zlacker

>>c420+(OP)
Yet another disturbing revelation about the NYPD brought to light by the STOP project. They're doing great work fighting an uphill battle -- they also tried (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) to keep Mayor Adams's NYPD from flying surveillance drones among the crowds, and even into private backyards, at J'Ouvert this weekend. (He got the idea from his recent trip to visit Netanyahu, who does all sorts of crazy stuff like that regularly.

>>coucha+06
Have you lived near where they celebrate J’Ouvert? I used to live in that part of Brooklyn for 10 years and the festival always incited crime and violence in our immediate area.

I’m not saying drones are the answer, but it is not by any means a totally harmless event.

For those downvoting who don’t want to accept reality, below is an article from just a few days ago. It happens every year.

https://www.amny.com/new-york/brooklyn/spate-of-violence-sul...

>>confou+Pk
You're being downvoted not because fights broke out at a parade but because you think such an event apparently justifies arbitrary levels of policing where the cops still don't actually do anything in the realm of preventing the harm rather than just cleaning it up. I've been in crowds where this kind of stuff happens, although to be fair never with a gun so maybe it's different, but the random people in the crowd jump into breaking up the fight way faster than the cops.

My city, which is not exemplary by any means, after a fuckton of political backlash about the "policing" that happens at protests and parades switched to having a small group of unarmed cops specially trained in deescalation (which is mostly marketing but eh, sure) and comprised of almost entirely minorities, women, and older folks. They're not at all shy about this unit being visibly nonthreatening and they just walk with the people, sometimes joining them. We haven't had any "riots" ever since. It's allllllmost like the police had been instigating them, funny that.

>>Spivak+Tq
>cops still don't actually do anything in the realm of preventing the harm rather than just cleaning it up.

That's their job. "Preventing harm" is acting _before_ crime happens. It's politicians and citizens job to prevent harm.

>>parine+Gr
Great. So cops are not actually achieving any goal of keeping people safe, since they fundamentally do not prevent harm.

>>UncleM+lA
They "protect and serve" by attempting to intervene in crime in progress if possible but mostly trying to find the people who've committed crimes so they can be held accountable by the state and it's citizens (jury of your peers and all that).

At least ideally. It doesn't always work that way but it's a misnomer to blame the police for a neighborhood being unsafe and you're going to be disappointed if you expect them to.

>>parine+0G
They also get called to many non-crimes and to other situations that do not require armed, violent responses.

I think it would be great to set up competition to Police forces: Cities should create and staff an unarmed "Helper Force" who gets deployed to non-emergencies, to help people in distress, investigate "Karen's" complaints of this and that, to defuse mental health episodes (maybe bring a social worker), incidents involving children, rescuing cats out of trees, and so on. Carry on for a year, and then have both the Helper force and the Police force summarize in writing how they benefitted the community over then last 12 months, and have them fight for funding on the basis of that report.

I think taxpayers would decide that they'd rather have the helpers.