Police Thinking

So I gt hit by a car on Thursday (9/13).  I was riding my bike in the bike lane on Christie street headed towards the Manhattan bridge.  A big black BMW SUV pulled out of standstill traffic and into the bike lane, thinking he'd get ahead while cutting me off.  When he got pinched and couldn't go any further I went around him and pointed to the bike lane and said “so where do we go?” “You're in the bike lane!?” He responded with with an abrasive Fuck You styled aggression filled response you'd only expect stereotyped from Jersey Shore.  I kinda kept moving slowly while responding in a kinder version biking legalese that didn't resemble backing down but wasn't aggressive like his but more matter of fact (those who know me can imagine..;).  As the lane opened a bit I started to go through, only to hear the roar of an engine in my left ear and all of a sudden I got hit on my left side and handle bars from behind (I think).  The wheel turned maybe, I went straight over the bars, the bike I think landed on or my hit back area while the car sped off.  It stopped briefly at the light ahead (as I tried to write down the license plate number), and then turned and was gone.  I lay on my stomach assessing my bits while others checked on me and tried to help me up.  I was amazed, and really just wanted this guy to not get away with it.  I called the 911 and some passers by in a car gave me a little first aid kit.

I refused an ambulance because I felt ok, I had a couple scrapes and bruises, but I'd had worse in football and life.  Of course, by the time the cops got there it was one hour and twenty minutes later and three calls to 911.  By this point my back and hip were starting to stiffen up.  But still I didn't think it was anything to get concerned about.  Really I just wanted to make sure this guy didn't get away with it.

The cop eventually pulls up and firstly wants to know if I need an ambulance.   I'm wishy-washy.  I don't know if I still have medicaid.  I think I do, but never got that confirmed as I lost my address before I got paperwork confirming it.  So I am reticent to get an ambulance as with no insurance and no money I'm screwed.  I can't afford that bill.  So I say no.  If money was no option, yeah, I'd have gotten checked out. But it is.  He pushes, "it's a simple yes or no answer." "yes or no?", as if someone just hit by a car thinks so clearly?  Kind of like, officer, are you an asshole?  Yes or no?  Come on, its a simple yes or no answer.  No you obviously are not. You have friends and family, people you love, things you do that show it.   No you are not an asshole.  So don't act like one right now to me. This was the way the conversation would go.  He then asked for my ID.  Which I had forgotten that day of all days.   He then proceeded to lecture me about not having an ID on me.  That I could be making up names and my life, and this incident.   That I could get a summons for not having a valid ID on me.   What?!?!  um, right....  Anyway, I questioned it subtly in an attempt to just get past it and move on.  Kind of an I don't need a drivers license to ride a bike, I don't have it what info do you need.  Needless to say he just continued on in his police speak aggressive tone.  The authoritative, shut the fuck up speech that they always give you when you ask a question or don't immediately jump as high as the ask you to.  It's like there's cop school where they send them to go learn how to verbally bludgeon people into submissiveness.  It's so sad.  I finally got to the point where I just said to him, “officer I just got hit by a car, it would really be nice if you could show a little compassion”.   He responded defensively and with vigor about how his job was to weed out people faking these claims.   That he had to be certain that I was telling the truth and not making things up.  Claiming it was his job to push me and to make me feel awkward to the point that if I was making my story up that I would waver and give up the attempt.  Basically, that I could just have a vendetta against someone and be filing a false police complaint.   Yeah well, if it didn't take an hour and twenty minutes for you to get there there would have still be witnesses....

Anyway, it was absurd.   To say that this was what he was supposed to do.  How he was trained to push people and to make sure they were in the right place.  As if getting hit by a car is an everyday occurrence and doesn't require any empathy.  Would you treat your grandmother like that?  Your mom?  Anyone you weren't assuming was a criminal?

This to me is what the problem is, and I hear it in the words of every police and law enforcement officer I speak to.  You are a criminal if you come in contact with me, you are a criminal in general until I eliminate that from my detectiving.  ----Pause---- I am writing this in the hospital and they just put a neck brace on me. It's tough to write in a neck brace ----Unpause----  So yeah, police officers always are looking for criminals.  If that is your soul goal, then how you treat people initially is going to come across as such.  It is tragic really.  After he and I got all done playing paperwork games and had developed a more friendly repore, I mentioned to him again that just as a thought that maybe he should work towards finding a better balance between doing his job and showing compassion in this type of situation.  We talked for another 15 minutes and I would consider him a friend at this point.  Yes, I consider everyone a friend, but you know what I mean.  I mean that is the way it always works with me! ;)  But still though, I think I got the message across to him.  He told me where he always is working there and writes tickets all the time for the bike lane.  But as it is, my point in writing this is to say that I think its horrible how cops speak to people.  Aggressive, authoritarian, and as if their authority is unquestionable and inherently legitimate no mater how just or lawful what they are saying.  They do not speak with respect or from a place of dignity for others.  Power over others that is all to often abused - as I felt it was with me after I was run down by a car. Sadly.

Reflections on an Ugly Night

Written 3/21/2012

The most disturbing thing about Saturday night (3/17/2012) was not the police brutality - though it is very difficult to think of anything more disturbing right now - but it was the systemic nature of the obvious strategy that the NYPD has undertaken in response to Occupy.  Firstly, they now have a special Occupy detachment.  It is the same officers and the same commanders there now.  People are starting to know officer's names and to identify the particular officers who seem to be continually "getting off" on the use of violence and absolute control of the protestors.  And the stories of things said, commands given, and the general disinterest in anything remotely professional or compassionate is so overtly obvious now as well that it is shocking only in how unapologetically blatant it is. 

The methodology seems obvious also.  The department has decided that they are going to be brutal and discriminatory in their suppression.  They know that we are going to pick up things on camera and video, and while they are doing what they can to keep camera's and mainstream media out of the area and break or take personal cameras and recorders, they really just want to minimize their exposure on video, voice, and pictures throughout the broader general public.  To minimize the sensationalism and thus largely get away with as much as they can. 

In the beginning of the night they had roughed up a few people, cuffed them, dragged them away, and then were letting them go.  It seemed given individual comments expressed to me by some of these individuals, that this must have been deliberate to keep the headlines to a minimum.  High arrests mean lots of news coverage.  While the pictures and video's on youtube tend to have a specific reach, it is limited to certain demographics and the mainstream news outlets seem reticent to disseminate these "amateur" "grainy" videos.  Where was fox news' coverage of Saturday night?

No, the NYPD seems to have a very deliberate strategy that is very savvy of both their place in society and of our society on the whole.  They know that corporate control of the media is their ally.  They know that there are going to be a relatively small number of people in the country that are going to see these things, and while perhaps those individuals will be horrified, that the images will likely not be disseminated widely, or at least to the point of TRUE repercussions - meaning tens of millions of people.  Even though they humiliate themselves on live stream and blogger posts, most of America never sees it. 

It seems to me that a lot of people involved in Occupy think they are winning these wars with each swing of the baton.  But really, the media savvy of the NYPD, Bloomberg, and all their goons seemingly outpaces us.  These messages and visuals are not getting to the American heart land, and if they are they are accompanied by narratives of Occupiers as terrorists, hoodlums, and evil anticapitalist anarchist bastards.  (ps. not case!)


Case in point:  Now maybe there are technical issues with grainy, unclear "amateur" video, but more likely they really think its news worthy.  MSNBC, which has had really good coverage in the past, started their article by saying that the batons came out after a protestor threw a bottle at the bus carrying away arrestees.  This is completely false to ANYONE that was down there (save whoever from the police was paid to give distorted, agendaed accounts).  Another part of their strategy comes in this vain, they always get asked for a comment, and it always gets printed.  As if their opinion holds more merit than anyone else's.  Its all propaganda.  We protestors are just a bunch of drunk hippies in the park right?  Fact is, batons where out long before they needed the buses to haul off all the people who had already been hit with batons while getting arrested.  And what got thrown if anything?  Did someone drop an empty Poland Spring bottle?  The horrors.  MSNBC compiled the article from news wires without doing any real journalism on the ground themselves (which evidently neither had the wire services).  I saw no obvious reporters there that night (and we've gotten to know most of them by sight), save a NY1 camera.  The NY Times covered it in its blog the next day.  Otherwise?  Occupy it seems is no longer so important at the editorial level at these big national news outlets to send reporters down there anymore.

The NYPD knows all this, they have it in a well versed strategy that puts us all in a bind.  Always at the wrong end of the sword.  We open our mouths as the constitution guarantees us able to do, only to have a sword shoved down our throats at just the right angle so the camera can't quite make out whether it went down our throats or just might have.  No unequivocal proof.  And it is that grey area that the police navigate in a very strategic and methodical way.  sigh... this system is a tough one, we must find better ways to react, or better yet - ways to act!   

Fire Ray Kelly!!

So I spent Saturday afternoon protesting in front of an event where Fordham Law School was honoring Ray Kelly, the commissioner of the NY city police department.  He over sees a police department that has been rampant in its excessive use of force on every thing from peaceful Occupy protests, to the long term daily life  of everyone living in minority communities through the city.  The event was organized by Muslim groups,  students at Fordham, and buttressed by the Occupy movement, following a string of anti Muslim policies came about (spying on muslim student groups, and anti Muslim training video, etc.).  There are also countless other policies causing harm to individuals and their communities such as Stop and frisk (where a police officer can approach anyone and stop them and pat them down for illegal substances, firearms, whatever), and even murder (see below).



Kelly oversees what I call the NYMD (New York Military Department).  A thriving military detachment run by Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg, seemingly at their will and for their purposes.  Maybe in time some of the issues will be covered, but I won't bury this post in details.  I will tell one story though that illuminated a lot for me.  On December 17th at Duarte square there was an action.  I was standing on the sidewalk, the police on the sidewalk kept telling us to get back.  The police in the street had told us to get on the sidewalk (mind you being in the street is illegal, sidewalk not).  It is also worth saying that I watched a younger guy get beaten by three cops on November 15th, the night of the eviction from liberty square, for pacively standing one step in the smallest of side streets.

So here I was, push pull.  I end up on the curb balancing precariously on my toes, while pointing out the hypocrisy of the officer in front of me.  So she shoves me, benchpress style, right off the curb onto my backside in the street.  I'm amazed.  My mom is there protesting.  She's appalled.  The emotions of it all, the complete disinterest of officers and others around.  The closeness of it all.  It was a truly memorable moment for me, and one that effected me tremendously.  BUT!!!!!  That was not the learning lesson.  The learning lesson came when I spoke to my African-American friends from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Newark, wherever.  And to a person they all said: "So!?  Welcome to our world.  That stuff happens everyday to us, and has for our whole lives.  Just another day of being black in America.  Police brutality."

This to me was the most amazing. That there was absolutely no sympathy.  None was deserved.  We live in a Police state.  A place where the police block off a sidewalk so wealthy people can have free entrance to their fundraiser, but a protester has to get a permit to protest about having to get permits to protest.  Freedom of speech?  What?  A homeless man is pushed off every sidewalk, and a park full of protestors is forcefully cleared under shamefully erroneous pretenses (I never saw a rat or roach at liberty square, but I see them in the subway everyday).  There is only one phrase that comes to mind when I think of the NYPD: abuse of power.  That is the cornerstone of current day policing tactics.  Above the law and around the law, so long as you get the "perp."  Abhorrent.  And Ray Kelly is the one that over sees it all, in the biggest city in the country.  So Saturday, I chanted:


Hey Hey, Ho Ho,
Ray-cist Kelly has got to go!!

Back Up Back Up,
We Want Freedom Freedom
These dirty spying cops
We don't need 'em need 'em!!

Kelly spies,
Bloomberg lies.

Hey Kelly?!
How many kids did you surveil today?
Hey Kelly?!
How many kids did you frisk today?
Hey Kelly?!
How many kids did you kill today?  (yes, Ramarly Graham, an unarmed 18 year old kid, was shot and killed by NYPD in his own bathroom.)