If I didn’t have to work till 1am most nights anyhow, I would have been awaken by this ridiculously low-flying NYPD chopper, as I’m sure many of my neighbors were. I called 311 just to ask what was going on — I’m not so presumptuous as to expect the police to land the chopper because someone complained about noise — and the operator simply said the relevant bureaucracy is now closed, and I need to call back during normal business hours, and tank you fah cawling da city of new ymmm…*click* Just as I was grumbling that my a/c wouldn’t drown out the noise, the chopper zipped off into the night. There’s no need for this clip to be a whole 38 seconds long, but I thought maybe they were going to do something, since they had been circling my block for 20 minutes.
I have been hard on Bushwick community organization Make the Road NY, and we do disagree on many important points. I think their point of view on certain economic issues is more characteristic of the beginning of last century than this one. That said, I appreciate their immigrant advocacy services — the idea of a person’s very existence in a particular place on earth being “illegal” offends me on a fundamental level. The other day I realized we have something else in common: opposition to the anti-child hate crime that is our heavily armed and armored public school system.
To all my neighbors driven into hysterics over the handful of muggings in Bushwick lately, I’d like to remind you, once again, that the police are not here to help you, they are here to collect a check. And for those whom the check is not enough, they are here to SELL CRACK. Yes, on your streets. Under cover of the badge you so respect.
“Luis Batista, a 10-year veteran, was the second NYPD detective arrested in as many days on corruption charges.” … “an informant claimed he and the cop went to a Bushwick hotel where they had sex with a woman and watched others use drugs” … “Batista was passing confidential information to a drug dealer, Virgilio Hiciano, before he fled to the Dominican Republic…”
This is who drug prohibition benefits: the crooked and the violent, who can make big bucks flouting the law — especially when they are the ones entrusted to enforce it. What a racket they got! It’s not like this is a terribly isolated incident — it’s somewhat common knowledge to those who pay attention that various levels of government are involved in the drug trade, especially cops on the local end, and the CIA on the international end.
As easily as you can say that this guy is an anomaly by which I shouldn’t judge the entire force, I can say that the “I became a cop to help people” dude is just as rare. Most just want a job where they can bully people and from which they can’t be fired.
Oh noos: the po-lice and associated eggheads can’t figure out why Northeast Brooklyn murders — that includes Bushwick — have gone up. Now, “up” is of course a relative notion: 212 in a borough of 2.5 million people. This New York Magazine article does little to dispel my assumption that probably 97% of the victims are also perps of some form. The remainder are their unfortunate neighbors. It’s why, when choosing a new neighborhood, it’s pointless to pay attention to the murder part of the crime stats — unless you’re planning on moving into a “Crips” floor at the Bushwick Houses.
Those whose agenda it serves of course have their own view of the problem: gentrification is to blame. The article mentions, as if to back up a comment about people pushed out of Bed-Stuy and into Bushwick, that in 2006, “Bushwick’s population jumped by more than 8,000.” I’m sure that’s true. But these people weren’t gentrified out of Bed-Stuy — they were gentrified out of the East Village and Williamsburg. Or they came from Mexico to work. Bushwick is not a catch basin for the poverty-mired of Brooklyn, it’s a magnet for the upwardly mobile who still have a long way to go.
The academics and cops of course mention the drug trade as the fuel for this murderous fire, but stops short of what makes selling drugs such a violent endeavor: it’s the drug war, stupid. From the 70s, throughout the crack epidemic, to now, the government has not changed its policy on dictating to Americans what they can put in their bodies. Since prohibition hardly dents demand, and no state anywhere, ever has yet found a way to crush the market signals for demand, there are people dedicated to making a living supplying that demand. Since the government has made punishment of the non-crime of drug selling so outrageously severe, the only people ballsy and reckless enough to sell drugs are those who have nearly nothing to lose, and rather impaired senses of the value of human life in general. You end up with the most violent elements having most of the money and weapons. Not a recipe for peace.
Drug prohibition created the problem of rampant crime in the United States. Drug prohibition helped keep New York a shithole for decades. Hell, drug prohibition has destroyed entire Central American countries and empowered vicious militias in Mexico and Colombia. It’s responsible for millions of deaths, holocaustian proportions.
End drug prohibition, and you will nearly end what little violence is left in New York. There will still be residual knuckleheads around because of the cultures incubated during the last 40 years, but that will eventually peter out with no drug industry to support it. Until then, stay clear of the projects and you won’t get shot. Not that anyone who doesn’t actually live there usually does.
I was at a Christmas party next door last night, and started talking with a cluster of guests near the food table. Turns out one of the group was a guy who grew up in Bed-Stuy, talking about how Brooklyn is cleaner, safer, more fun, and cooler all the time. “Look at Bushwick — this neighborhood is so much better!” We shared stories about how it used to be — he particularly liked my story from my dad about fishtailing at 50mph to keep thieves in late-’70s Bed-Stuy from breaking into his delivery truck. His stories about random crime were, of course, first-hand; mine were passed down from my father and others.
“Yeah, everything gets better here every year except the cops.” I perked up, of course. We then began sharing stories and complaints; one of his was that a cop lured him off his mother’s stoop with a beer in his hand, and when he stepped on the sidewalk he was issued an open container ticket. We also talked about people ticketed for walking their bikes across the sidewalk from their stoops to the street. “Don’t ride your bike at the end of the month” was advice we shared on avoiding being a victim of citation quotas.
He said a friend of his was stabbed four times on the Metropolitan G platform, though the station houses a police precinct. A cop stumbled upon the guy laying in a pool of blood and asked him if he was okay. “I’m fuckin’ bleeding!” his friend responded, and was reprimanded by the cop for his attitude!
To hear native Brooklynites tell it (to the deep chagrin of those who like it how it used to be just because that’s how it used to be), the borough is better than ever. So why do the cops still act like it’s 1977 up in here?
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.
On the Bed-Stuy blog last week was a huge thread of comments sparked by Petra’s complaint about her friend being ticketed for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk. With the exception of the couple of assholes roboting in humorless monotone that “the law is the law,” most people shared their experiences with the NYPD in quota-making heat. I was shocked at how many people were victimized, the vast majority for stupid garbage like being on the bike to cross the sidewalk from the stoop to the street, or for swerving to the sidewalk to avoid — that’s right — a cop car parked in the bike lane.
I’m so used to scoffing dismissively at complaints of racism, but when you read some of thesecomments, it’s impossible to ignore. Cops treat people like dirt for no reason other than they can. There is literally no recourse. If a cop wants to spit on you or curse at you or talk to you like a child, he can. What are you gonna do about it? He’s the one with the gun, and the huge system behind him to back him up in his power trip that he’s fantasized about since he was the middle school bully.
And to all those who are getting ready to reprimand me for questioning the cops — for example, “we’ll see how much you hate the cops when they save you from being mugged” — how about just shut the fuck up ahead of time. Save yourself the embarrassment, you’re ridiculous and your jingoist spluttering is as pathetic as that of the president defending his decision to blow up Iraq. The day a cop saves me from jack shit, I might possibly, though doubtfully, reconsider. All I have ever gotten from cops is harassment, and I am white and have no record. I can’t imagine what a black guy with a petty criminal record from when he was 16 must tolerate from these cocksuckers.
I mean really, when is a cop around to actually stop crime? Giuliani and his boosters have elevated the post hoc ergo propter hoc into a religion — Rudy’s administration “doing something” no more ended crime in New York than FDR’s barbaric policies ended the Great Depression. A decline in criminals and crime due to the waning of the crack “epidemic” and, well, gentrification, were some of the main drivers. Ticketing jaywalkers, hmmm, not so much.
Cops just clean up the mess after. They’re not as stupid as you may think — they’re not about to patrol dangerous areas to be heroes, they’re gonna ticket non-threatening dorks on bikes and then maybe later go in a pack to an after-the-fact crime scene to put on airs of self-importance and possibly remind you that you “need” them. And god forbid one of them harms someone without justification, as there’s no punishment to be meted out whatsoever. I mean, cops aren’t even legally required to respond to calls. What the fuck do we even pay those fat slobs for? We’re not even allowed to have weapons for self-defense. It’s the cops — if they feel like responding — or nothing, and too many times in this city, it’s nothing.
Really, so far my experience with cops in Bushwick is bizarre, creepy propaganda plays, a group of mourning kids being arrested on dubious grounds, more confidence-seeking propaganda, and arresting hipsters for drinking on private property where they live. I have yet to hear of a crime actually being stopped, but plenty that went unstopped. My argument is not that we need more cops. Good god, what a nightmare that would be. No, rather, I think we should fire the whole lot of them and get some Wackenhut up in here. Then we will be their clients, they will have no union to protect them from us, and they can be fired for fucking up. Ever heard of a rent-a-cop blowing a kid away who held a hairbrush in the air? No, but seriously, cops suck and a new system is needed, one that is more realistic, one where crime is stopped on the micro level by old ladies with 9mms in their pocketbooks.
So. *cough*
Anyone been the victim of NYPD on their bike in Bushwick?
Thirty years ago, Bushwick burned; today, it’s being slapped with a disorderly conduct summons. I know that I probably shouldn’t lambaste people in search of love but I just can’t help myself. Doing some research on Bushwick last night (yes, actual research), I stumbled upon the following Craigslist “Missed Connection”:
mckibbin lofts roof party the cops broke up - w4m - 22
NYU Philosophy student! I was talking to you on the upper roof deck Friday night. I threw a beer can before climbing down. I’m a girl (duh), shortish brown hair, recent Columbia grad, trying to be a writer. The fucking cops got me and I had to follow them downstairs to get my bullshit summons. You seemed nice and I thought you were cute. You must be smart too, cause you got away from the goddamn police. Email me!
Do I feel sorry for this young woman? Not a bit, I fear. First of all, is this the finest prose we can expect from the graduate of school that nurtured the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Langston Hughes? I might use better words than “cute,” “smart” and “nice” to describe the potential mate of my dreams. Also, how does one “try” to be a writer? I imagine that all one needs is a MacBook and the $3 requisite to score a soy latte and table space at Potion or the Archive. Last I checked, both were in ample supply around these parts.
What really piques my sense of civic pride, however, is the beer can that seems to have been tossed by our lovestruck friend as she was on the verge of an encounter with New York’s Finest. I knew guys who used to throw beer cans from apartment windows — when they were in high school. Perhaps the mysterious Casanova in question, a Philosophy student at NYU, could have discoursed on Emmanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, which stipulates that an action is moral based on whether one can imagine everyone else in the world doing it.
Now, can you imagine everyone in Bushwick (forget the entire world for now) throwing beer cans, chicken bones and other refuse on the street? If that were the case, we would live in a neighborhood with perpetually dirty streets, besotted sidewalks, and a battered housing stock that is only affordable to enterprising young “artists” because it has been neglected for so long. Oh, wait, nevermind. Scratch that last paragraph. Party on, cans away!
One of my housemates, whom I bumped into on the train today, told me that last night cops were handing out these flyers at the Morgan Avenue L station. “Remember to close and lock your doors and windows when leaving your residence” — Are people moving into this neighborhood really that oblivious? “Put things out of sight before parking your vehicle” — I would do that in the Upper East Side, forget Bushwick.
These bits of wisdom are brought to you by the 90th Precinct.
Trying to understand what exactly the hell happened last week in Bushwick when cops arrested 30 or so kids has been a bit difficult. Quick background: Donnell McFarland, 18, undeniably a gang member and possibly even leader (depending on the report), was shot dead by a rival gang member a few weeks ago. Last week, a group of his peers — friends and neighbors (according to some sources), fellow gang members (according to others) — gathered to either travel to his funeral or to make a show of strength (again depending on the source).
The New York Post of course starts out falling over itself to praise the cops as “outright heroes.” But then it does mention that at least one kid was walking on cars, and that the kids were arrested for their own good: they surely would have been targeted for attack by the rival gang, a view with which Councilwoman Diana Reyna sides. But then the far-left activist Drum Major Institute’s blog counters that the last thing these kids need is to be exposed to the criminal “justice” system — an opinion I share.
What is the right answer? Anyone have better info, sources, or opinions on this story?
