NYPD is IRONICALLY Proving that Most of their Police Work is Completely Unnecessary (Convict Leasing/Prison Privatization) Many people are now looking at the “work stoppage” itself—which reportedly resulted in drastic reductions in arrests, citations, and even parking tickets—as rather positive evidence that a city with less arrests may be something to celebrate, not criticize. Ramos on December 20, New York-based journalist and radio host Allison Kilkenny took to Twitter and noted, “Arrests plummeted 66% but I just looked outside and nothing is on fire and the sun is still out and everything. Weird.” Fewer arrests for minor crimes logically means fewer people behind bars for minor crimes. Poorer would-be defendants benefit the most; three-quarters of those sitting in New York jails are only there because they can’t afford bail. The police shouldn’t be collecting backdoor taxes because politicians are too cowardly to raise them, and they shouldn’t be pre-emptively busting people in poor neighborhoods because voters don’t have the patience to figure out some other way to deal with our dying cities. Fewer New Yorkers will also be sent to Rikers Island, where endemic brutality against inmates has led to resignations, arrests, and an imminent federal civil-rights intervention over the past six months. A brush with the American criminal-justice system can be toxic for someone’s socioeconomic and physical health. The NYPD might benefit from fewer unnecessary arrests, too. Tensions between the mayor and the police unions originally intensified after a grand jury failed to indict a NYPD officer for the chokehold death of Eric Garner during an arrest earlier this year. Garner’s arrest wasn’t for murder or arson or bank robbery, but on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes—hardly the most serious of crimes. Maybe the NYPD’s new “absolutely necessary” standard for arrests would have produced a less tragic outcome for Garner then. Maybe it will for future Eric Garners too. Concluding his assessment, Taibbi describes what he thinks are the two issues that are central to what’s happening in New York City and their relevance to a much broader conversation about race, policing, and other public policy questions for the nation as a whole. He writes: One is an ongoing bitter argument about race and blame that won’t be resolved in this country anytime soon, if ever. Dig a millimeter under the surface of the Garner case, Ferguson, the Liu-Ramos murders, and you’ll find vicious race-soaked debates about who’s to blame for urban poverty, black crime, police violence, immigration, overloaded prisons and a dozen other nightmare issues. But the other thing is a highly specific debate over a very resolvable controversy not about police as people, but about how police are deployed. Most people, and police most of all, agree that the best use of police officers is police work. They shouldn’t be collecting backdoor taxes because politicians are too cowardly to raise them, and they shouldn’t be pre-emptively busting people in poor neighborhoods because voters don’t have the patience to figure out some other way to deal with our dying cities. However, what Taibbi ultimately laments is that because the work stoppage, in his opinion, represents a self-interested gesture by the NYPD it will likely have little, if any, long-term impact. Instead of shining a light on the broader issues he mentioned, Taibbi says, it will unfortunately be “just more fodder for our ongoing hate-a-thon” that plays out on cable news and elsewhere. Sardonically, Taibbi signed off, “Happy New Year, America.” Read more at thefreethoughtproject/nypd-ironically-proving-…/…
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 17:48:44 +0000
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