Arrest Numbers Show The NYPD Is Handling Pandemic Enforcement With The Same Biased Enthusiasm It Put Into Stop And Frisk

from the at-least-the-selective-enforcement-is-consistent dept

You can take the stop-and-frisk out of the NYPD, but you can't remove the biased policing, as the old saying goes. The NYPD may have been forced to stop pushing every minority up against the nearest wall/fence/cop car after a federal court determined this to be a violation of their rights, but they're apparently continuing to enforce laws very selectively.

On Thursday night, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office became the first prosecutor in the city to release statistics on social-distancing enforcement. In the borough, the police arrested 40 people for social-distancing violations from March 17 through May 4, the district attorney’s office said.

Of those arrested, 35 people were black, four were Hispanic and one was white.

More than a third of the arrests were made in the predominantly black neighborhood of Brownsville. No arrests were made in the more white Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope.

So, this is more than just anecdotal evidence. It's, you know, evidence evidence. Plenty of anecdotal evidence exists of inconsistent social distancing enforcement is available, if you're interested in seeing that as well.

This bothers Mayor Bill De Blasio -- the man who won the election by promising to be someone other than Mike Bloomberg, who loudly and proudly supported the NYPD's "right" to harass and detain minorities. But he's not upset enough. And he's upset incorrectly. Critics are calling this selective enforcement of pandemic efforts a new stop-and-frisk. De Blasio is only upset about the terminology.

“What happened with stop and frisk was a systematic, oppressive, unconstitutional strategy that created a new problem much bigger than anything it purported to solve,” he said. “This is the farthest thing from that. This is addressing a pandemic. This is addressing the fact that lives are in danger all the time. By definition, our police department needs to be a part of that because safety is what they do.”

That's just talking around the problem. Yes, the pandemic response isn't "systematic," but the ingrained habits that have resulted in minorities being disproportionately targeted by NYPD officers certainly are. And his siding with the NYPD aligns him more with the man he replaced than the public that elected him. Both De Blasio and Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea claim this enforcement has been deployed "sparingly and fairly." It's hard to square "fairly" with the numbers released by the Brooklyn DA.

It also doesn't square with the total arrest numbers provided by the NYPD.

Citywide, black people make up 68 percent of those arrested on charges of violating social-distancing rules, while Hispanic people make up 24 percent, a deputy police commissioner, Richard Esposito, said late on Thursday night.

Only seven percent of the social distancing arrests citywide involved Caucasians.

The police union spoke up, because of course it did. The head of the PBA made one halfway decent point about bad laws and the problems inherent in enforcing them…

Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, declined to comment on Officer Garcia’s actions, but noted he and his colleagues “did not create the poorly conceived social-distancing policy they were sent out to enforce.”

… but followed that up by defending an officer who has been sued seven times and cost the city more than $200,000 in settlements. Officer Francisco X. Garcia was involved in a controversial social distancing arrest in which he punched a man onto the ground and then sat on him as he was handcuffed. Garcia has been removed from duty while this arrest is being investigated, which is apparently the equivalent of hanging this sinless man on the cross.

[Lynch] said City Hall was blaming Officer Garcia for carrying out the policy it had created. “Once again, our leaders are poised to trample a police officer’s rights in order to protect themselves,” he said.

Ah yes. Let's not "trample" those rights. But the rights of everyone else can be trampled while the NYPD fumbles its way through the pandemic, making minorities pay the price for the social distancing sins of an entire city.

Filed Under: bias, biased policing, civil liberties, nypd, pandemic, policing, social distancing

Tales From The Quarantine: 'Queer Eye' Guy Now Offering Support And Advice On Your Video Game Home Furnishings

from the for-the-wii-guy dept

The COVID-19 crises has changed most of our lives. Working from home is now the norm for many, rather than a perk. Sports is mostly gone, replaced by esports simulacrums. Schools are shut down, as are most non-essential businesses.

And the folks from Queer Eye are now advising on and critiquing your digital homes rather than your IRL abodes.

Queer Eye interior designer Bobby Berk, without any actual homes to visit and makeover right now, is keeping busy by offering his assistance at turning your Animal Crossing trashpit into something easier on the eye.

Or at least that was the intent with this Tweet, which was phrased as a means of getting some “some special hiptips”.

The responses to that tweet were swift and plentiful, as any veteran of the internet would have expected. Still, the entire thing turned into something of a combination affirmation project of fun, with Animal Crossing players posting pics of well-maintained digital homes for Berk to lavish with praise, or those with messes of digital homes to which Berk gave suggestions akin to what he does on television. And, on occasion, Berk got to do something a little closer to his day job.

It's both strange and interesting to see how we all adjust and adapt during these deeply weird times. Whatever the combination of video game escapism and internet fun this is, it's something close to what many of us need at the moment. And, for a little Techdirt angle on it all, it's a version of connecting with fans. One hopes this type of fan engagement will be remembered when this nightmare ends.

Filed Under: animal crossing, bobby berk, lockdown, quarantine, queer eye, social distancing

As We're All Living, Working, And Socializing Via The Internet... MIT Tech Review Says It Proves Silicon Valley Innovation Is A Myth

from the say-what-now? dept

I get that people are getting a bit of cabin fever and perhaps that's impacting people's outlook on the world, but a recent piece by David Rotman in the MIT Tech Review is truly bizarre. The title gets you straight to the premise: Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation. Of course, even the paragraph that explains the thesis seems almost like a modern updating of the famous "what have the Romans ever done for us?" scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian:

Silicon Valley and big tech in general have been lame in responding to the crisis. Sure, they have given us Zoom to keep the fortunate among us working and Netflix to keep us sane; Amazon is a savior these days for those avoiding stores; iPads are in hot demand and Instacart is helping to keep many self-isolating people fed. But the pandemic has also revealed the limitations and impotence of the world’s richest companies (and, we have been told, the most innovative place on earth) in the face of the public health crisis.

Wait, what? That doesn't seem "lame" at all. That kinda seems central to keeping much of the world safe, sane, and connected. And the next paragraph seems equally ridiculous:

Big tech doesn’t build anything. It’s not likely to give us vaccines or diagnostic tests. We don’t even seem to know how to make a cotton swab. Those hoping the US could turn its dominant tech industry into a dynamo of innovation against the pandemic will be disappointed.

Leaving aside the hilariously wrong "big tech doesn't build anything," this paragraph reads like "how dare pharmaceutical companies not build video conferencing software." Besides, tons of big tech companies are doing a lot (beyond the admitted list above) to help during the pandemic, including Google's and Apple's efforts to help with contact tracing, and then, of course, there are plenty of examples of the big tech companies of Silicon Valley trying to do more to help out in the pandemic as well. No matter what you think of Elon Musk, engineers at Tesla have been working on using a bunch of existing parts to build ventilators:

And that's already received praise (and some constructive suggestions) from healthcare professionals.

Basically, the entire premise of Rotman's article makes no sense at all, and he just keeps repeating it like if he says it enough, maybe people will believe him:

The pandemic has made clear this festering problem: the US is no longer very good at coming up with new ideas and technologies relevant to our most basic needs.

Except that we are -- as his own article makes clear. The fact that internet companies aren't magically creating vaccines isn't a condemnation of Silicon Valley innovation. I mean, at best, you could argue that it's a failure of big pharma innovation, but it seems a bit early to be saying that one way or another given that we're just a few months into this thing, and a bunch of innovations that are helping to rapidly create a vaccine, like genetic testing, have also developed with help from Silicon Valley.

The only way Rotman supports his premise is to argue that software/internet companies are producing software/internet products, rather than manufacturing physical goods. But, again, that's like saying "why doesn't Pfizer create videoconferencing software." It's not their business. And, perhaps Rotman should get out of Cambridge and come to Silicon Valley (well, post pandemic) to learn about how there'a a hardware renaissance happening in Silicon Valley, in part thanks to new innovations like 3D printing.

The whole article reads like Rotman had a premise, and then wrote the article despite the near total lack of any actual evidence to support the premise. It's a bad look for MIT's Tech Review, but what good has MIT ever brought the world anyway?

Filed Under: david rotman, hardware, innovation, pandemic, remote work, silicon valley, social distancing, software, technology

NYC Mayor Asks Residents To Snitch On Social Distancing Violators, Gets Dick Pics And Hitler Memes Instead

from the socially-distance-THIS-yo dept

"See something, say something" but for the coronavirus. How could it possibly go wrong?

Everyone put your hands down. Of course we know how it could go wrong. Opening up the lines to callers never works. The DHS knows this, even if it chooses to ignore this. Years of "see something, say something" did nothing more than fill its data stores with reports from curtain twitchers about things their brown neighbors were doing and do-gooding randos calling in everyone they saw walking around with a camera.

The home to the most "every Muslim is a suspect" city in the US should have known better than to open up a snitch line to the public. But officials like Governor Andrew Cuomo have already shown they're unable to fathom the concept of unintended consequences. Cuomo issued a mandate for mask-wearing in public while allowing an anti-mask law to run concurrently, inviting state law enforcement officers to engage in very selective enforcement.

Without a doubt, the state has a COVID problem. But doing dumb shit isn't going to fix it. At best, it's just going to tie up city resources.

Enter NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio. A city in the deep throes of a pandemic needs solid leadership. This isn't it. This is only something that seems sort of useful until someone gives it a few seconds of thought.

On April 18, Mayor De Blasio took decisive action in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus:

If you see someone failing to practice social distancing, rat them out, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged Saturday as part of a new city effort to corral the coronavirus.

“We still know there’s some people who need to get the message. And that means sometimes making sure the enforcement is there to educate people and make clear we’ve got to have social distancing,” Hizzoner said in a video posted to Twitter

To do that, is “simple,” he explained.

Snap a photo of an offending person or crowd, set the location on the image, and text it to 311-692.

I don't know what he expected, but anyone who's had any internet experience knows what the public will do when it's given access to a government hotline (or an internet poll, etc.).

Photos of extended middle fingers, the mayor dropping the Staten Island groundhog and news coverage of him going to the gym have all been texted to a special tip line that de Blasio announced Saturday, according to screenshots posted on Twitter.

Believe it or not, that's the better stuff. The government wanted the public to respond and respond the public did. Emphatically and obscenely.

An NYPD source said that “dick pic” photos of real penises have also been texted to 311, and a caller phoned in a tip that de Blasio was seen performing oral sex on someone “in an alleyway behind a 7-11” early Sunday.

Feeling any safer, New York? If you ask people to become informants, you're going to have to sift through a lot of bullshit. If you ask people to report their neighbors for being in the proximity of other people, you're going to get Hitler references and dick pics. And if you haven't prepared for this inevitable eventuality, you're going to have to cut off your access to the very small amount of genuine tips to clean out all the garbage you didn't realized you'd asked for.

City Hall confirmed Tuesday that the 311 text line was shuttered to clear out a backlog of crank complaints on Sunday.

The solution isn't a new tip line that's going to quickly turn into an IRL 4Chan. The solution is to let existing systems handle the influx and hope for the best. Yes, too many people still use 911 and dispatch lines like all-purpose complaint boxes but asking New Yorkers to snitch on each other for being social was never going to work out well.

People are already feeling the encroachment of the government as the pandemic wears on. Asking residents to be part of the perceived problem is always going to result in little-a anarchy. Government officials never seem to understand most Americans think being a snitch is pretty much un-American. This is something we expect authoritarian nations to do: turn citizens against each other. We don't care for it much in the Land of the Free. There will always be outliers willing to sell the person across the street out to the fuzz, but most Americans would rather let their fingers (or other appendages) fly when the government asks them to be unpaid informants.

Filed Under: 311, bill deblasio, covid-19, new york, nyc, say something, see something, snitch line, social distancing, tipline