More Self-Important Cop Crap
As if posting seven cops at the Bogart entrance of the Morgan L stop doesn’t make it obvious enough as to how desperate cops are to show us we need them, we now have the local cop as anti-terrorist hero.
A friend noticed the perfect ledge to rest his camera on to take photos of himself (he’s vain I guess, whatever), and began snapping shots in front of the Housing Authority police station on Central and Forrest. Yeah, I guess the projects need their own supplemental police force, though why the station isn’t near any projects isn’t quite clear.
One of our heroic protectors saw my threatening friend doing his thing and walked over to him:
“What are you doing?”
“I’m taking pictures,” responded my friend, baffled at the fact that perhaps the cop didn’t know what exactly a camera does.
“Of what?”
“Of…me.”
“You can’t do that here, you have to delete them.”
“Oh, is it illegal to take pictures near a police station?”
“No, but… well, I don’t know you. You could be a terrorist or something.”
That’s right: a gay Russian guy taking pictures of himself in front of a police station is all part of an al-Qaeda plan to blow up the Housing Authority police station on Central Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
But that’s not what this was about, of course: a bored pig, out of donuts, I guess, decided to go find something to do, and found the least-threatening person in his immediate vision and decided to pretend he was being vigilant against terrorism, with the real intent of just busting an innocent person’s balls for a few minutes for kicks, because he could.
Cops are just grown up high-school bullies with guns and a license to kill.
December 11th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
It’s all a show. Pretending they’re doing something while making sure people know whose boss. It’s beyond pathetic.
Good luck calling 911 from that same area too.
December 12th, 2007 at 1:38 am
So, was he actually forced to erase the pictures?
I’m pretty sure NY cops are required to say “Don’t get cute” once a day so maybe he was trying to instigate something in order to fill his quota. It’s important to remember that beat cops are rookies so they are new to having power. A lot of them let that go to their head which may or may not have a brain.
The assertion that “Cops are just grown up high-school bullies with guns and a license to kill” is not true of all of them.
Jeremy will learn this when he is the victim of a serious crime, which will happen, soon I hope.
The only shocking thing to me here is the fact that Jeremy has a friend.
December 12th, 2007 at 1:48 am
I also hope, in this holiday season, that people who hate my guts for no good reason be mugged and beaten by random thugs. Just not in Bushwick, bad for my property values.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I don’t live in Bushwick, but he’s my story from Queens: Once I tried to take a photo of the Roosevelt Island bridge with a polaroid camera. A cop pulled over and started yelling at me, asking what I was taking photos of. I told her, and she pointed out that the Keyspan plant was in the background, and that no one was allowed to take photos of it. I find that odd, since I can see the plant from my apartment window.
The police woman told me to delete the photos. I told her I couldn’t, it was a polaroid camera. Incidentally, I had run out of film, and it hadn’t taken a photo at all. She ordered me to give her the camera. She didn’t know what a polaroid camera was, I had to explain to her how to use it. She finally got it open, removed the empty film carton, and said she was “Confiscating this.”
She threatened to call back up to search me for photos. She said she would throw me in jail if they found any. I was angry, and I told her I didn’t have any photos. She drove off with warning: “If I ever see you in this neighborhood again, I’ll arrest you.” I live a block away.
So that’s my rant. Needless to say, I was pretty upset and didn’t think to record the car number to complain.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
If a cop ever threatens you like this, say no, then get their name and/or badge number (which they HAVE to give you, but usually you can just see it on their uniform), and tell them you are calling the CCRB (Civilian Complaint Review Board). Usually they will just go away because they don’t want to deal with going downtown when the CCRB investigator wants to interview them.
December 12th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Good luck with CCRB. I complained about the police not coming to take care of a noise complaint about six months ago; CCRB forwarded my complaint to an officer at the local precinct station (in Astoria), who sent me a certified letter telling me he’d been trying to call me on the telephone for a month (no such calls were ever placed). The letter went on to say that I should contact him at his office, blah blah. I called his office at the precinct and was told he worked the midnight to 8:00 a.m. shift…and would be on vacation for the next two weeks. Bastards. It’s another of Bloomberg’s “See, we ARE helping citizens out!” plans, made to appear to placate people but in effect doing absolutely nothing.
December 14th, 2007 at 11:50 am
The reason why the Housing Authority station isn’t “close to the project” (even though it is a VERY FAST cop car ride) is due to the rampant 1960’s and 1970’s Black Panther tactic of walking into a precinct and simply killing a cop and walking out again.
Or - you’re clearly an uneducated person and might gain a lot by realizing that one bad cop doesn’t destroy cop-dom. If you needed them, you’d want them there.
December 14th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Folks, I know it seems that we are being preyed upon by the local police but you folks dont seem to realize what is going on at the Bogart stop. I do as I live in 315 Seigel which is the building that sits on top of this station essentially. Just so you know, several innocent local young folks like you and I have been mugged and beaten up by young criminals in the last year who have been hiding out in the stairwell at this station late at night and early in the morning and have beaten the crap out of several people while they existed or entered the station. One guy was beaten unconcious in October and was taken to the hospital. We need the cops to protect us folks moving into the Morgan “Island of Safety” which is sitting in the middle of a low income disadvantaged, industrial park that we all love. I always greet and thank the cops. I am bothered by cops as well for the arrogant shits they can be most of the time but these guys are keeping us from getting attacked believe it or not.
December 15th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Agreed JE. I’ve been aware of those incidents and the police presence there is simply in their response.
This posting smacks of someone is terribly inexperienced in life.
December 15th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Dresden, your language skills leave much to be desired, and so even a reasonably intelligent person is left to only guess at what you could possibly mean. The “or” part of your first comment is disembodied from any prior reference. Furthermore, even if I were “uneducated,” education would not help me realize that “one bad cop doesn’t destroy cop-dom” — as if that were even my assertion here; as if I have only met one cop in my entire life; or as if I have met several cops, all of them had been good, and one was bad, and this one bad cop colored my view of every cop, ever. Clearly, none of these scenarios are the case, as anyone with even basic reading comprehension would tell you.
If I needed a cop, I would want one, certainly — too bad they more times than not do not arrive on time to help most people. But rest assured, if there’s an innocent person that needs harassing, they’ll be there to do the job.
December 18th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Fair enough Jeremy, however I’d like some dismal, distressed mental freak like yourself to consider reading all the times the cops show up in this hood, find and arrest the bad guys, and make it safer for you to fail at being whatever artist you are. You can read about them in something called the newspaper.