled him from behind, cuffed him, and stuffed him in the car.

For all that’s uncool, it gets better. He was booked at the station by an officer proudly wearing a McCain-Palin T-Shirt, and later standing in line to see the judge to receive his charges, an officer leadig him and several other folks around told everyone that “Next time you should just vote for McCain.”

I’ve already written about the police stuff I saw right after the election, but this took things to another level – and it’s why we need to keep calling bullshit on the NYPD when stuff like this happens.

Cameras, Police – How Much is Enough?

What is this world coming to.

I’m not normally an AMNY-er, but the front page today caught my attention: two reporters counted surveillance cameras on the south side of Union Square and found 170 cameras on one block, and used that as a prop to discuss the proliferation of cameras in the city, primarily Manhattan.

I wonder where it stops – how many cameras is enough? Getting to JFK for my flight last week, I counted 15 (visible) cameras in the Air Train station alone. NYU’s Kimmel Center is slathered in them.

The invisible surveillance creeps me out the most. I was sitting with a friend in Riverside Park one night earlier this summer and saw a Parks SUV drive right up to a couple drinking some beers and issued an open-container summons. Clearly, the Parks Police had no means to spot their containers from the other end of the park by mere eyesight, and used some sort of camera to find them. I looked around: I couldn’t see any cameras on poles, in trees, etc. I got up and looked a bit more. Still nothing. Then, the friend got up and just asked the police: where are the cameras? Of course, they laughingly refused to answer, but the incident set me to mild paranoia about who is watching where – clearly there are surveillance tools you can’t just casually count on the street like AMNY did.

Similarly, when do we have enough police? One thing I noticed about being in Austin was the lack of a visible police presence. Whenever I go anywhere in New York, I see the NYPD. The APD keeps a lower profile, even at big events – on 6th Street on Saturday (what amounts to an open air street festival), I saw maybe 4 cops, whereas at a similar event in New York, I might see 20. New York has 37,000 Police Officers. That’s a shit ton (and I don’t know if that count includes Corrections or Parks officers). When do we stop? 50,000? 60,000? That’s a terrible drain on resources, for what may be a lost cause in the first place.

My real point is this: what is the real goal of such heavy policing? Do we really want to live in a world where all of our activities are under review by employees of the state (who, ultimately, are just people with flaws and human problems like everyone else)? I think a tightly policed social space necessarily undermines democracy because it creates a one-way ratchet towards fascism: once repressive laws are passed, organizing (in a real sense, not just in a ‘write your congressperson’ bullshit sense) to stop those laws becomes more difficult if not impossible, and we have to rely on the benevolent will of our elected officials to check the Po’.

And don’t give me that ‘If you don’t commit a crime you have nothing to fear’ bullshit. You don’t decide whether you commit a crime, the police, a judge and lawmakers do. If ever you were to disagree with a cop in a court of law, you would lose the argument, simply by their badge and uniform. Also, there are plenty of things that probably shouldn’t be illegal that are – and I think we should preserve some space for active civil disobedience outside the law, as a check on immoral law making and enforcement, lest we be stuck with contesting terrifying bullshit via the arcane, corrupt and biased legal system.

Where does it stop? It should be up to you – not Ray Kelly, not Congress, not the Dept. of Homeland Security – to decide.

One Month Blog Wrap.

Meta Meta Meta

So, when I began this blog on June 29th or so, I set out with the goal to get 5,000 hits in the first month. Now, on July 30th, I managed around 4,700 or so. Not bad? Here’s to much more in the future. I have some lessons learned on how to run a good blog – one that not only accumulates hits, but hopefully shapes political agendas and creates news. I don’t think I’ve necessarily achieved all these goals, but I’m getting some ideas about how to make it happen.

-Always write original content. Seriously. I’m continually struck by the amount of utter bullshit on the internet; a blog that just posts links and comments doesn’t really help anyone; you should write because you believe you have something unique to contribute to ongoing discussions/stories, not just because you happened to figure out how Blogger worked. If you want to post links, get a Digg account.

-That being said, write about what you know – “personal is always better”. My most popular posts thus far are about Yupres and NYU Buses – two posts I was personally invested, as a student activist and a student intern. I think this shows up in the posts: personal blogging not only brings out passion and lucidity, but also means you’re writing about something you (hopefully) have unique ‘expertise’ in. Seriously – I got link-backs to the Yupre post that just referred to the job listings I pulled out of my email; sometimes just knowing the right place to look for content can give a post legs.

- Follow a news cycle – This is a modification of the ‘don’t just link’ idea above. Know what other people (bloggers) are reading, and work your posts around that. This comes from basic reporting knowhow: better stories have an ‘angle’ that tweaks another story, meaning you don’t duplicate the work of another reporter and hopefully drive more readers to your paper. Same with blogging: try to take account of what is ‘rising’ (in Digg terms), and then write in reference to that story, with your own perspective.

- Titillate – for me this means writing about NYU, the NYPD and Yuppies (key tags from the top 3 posts, as it stands today). Really, you don’t have to apologize for what you write – a hit is a hit, and as long as your message gets out, the how doesn’t matter that much. People will link to you if they like you, but also if they hate you (though more frequently if they like you – BoingBoing, one of the most successful blogs on this here internets has notoriously cool authors).

- ummm… focus. this post has taken me an hour or more to write. shit.

- Send trackbacks, but most importantly email. if you think you’ve written something good, and want other people to read it, just send a damn email to blogs you like (or read to get inspired to write), and give them a link. (Be nice about this) Each of my biggest posts blew up when I sent an email to people I like to read, and told them about a post I wrote. Don’t overload someone’s inbox; make it look like you care about what goes on their blog – which you should, if you read them – and show that you aren’t just dumping links on people by taking care with the links you send, and to whom.

- Always put up images. These show up in page previews (that damn Snap thing at least), Facebook when you post a link, Digg when you post a new submission, etc etc. Original images in particular make a post stand out, and should embody the fact that you have something unique to contribute to the internet. (since this is a meta-post, I took a picture of me writing… this post)

That’s all I got. Big day, tired brain.

TimeOut NY Wants You to Change New York – But Not Too Much

image from TimeOut New York's latest issue.

TimeOut New York took an admirable jab at getting New Yorkers into some activism with their latest issue – decked out in red tinted activist-y decoupage, of course – but misses (more than) a few points. Summary:

GOOD: Critical Mass! An actual endorsement for almost direct action!
BAD: No other mention of direct action. A friend of mine might describe much of their suggestions as ‘Liberal Bullshit.’ There was way too much discussion of calling legislators and asking nicely. Concerned about housing prices? Squat! Food going to waste? Dumpster it! (The ‘food is wasted’ section really needed to talk about Food Not Bombs) Take to the streets, but realize that moral persuasion only goes so far in getting the change you want – at some point you have to pose a risk to the interests and goals of the people you wish to persuade, and phonecalls just won’t do the trick.

GOOD: Acknowledgment of the housing crisis! A two part-er – New York homelessness continues to a be a problem, as does gentrification, which creates vulnerability to homelessness.
BAD: Umm, connecting the dots anyone? Homelessness and lack of affordable housing are the same issue, and parsing out ‘homelessness’ as a problem turns homelessness into a pathology rather than the result of systemic violence. Homelessness happens because of the cost of housing, not a lack of ‘job skills’ or ‘training.’ Too many people conflate homelessness with unemployment, but someone can go homeless while employed because of rent increases, spouses leaving – any number of sudden reasons.
Another problem: what the fuck is ‘overdevelopment‘? And what does it mean to ‘kill a neighborhood’? TimeOut devotes a whole section to this, and all it talked about was preserving buildings and shit. I don’t think you can talk about ‘killing a neighborhood’ unless you talk about what that means materially for the people that live there. This is not a legitimate issue until you connect it to the actual struggle of people to make do in capitalism, instead of merely protecting the interests of the already-established.

GOOD: Acknowledging environmental catastrophe!
BAD: Pretending it’s consumer’s fault! TimeOut gives some useful tips on cleaning up riverfront trash, reducing air emissions, etc. – but doesn’t ask who produced that trash, the cars creating air pollution, and totally ignores ConEd when talking about ‘deadly air.’ Also, dirty air doesn’t just happen everywhere – New York has a history of locating environmental contaminants in and around poor neighborhoods. Why is the Cross-Bronx Expressway not the Cross SoHo Expressway? Where are the power plants (and landfills) in New York? Seriously: coal/gas power plants hurt people, and ConEd placed its New York plants in places where people wouldn’t complain, or if residents did ignore, they could be ignored with limited political fallout.

GOOD: Talking about unions! Organize!
BAD: TimeOut doesn’t actually suggest anyone form or join one. Instead, they suggest wearing pro-union clothes and singing songs. Uhhh…

BAD: Misplaced priorities. The topics for the issue were selected by ‘reader poll,’ which means that the population of prisons and other marginalized groups probably didn’t have much say. That’s a serious oversight – NYPD has more than its share of issues, NYC Department of Corrections has similar or more problems. I also would have liked to see a discussion of the privatization/elimination of public space, and a discussion of AIDS, particularly in connection to the bit on homelessness. I don’t think TO NY had many homeless people asking about how to get into a home, they had housed people asking about how to get homeless folks out of their neighborhood.

Also, shoutout to Nina, now on the blogroll…

Policing Absurdities Part 3 – the Petty

Alright, I’m going to try and make this a quick post because I’m tired. More or less, I’m tired of the petty bullshit police pull. I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to take up someone over interpersonal slights or bending rules, but in the case of police, petty abuses add up to undermine public confidence in the police (which creates problems of its own); they also indicate more fundamental problems in the way police treat non-police.

Twice in one week, I’ve been in situations where police use sirens or the appearance of an emergency to run red lights or simply move traffic. In both cases, cops flipped on their lights or siren for a short period of time to blow through intersections and force drivers to the side, only to resume driving normally a short distance later. So, tonight: cop rolls up to red light at Houston and Ave B/Clinton, turns on lights to get through intersection before drivers enter, makes a left onto Suffolk (also running a red) where they turn off their lights and keep driving normally. Previously: Mulberry St., turning left onto Canal, traffic is stopped, cop immediately behind me flips on their siren, forcing me and the driver ahead to the left while they cruise through, turn left, turn off the siren and keep driving.

Am I petty to complain? yeah, but they’re even more petty for using the fear/institution of the police to suit their driving whims.

Alright, here’s the bigger politics part. The excuse for such behavior, and much other even worse behavior, is that cops are only human – they have needs, wants, frustrations, etc., and the stress of their job sometimes pushes them to cut corners. Similarly, cops deflect criticism of violent actions by claiming to merely do their jobs, they they have a family, kids, and a mortgage. At the same time, people with families, kids and bills to pay fill America’s jails – they receive very limited or no deference for circumstance or human frustration.

Regarding cops as human beings means creating the reasonable expectation that they reciprocate. And just as you’d never do a favor for a friend that lies and manipulates you, I don’t think people should do favors for (“just move back to the sidewalk, I agree with you on this one, I’m only trying to do my job”) or make excuses for cops that manipulate their power, commit acts of violence, or threaten to put you in jail. Until I can skip bail or void a sentence because of my personal commitments to a job, family member or ideal, I won’t tolerate a cop doing something wrong because of their personal commitments.

In the cases I described above, I have one caveat: even if I had talked to the particular officers about why I was frustrated with them, I would have no protection against retaliation by the officers. So, that’s another beef – real accountability that either provides a safe forum for bringing officers to the table to discuss abuses of power, or a way to check against officer retaliation (that isn’t the CCRB, which sucks.)

Policing Absurdities, Part 2

The car and officer who helped it

Lessons in New York policing: ride a pedicab, speak with an accent, and you get yourself arrested. Drive a Mercedes, and sounds like you’re ‘from here’, and the NYPD will help you with your parallel parking.

This is what I saw riding home yesterday:on my side of the street, a police officer having a nice chit-chatty conversation with a big, slightly less than middle aged guy who says he’s from New Jersey. Across the street, there’s another officer standing in the street, obviously looking for a particular car – after a minute, I hear her yell to the two folks near me: “I think I see her! Is that her car?” The two men next to me look down the road and smile, seeing whoever it is they’ve been waiting for.

It takes me a moment, but I realize at this point that the police officer standing across the street from me stood in the street to save a parking spot, not to get a vantage point. On a congested street already plagued by police parking problems, I daily see drivers struggle to find parking, I realized this was a fine gift on the part of the officers involved.

After a few moments I see the car pull up. A late model Mercedes, looked like a station wagon of some kind, very large and curvy as expensive cars tend to be. The officer opposite me steps out of the parking spot and then directs the driver into the spot, laughingly helping them back up without hitting the car behind. There’s a joking back and forth between the two about the difficulty of driving in New York, etc. etc. The two men next to me smile and greet the driver as she steps out – a buxom blonde, of course, with visibly white teeth and fake tan to match. They walk across the street to meet her and the folks riding in the car with her.

The officers lending a hand

Thus begins the unloading. The officer standing across the street from me helps with unloading, lending a hand to the various kids and such making their way out of the car. More jovial conversation. The officer previously standing next to me stands aside impatiently, waiting to move on from the scene. At this point, I figure little else real will happen, snap some quick pictures (taking photos next to cops still unnerves me), then go to sit on my steps.

A favor is never just a favor. While listening to the two men standing near me, in the voice of the civilian you could hear the jaunty confidence of someone who has never felt vulnerable near police, someone able to act with almost total certainty that they will never be the victim of police harassment or abuse. Watching what came afterwards made me realize the absurd disparities of class and race in our city. If this were a favor extended uniformly, or even without the simultaneous harassment of people of color driving cars, or what I saw in Central Park with the pedicabs I might feel a little warmed by the kind gesture. Without that guarantee of equality, the episode felt collusive and corrupt.

Photopost: Stupid Ads in New York

NYPD’s Recruiting Ad, on the 1 train

The above ad reads “MYNYPD is a 75% crime reduction in 15 years. That’s a job resume we can all be proud of.” Saw this on the subway heading out to Brooklyn last night. The NYPD attempt at new media relevance is sort of laughable, as if sticking a “MY-” in front of the name would suddenly convince people that the NYPD isn’t a vast, corrupt bureaucracy that regards its new recruits as something between shit and dirt. The ads plastered an entire side of the train – other images lauded new-recruit pay raises (to ’still not very good’ pay); the others were un-memorable “build your resume!” type appeals.

The crime reduction figure is misleading, and arrogant. Of course they don’t tell you about the increase in the prison population occurring in the same period, and the assertion that crime reduction resulted from NYPD policy alone seems misleading as well.

In Prospect Park

I passed this last night walking near Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and it could be the least appealing ad I’ve ever seen.

First, the image: the girl looks like she’s been force-fed barbecue for days, and is losing her will to live. Looking into her oversized face on the street was somewhere between shocking and terrifying, and does nothing to encourage anyone to consider buying ‘BBQ’ in the ‘Prospect Park you didn’t know.’

Second, the text: “Don’t just make BBQ… Buy BBQ‘ Good thing this ad is here for those hungry Park Slopers looking for their next meaty treat. Now, I thought ads like this were supposed to convince you buying shit was a good idea – this one seems to assume you already want to buy yer BBQ, but just can’t quite figure out how to. “I just love spending money, but if only I knew where to do it…”

I have no idea how anyone could have even thought this was a good idea even conceptually, but somehow it made it onto the streets of Brooklyn as a finished product.

Shoutout to Copyranter for fostering my appreciation for shitty New York advertising.