How is this even a thing? I don't know much about the US political system but how is it that the police is not entirely subjected to civic government and why does a law need to be passed to control what the NYPD does?
Look up the open justice initiative in California.
The separation of powers in NYC/NYS is very messy so this doesn't surprise me.
Take the NYPD's use of proprietary "predictive policing" algorithms to identify where a crime may occur and identify individuals who may be a perpetrator.
These algorithms have long been feared to express the biases of their input data. [1]
The NYPD has obstructed freedom of information requests at every turn. They wouldn't even release their correspondence with the vendor because it "would reveal trade secret information." [2]
If we can't examine it or even know how it's being used, it's significantly more difficult to scrutinize.
[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessm...
[2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/cour...
You’d think we as a society figured out hosting costs ...
Any quote on what the cost of hosting is and if it can be crowd funded? Technically speaking, their whole institution is crowd funded so I don’t know where they get the autonomy to decide jack shit.
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.”
— https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
In other words, the police, like essentially every other organization, is trying to preserve itself and expand itself. It only aligns with the wishes of another organization, e.g. “the tax collector”, as far as it serves their own goals, either because it furthers their goals directly, or if the other organization is in a position to threaten their own goals of preservation and expansion.
The police union, however, is a very organized labor union, and the current mayor was brought to heel even though he was elected on the most anti-police platform of his first election.