Merry Christmas from the NYPD
Officers from the New York Police Department raided a Brooklyn home on Thursday, arrested the family living there, and then posted pictures to Snapchat—yes, really—with the caption “Merry Christmas Its [sic] NYPD.”
It wasn’t until later that the cops realized they had raided the wrong house, and arrested and publicly humiliated the wrong people.
The family, according to ABC-7 in New York, was so upset by the whole incident that they filed a police report and called 911 to report the cops—which, yeah, good for them.
“The worst part was the Snapchats,” Kimberly Santiago, one of the people wrongfully arrested in Thursday’s incident, told the TV station. “He doesn’t deserve to be a police officer. If he does that, what other things he does on the low that nobody knows?”
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The ABC affiliate reports that NYPD internal affairs is investigating the wrongful arrests and, I think it’s safe to say, completely inappropriate snapchatting.
After posting the first picture of the family in handcuffs, the NYPD warrant squad that showed up to the house at 6:30 a.m. posted a second picture of the inside of the house with the caption “Warrant sweeps its still a party.”
A party, indeed.
The fact that the police raided the wrong house makes the story worse, but don’t let Officer Snapchat—his name has not been released by the NYPD—off the hook that easily. Even if the cops had arrested someone suspected of an actual crime, it still would be wrong to publicly humiliate them on a social media platform (and still just as tasteless to offer holiday greetings while doing it). If the arrestees had been actual criminals, such cavalier behavior by the officers may have jeopardized the chances of getting a conviction. As it stands, it’s like to cost the NYPD whatever amount of money they’ll have to pay the family to settle the inevitable lawsuit, and it should also cost at least one officer his job.
It’s worth nothing the similarity between posting Snapchats of arrested suspects and the use of fake traffic stops as holiday-themed publicity stunts. If you’re not familiar with that second thing, it works like this: police officers will illegally stop drivers so they can (maybe with one officer dressed up like jolly ol’ Saint Nick) hand out gift cards or other small goodies. The whole affair is recorded on camera and released for public relations purposes. They’re supposed to be heartwarming stories about good cops, but they’re actually terrifying abuses of police power, potential violations of the Fourth Amendment, and, quite frankly, just really creepy.
In both cases, the goal is to produce something that will “go viral” on the Internet. That’s fine for a bunch of college students who are bored during their winter break, but it is beyond inappropriate for armed officers of the law who are given broad authority to use force against their fellow citizens. There is absolutely no overlap between these actions and legitimate police work, not even if the NYPD hired the people who made Venn diagrams for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
This sort of behavior from police officers reduces other people—people who are innocently sitting in their homes preparing for Christmas or people who are minding their own business while driving down the road—to being mere props in a public relations game. Those other people, by the way, are the people the police are supposed to be serving and protecting, not hoodwinking and humiliating.
Bottom line: on-duty police officers shouldn’t be using Snapchat, but maybe they should download Waze—the map app that cops love to hate—so they can find the proper address and arrest the right suspects. When they do, there’s no legitimate reason to talk about it on social media.
If SWAT team types were met with real “firepower” from honest citizens every time they “raided the wrong house”, their shenanigans would stop. It is long overdue to strip “qualified immunity” from ALL public officials, especially law enforcement, prosecutors and court officials. This one step would do MORE to reign in the abuses that take place “under color of authority”.
It is somewhat perverse, but I don’t care–when I hear of a cop losing his life, a small shred of my thinking asks the question. Did this person abuse his authority and contribute to his own death??
We are reaching a “tipping point”. . .Most (unjustified) police shootings are “covered up” by the “thin blue line” and their enablers. In fact, most police academy “training” comes with the (unofficial) recommendation to obtain and carry a “throwdown” weapon that can be used to “clear up” (actually obfuscate) a “questionable” situation.
During the Soviet purges, if the midnight “knock on the door” were met with resistance, the government would have found it difficult to recruit people for the “raids” . . . It the KGB knew that there was a chance of them “not going home” that night, the raids would not have taken place . . .
We are at that same point now . . .
People get killed on a somewhat regular basis by SWAT and other cops raiding the wrong house and being met by “real firepower” -or any resistance at all that can be interpreted as dangerous such as having a coke or cell phone in your hand- because they thought they were defending themselves from a home invasion.
This man was in prison for two years for defending himself. At least they finally let him go, but there are others who were not as lucky.
https://photographyisnotacrime.com/2016/12/13/texas-man-found-not-guilty-for-shooting-three-cops-during-no-knock-raid/
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt . . .”
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Anarchyst….that’s my favorite quote in regards to stand up against the machine .
I guess this won’t be the basis for an episode of Blue Bloods now………
BROOKLYN — An NYPD officer was suspended without pay after posting a photo of a handcuffed family to Snapchat, police said.
Police confirmed the picture was accompanied by the caption, “Merry Christmas Its NYPD.”
The incident was first reported by ABC 7.
Officers with a warrant raided the family’s Brownsville home at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 22 and placed everyone in the apartment in handcuffs during the search, police confirmed.
Police said the warrant authorized the officers to search the apartment on Dumont Avenue, the Associated Press reported. The officers remained there for about three hours, reports said.
The NYPD did not provide information on why the apartment was being investigated, other than to say they were looking for someone at that address. The person ultimately was not found there, the NYPD said.
The suspended officer works with the 73rd Precinct, the NYPD confirmed, though police did not name him.
A member of the Brownsville family told ABC 7 that she and her family thought the officer was texting during the raid.
“The whole three hours we were sitting here, he was the one standing there. We saw him on his phone, but we didn’t think an officer would do that,” Kimberly Santiago told ABC 7.
The officer posted a second Snapchat of the family with the caption, “Warrant sweeps Its still a party smh,” the NYPD confirmed.
Both Snapchats appeared in the public “New York story” feed on Snapchat, ABC 7 reported.
Santiago told ABC 7 that the worst part of the raid were the Snapchats.
“The things that he wrote, it’s like, this [is] what you all do?” Santiago told ABC 7. “If he did that to [us], picture how many other families he’s done that to. And he was the only one standing there watching us.”
The incident is under internal review, according to an NYPD spokeswoman, including by the Internal Affairs Bureau.
He’ll get a “paid vacation” and be “back in business” before long.
I apologize for the length of my tome, and to those who have previously read this, but here goes:
If anything, police should be held to a higher standard than that of the public…As it stands now, police can commit crimes with impunity because, in most situations, they investigate themselves…Behavior that would get an ordinary citizen charged, convicted and incarcerated is routinely ignored by “the powers that be” because police are considered to be “above the law” as the “law” is whatever they say it is, the Constitution be damned…
Ever notice that police unions are “fraternal”? This should tell you something. The “thin-blue-line” is a gang, little different than street gangs–at least when it comes to “covering-up” their questionable and quite often, illegal and criminal behavior.
In today’s day and age, “officer safety” trumps de-escalation of force. This, in part, is due to the militarization of the police along with training in Israeli police tactics. This becomes a problem, with the “us vs. them” attitude that is fosters, along with the fact that Israel is a very different place, being on a constant “war footing”, and by necessity, its police tactics are very different.
There are too many instances of police being “given a pass”, even when incontrovertible video and audio evidence is presented. Grand juries, guided by police-friendly prosecutors, quite often refuse to charge those police officers who abuse their authority.
Police officers, who want to do the right thing, are quite often marginalized and put into harms way, by their own brethren…When a police officer is beating on someone that is already restrained while yelling, “stop resisting” THAT is but one reason police have a “bad name” in many instances…this makes the “good cops” who are standing around, witnessing their “brethren in blue” beating on a restrained suspect, culpable as well…
Here are changes that can help reduce police-induced violence:
1. Get rid of police unions. Police unions (fraternities) protect the guilty, and are responsible for the massive whitewashing of questionable police behavior that is presently being committed.
2. Eliminate both “absolute” and “qualified” immunity for all public officials. This includes, prosecutors and judges, police and firefighters, code enforcement and child protective services officials, and others who deal with the citizenry. The threat of being sued personally would encourage them to behave themselves. Require police officers to be “bonded” by an insurance company, with their own funds. No bond= no job.
3. Any public funds disbursed to citizens as a result of police misconduct should come out of police pension funds–NOT from the taxpayers.
4. Regular drug-testing of police officers as well as incident-based drug testing should take place whenever an officer is involved in a violent situation with a citizen–no exceptions.
5. Testing for steroid use should be a part of the drug testing program. You know damn well, many police officers “bulk up” with the “help” of steroids. Steroids also affect users mentally as well, making them more aggressive. The potential for abuse of citizens increases greatly with steroid use.
6. Internal affairs should only be used for disagreements between individual officers–NOT for investigations involving citizen abuse. State-level investigations should be mandatory for all suspected abuses involving citizens.
7. Prosecutors should be charged with malfeasance IF any evidence implicating police officer misconduct is not presented to the grand jury.
8. A national or state-by-state database of abusive individuals who should NEVER be allowed to perform police work should be established–a “blacklist” of abusive (former) police officers.
9. Most people are unaware that police have special “rules” that prohibit them from being questioned for 48 hours. This allows them to “get their stories straight” and makes it easier to “cover up” bad police behavior. Police must be subject to the same laws as civilians.
10. All police should be required to wear bodycams and utilize dashcams that cannot be turned off. Any police officers who causes a dash or body cam to be turned off should be summarily fired–no excuses. Today’s body and dash cams are reliable enough to withstand harsh treatment. Body and dashcam footage should be uploaded to a public channel “on the cloud” for public perusal.
11. All interrogations must be video and audio recorded. Police should be prohibited from lying or fabricating stories in order to get suspects to confess. False confessions ARE a problem in many departments. Unknown to most people, police can lie with impunity while civilians can be charged with lying to police…fair? I think not…
12. Any legislation passed that restricts the rights of ordinary citizens, such as firearms magazine capacity limits, types of weapons allowed, or restrictive concealed-carry laws should apply equally to police. No special exemptions to be given to police. Laws must be equally applied.
Police work is not inherently dangerous…there are many other professions that are much more dangerous.
A little “Andy Taylor” could go a long way in allaying fears that citizens have of police.
That being said, I have no problem with police officers who do their job in a fair, conscientious manner…however, it is time to call to task those police officers who only “protect and serve” themselves.
The names and homes addresses and phone numbers of every officer of the 73rd precinct needs to be published so we can fuck them all…until they give up the names of the raiders that did this shit.
There needs to be payback against rogue cops!
Well, you would also fail Guerrilla warfare 101. You don’t counterattack when they attack your house. They have the numbers and element of surprise at that time. You take names, and then later track them down and raid their homes.
And leave them like this.[img
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If you don’t counterattack, and you “move” wrong (according to the officer’s statement that he feared for his life) you end up DEAD…
There are no easy answers.
No-knock raids should be illegal–PERIOD
SWAT raids should be illegal as well.
I hope the size of the lawsuit causes this department to do some thinking about Snapchatting their next arrest.
…the only way to stop it is to remove immunity from the officers involved and their command structure and take any funds from their pensions.
You would see them “clean up” in a hurry, especially if their pensions were threatened…
General and Ginger have the right idea. The time is coming when a policeman should be afraid of being aa policeman and not how he acts as a policeman. The abuses by government are minor compared to what is coming when the leftists get absolute power.
Arm every citizen.The only answer.