Inside the NYPD's Attempt To Build Community Trust Through Twitter (backchannel.com) 59
mirandakatz writes: When the NYPD rolled out its Twitter presence a couple years back, it didn't go so smoothly: the @NYPDNews account tweeted a request: 'Do you have a photo with a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD,' and by midnight the same day, more than 70,000 people had responded decrying police brutality. At Backchannel, Susan Crawford looks at the department's attempt to use Twitter to rebuild community trust, noting that while the NYPD has a long ways to go, any opening up of communication is an improvement on the traditionally tight-lipped culture.
They're currently reaching about 10% of the city's population, tweeting pictures of "wanted" suspects and sharing information on recent criminal activity, as the police commissioner describes shifting their mindset from "warrior" to guardian.
They're currently reaching about 10% of the city's population, tweeting pictures of "wanted" suspects and sharing information on recent criminal activity, as the police commissioner describes shifting their mindset from "warrior" to guardian.
Here's a start to regain trust (Score:5, Informative)
Stop breaking the laws you are supposed to uphold, you fucks.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Stop breaking the laws you are supposed to uphold, you fucks.
Sure, but you have to realize that institutional cultures do not change overnight.
There have been big problems with many big-city US police departments, but if they are sincere about "... shifting their mindset from 'warrior' to guardian", that's something that'll unfold over time, not like a light switch.
The fact is that it sounds like a move in the right direction. The fact is also that it's never going to be perfect, so if you are intend on finding problems, you will always have some to find. But degre
Re: (Score:3)
They can change in one direction slowly -- that's the direction towards maximum decay and corruption. Any other change has to be "overnight" or the institutional forces pushing the other way will defeat it.
Re: (Score:2)
They can change in one direction slowly -- that's the direction towards maximum decay and corruption. Any other change has to be "overnight" or the institutional forces pushing the other way will defeat it.
The French nobility could not be reached for comment.
Oh, right...
Re: (Score:1)
We had a Chief here in Pittsburgh who attempted to make that transition and the police union had a vote of No Confidence and forced him to resign.
The culture is thuggish, brutish and corrupt.
I don't know how to change it other than federal oversight and sending offenders to prison.
LK
Re: (Score:2)
Just my suspicion... Most of the officers are former military police. I doubt many have gotten the military mindset out of their systems, and realize that the civilian population isn't the enemy. As a vet myself, I remember that the people who scored the lowest on the ASVAB exam became cooks and military police. And so now you've got some of the dullest knives in the drawer as LEOs. At a minimum, some training needs to be done...but then, I don't know, maybe it is already.
Re: (Score:1)
Scalia said that until the accused has "surrendered" the killers ARE the law!
Re:Here's a start to regain trust (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention the law is already slanted heavily in their favor. All a cop has to do to literally get away with murder is say, "I feared for my life", case closed, all charges dropped. Evidence? it's easy enough to produce with the blue wall of silence and fraternal order of police.
Saying "he grabbed my Taser" is enough. A mistrial was declared for the public execution of Walter Scott by killer cop Michael Slager *despite* video evidence that Scott was running away, quite slowly, when Slager shot him 8 times in the back AND PLANTED HIS TASER next to Scott's body
Re: (Score:2)
Which group of people is in the best position to "influence" the jury? How many members of the jury need to be "influenced"?
There was another case where there was video of someone in handcuffs in an interview room being beaten by a policeman, but the policeman was acquitted.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
so i guess the sharing of information on "recent criminal activity" doesn't including tattling on themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wear the cameras (Score:2, Insightful)
It would be easier to trust them if they'd just wear the damn body cameras.
Re: (Score:2)
Please outline how turning a cop into a cameraman who has to respond to FOIA requests doesn't become an invasion of my privacy whenever I interact with one.
Re: (Score:2)
Please outline how turning a cop into a cameraman who has to respond to FOIA requests doesn't become an invasion of my privacy whenever I interact with one.
The requests can be denied if they will interfere with your privacy, of course. Ask a hard one.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a great theory - but as I understand it legal precedence is tending to lean the other way. We need to get appropriate exceptions to the FOIA encoded in law for that to be a valid assumption. And we need to make sure the exception is narrow enough that it doesn't interfere with the ability to acquire that video as evidence against officers.
Re: (Score:2)
We need to get appropriate exceptions to the FOIA encoded in law for that to be a valid assumption.
What we need is one unifying federal law to handle this, because this is a basic issue of freedom. The law needs both to mandate the use of the body cameras, and also set standards for when FOIA requests should be denied and how the appeals process should work. However, I'm afraid that transparency is more important than your privacy, so part of the law should be that all requests are processed in the order in which they are received, and that any request open longer than ninety days should be automatically
Re: (Score:2)
You mean like these?
http://www.foiadvocates.com/ex... [foiadvocates.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if any of those standards would adequately address the particular issues surrounding police camera footage; none of them were intended to do so.
Re: (Score:3)
Consider the alternative.
There is NOTHING to keep the cops accountable when there is no camera.
At least the video can be used to prove the cop was doing what he was supposed to be doing.
The alternative of no camera is far worse.
Keep your friends close (Score:1)
And your enemies closer.
Here's another one:
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Become friends with a cop, expect to be spied upon.
70,000 responses (Score:2)
That is more contacts than the NYPD has had with the public in 5 years or more. Probably 75% of those responses came from jackasses in that had never been to NY or ever even had contact with the NYPD. Not to try and excuse the BAD cops but people who decry the viciousness of police based solely on some hugely biased news media coverage, are like professional protestors shipped in from wherever to boost numbers and cause trouble in order to garner additional media attention.
Re: (Score:3)
70,000 contacts, over 5 years, for a police force with 34,000 uniformed officers? That's two contacts per officer. For 5 years.
Want to try your comment again using your brain this time?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: 70,000 responses (Score:5, Insightful)
You haven't been paying attention at all. This has been going on since African Americans were granted rights as people.
A good Red foxx joke I saw from the 70s citcom Sanford and son.
Lamont: "Pop, did you know heart disease is the #1 killer of black men"
Fred: "Really? I thought it was cops."
That was in the 70s and African Americans all over America still feel the same way. It's sad, but it's true. And it's going to take a long time to earn back that trust. Especially given that cops are still killing unarmed black men at an alarming rate.
Re: (Score:1)
Not a fan if AC comments but extremely culturally insightful. Mod up please.
Re: (Score:3)
Jeez, you're making we old Slashdotters look bad.
Just the department's own stop-and-frisk data show how very, very, very wrong you are.
http://www.nyclu.org/content/s... [nyclu.org]
Re: (Score:1)
Um, out of all the people getting killed by police, 13% are black, and 63% are white. As for the rest, they don't fit into those two categories.
Re: (Score:2)
You overlooked UNARMED
Stop randomly searching minorities. (Score:1)
Want to build community trust? Stop treating the community like criminals and start respecting their constitutional rights.
Re: (Score:2)
Cops need to start respecting the people and their rights again. The average person is not a (serious) criminal* so stop treating us as such. Police are supposed to serve the public. Demanding [youtube.com] we respect you when you act like thugs is not a good approach.
Some minority communities have enormous problems. Black communities seem to produce way too many criminals and they keep murdering each other. Ignoring these problems is not resolving them.
It's possible we all need to
Re: (Score:3)
* Completely unrelated problem, nobody actually knows all the laws.
That's a major problem with the US legal system. There are so many laws on the books that even when they spent millions of dollars and many months trying to catalogue and count Federal laws, they couldn't count them all.
That's very dangerous for a supposedly free and open society. It allows police to arrest anyone as it's almost certain that some law can be found to have been broken. Often police outright ignore the laws, like the right of people to audio-record/photograph/video-record police. Most departme
It's a common pattern (Score:2)
The abusive one in a relationship often blames the other for the lack of trust. The NYPD is assuming twitter will fix the problem. As you point out, what will really fix the problem is a tighter ROE. It's strange, since with only a couple of situations (normal/traffic stop/domestic disturbance/responding to armed incident) you could class all possibilities and have prewritten, tested and adhered to ROEs
Re: (Score:2)
The NYPD is assuming twitter will fix the problem.
No, they know damned well twitter won't solve or help anything. It's just something very visible, cheap, and easy to implement to point to and say "hey look, we're trying!" while they go about business as usual. It's pure CYA, nothing more. And as a consequence, more innocent people will die and more police officers will be assassinated and more kids will grow up with one parent having been needlessly killed.
Strat
Re: (Score:2)
I'll start trusting the NYPD if they publicly embrace Frank Serpico as one of their heroes & role models and award him the Medal of Honor, again, in a proper public ceremony
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"Talking to former military, I've been told that combat soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have stricter Rules Of Engagement than US police officers"
I believe that's correct. Also some PDs don't like former military as they will not readily shoot civilians dead as the police would like.
Compared to most Euro countries, American cops are woefully undereducated & undertrained unless you consider a frag-them-all videogame mentality as acceptable.
Re: (Score:2)
...unless you consider a frag-them-all videogame mentality as acceptable.
Well, it's not like some cops have had things like "You're Fucked!" etched into the receiver of their weapon...Oh, wait...
Strat
Re: (Score:2)
But when the community includes a large number of people statistically likely to be drug dealers, the police are dealing with criminals on average. Move all the blacks to New Jersey for a couple of weeks and watch how quickly NYPD behavior improves.
Drug usage is statistically much different between white & black people but arrest rates and prosecution have been dramatically different for decades.
Heroin, opiates, fentanyl, meth, painkillers are cutting a broad swath through white America and nary a fucking word about them having lower IQs, inferior genetics or their deplorable family values.
Re: (Score:2)
Correction, should read RATES of drug use is statistically NOT much different ........
Re: (Score:1)
The French in Algeria and what was Vietnam, France now, 1970-80's South Africa.
Where to get a vast number of experts to start search everyone? Use the mil as a wider example?
Searching the majority of a population all the time gets really expensive and allows criminal groups to quickly adjust easy weaknesses given the huge spread of police.
Real papers and nothing to
Friendenemy (Score:2)