NYPD's Twitter Campaign Backfires 173
An anonymous reader writes "A NYPD community outreach campaign designed to show images of citizens with cops turned ugly quickly when a deluge of images depicting police brutality came in. From the article: 'The responses soon turned ugly when Occupy Wall Street tweeted a photograph of cops battling protesters with the caption "changing hearts and minds one baton at a time." Other photos included an elderly man bloodied after being arrested for jaywalking.' Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says, 'I kind of welcome the attention,' of the #myNYPD project."
Re:I kind of welcome the attention (Score:2, Interesting)
There was and will be none, because at least 70-80% of the population of NY was cheering the police on when they busted up OWS, and seeing those images again probably makes them happy.
Nooo... because 99% of those images lack context of a situation where force was justified. Do some ride-alongs with cops and see the entire story.
Re:Some of these are overreaction (Score:2, Interesting)
What you're essentially asking for is to have a job where you're expected to get rocks and garbage thrown at you (yes, this is common at occupy events) and for you to just stand there and take it. That is exactly what happens prior to these incidents.
Cops are humans, and as such they don't want to have to be denigrated like that any more than you do.
Think about this: If you deliberately provoke a reaction, do you think it's possible that you just might succeed in getting one?
Re:If they were interested in upholding the law... (Score:4, Interesting)
Good cop story: I was accosted by four cops in squad cars one night in Tucson about midnight. I'd gotten hungry and decided to go to the local burrito joint. I wanted to read while I was there, so I took my netbook. It was cold, so I jogged the few blocks to the Taco Shop.
'Course, the cops see a guy running down the road with a laptop, and go "huh, we'd better see what the hell is going on here."
Cop says "Eh, what're you doing?" I tell him I'm headed to the Taco Shop for a burrito, and ask him what the problem is. He says "Is that your computer?" I tell him "Yeah ... now that I think about it, I do look suspicious, I guess. Look, can I boot the thing and show you documents with my name on them, and that it matches my driver's license?"
The cop tells me to go ahead, so I do. He says "Well, looks like it's your computer -- have a nice night" and they leave me alone.
Unfortunately, in a lot of places trying to do what I did (talk to the cops, rather than say "I do not consent to any searches and would like a lawyer") ends badly. But Tucson PD is pretty relaxed. I just wish police in more places could be trusted to treat citizens like citizens rather than "criminals they haven't caught yet"; I imagine they'd be better at preventing crime if they did.
(For those not well-versed in Arizona geopolitics: the place with the out-of-control xenophobic sheriff is Phoenix, north of Tucson. There Hispanics are regularly harassed by the police. In Tucson a big chunk of the police *are* Hispanic; it's a city that is far more tolerant.)