NYCLU Tries To Shine Light On NYPD's Attack On Privacy

When the NYPD isn't beating down bicyclists, they're busy trying to install cameras to record anything and everything in order to turn our city into a police state. Operation Sentinel is one step towards that goal and not everyone is happy about it (surprise!). The NYCLU is taking the lead in the fight against the cops by trying to uncover some details about the program, but police officials are trying especially hard to stay in out of the public's flashlight.

From The Gothamist:

The NYCLU is concerned because, per the group's associate legal director Christopher Dunn, "the police tracking millions of law-abiding New Yorkers...has profound privacy implications." The NYCLU wants information about the scope of information to be collected, how the police will use the information, who the information will be shared with, what privacy protections will be included, and many more things.

Referring to the reports of Operation Sentinel (aka Operation Photograph Every Single Car in NYC), executive director Donna Lieberman said, "The public and our elected officials can’t keep reading about these programs in the paper." The NYPD's response? Spokesman Paul Browne told the NY Times, "We have already provided the N.Y.C.L.U. with information short of a road map for terrorists to use in another attack on the financial district."

While the cops can respond with childish retorts, people's privacy is a serious matter. Recording every car that goes in and out of the city may be no big deal for those that would call Patrick Henry a terrorist-sympathizer. Though for those that still like to adhere to the Constitution and the ideals of our founding fathers when it comes to the issues of life, liberty and property the pursuit of happiness, Operation Sentinel needs to be closely watched. More so than the NYPD plans to watch us.

NYPD Looks Multicultural On The Outside, But Not Inside

The NYPD has always been a controversial force in New York City. Race and class have been two strong factors about that controversy and it continues on into 2008. The NYCLU released a report today showing how race is really played out in the ranks, how force is used and how it is being kept track of.

From The NYCLU:

• During the last two years the NYPD reported the race of those shot by police, nearly 90 percent of the people shot at by officers were black or Latino. In 1998 the Department stopped reporting the race of civilian targets and started reporting the breed of dogs being shot.
• The NYPD command structure remains almost entirely white. At the end of 2002, 85.3 percent of the 735 members of the NYPD at or above the rank of captain were white males, with blacks holding only 3.9 percent of those positions. At the end of 2007, after five years of a large number of retirements and promotions, 84.3 percent of leadership positions were held by white males, with the numbers of blacks actually shrinking to 3.7 percent.
• In 77 percent of the incidents where officers fired their weapons at civilians between 1999 and 2006, the officers were the only ones shooting, with officers often shooting at unarmed civilians (like Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo).
• In 2006 (the most recent year for which there is information), police officers fired an average of five shots per incident when they were the only ones shooting, which is the highest number for the entire eight years for which these figures have been reported.

Those are serious numbers that, as Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU remarked, scream out for serious review. The police and race relations are as important as they were decades ago. Race is still a problem for the police, and without a serious investigation and enforcement of real reform, we'll be looking at the same numbers in another ten, twenty or thirty years from now.