Tag Archive for: NYPD

Bronx T-Mobile store workers use merchandise security tags to help NYPD track and arrest armed robber in Manhattan – New York Daily News

/in


Traceable electronic security tags on merchandise stolen from a Bronx cell phone store helped cops track down an armed robber after a wild chase Saturday on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, police said.

Two armed men ransacked a T-Mobile location on E. 149 St. near Union Ave. in Woodstock about 3:20 p.m., cops said.

One of the men fled on foot while the other drove off with the stolen goods in a gray BMW.

(File) Two armed men ransacked the T-Mobile location on E. 149 St. near Union Ave. in the Bronx on Saturday — and cops nabbed one of them with help from store workers and merchandise tracking devices. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

Quick-thinking store employees began tracking the stolen electronics through security tags the thieves overlooked, police said.

Aided by the store workers and the trackers, cops followed the trail to the Upper East Side, where they soon found the BMW.

When they tried to pull over the car at E. 96 St. and Third Ave., the driver hit the gas, ramming a police vehicle as he tried to escape.

The crook made it just three blocks east when responding officers stopped the BMW on the southbound FDR Drive at E. 96 St.

The suspect ditched the BMW, ran one block up the highway, and tossed something into the East River before cops put him under arrest.

One of the arresting officers injured his wrist during the struggle.

The robber’s name and charges against him were not immediately released. His partner in crime was still being sought late Saturday.

The NYPD’s Harbor Unit and Aviation Unit were searching for the object he threw in the water Saturday evening.

Source…

How the N.Y.P.D. Is Using Post-9/11 Tools on Everyday New Yorkers

/in


But Mr. Ingram, an organizer and activist, was not a terrorism suspect. Officers were seeking him in connection with his participation in a protest, where they said he spoke through a bullhorn near the ear of a patrolwoman, causing her temporary hearing loss. He would later be charged with assault of a police officer — a case that was subsequently dropped.

The intensity of the police operation was shocking, Mr. Ingram said.

“It kind of felt stupid. I felt like it was a waste of taxpayer money and funds,” Mr. Ingram said. “We’ve created a monster that’s kind of always existed within America, but we’ve given that monster — because of 9/11, because of other terrorist attacks and things that have happened — unquestionable, unchecked power.”

Safeguards meant to limit the police’s ability to monitor political activity were suspended. Thousands of additional cameras and license plate readers were installed around Manhattan, part of the Lower and Midtown Manhattan Security Initiatives.

Only recently — because of a law passed by the City Council last summer, to police officials’ dismay — did the breadth of the Police Department’s surveillance dragnet begin to become clear. The law, known as the POST Act, requires the department to provide a public accounting of its post-9/11 technological arsenal.

Police officials have proved reluctant to fully comply with the transparency requirements, and have historically kept such expenditures secret even from the city’s own comptroller. But according to figures maintained by the city’s Independent Budget Office, the Police Department’s spending on intelligence and counterterrorism nearly quadrupled between 2006 and 2021, up to $349 million from $83 million in 2006, the earliest year for which the office keeps data.

For a department that was running entire precinct houses on single computers at the time of the attacks, the expansion has been stunning, said Raymond W. Kelly, whose second stint as New York Police Department commissioner began just months after the attacks. Mr. Kelly led a frantic, rapid effort to bring the department up to speed.

Source…

Law Dept. Hack Slows Down Protester Lawsuits Against NYPD

/in


(TNS) — The hack of the city Law Department is causing major delays in high-profile lawsuits over the NYPD’s response to racial protests last summer, a new court filing revealed Wednesday.

Lawyers for protesters and the state attorney general’s office wrote in a letter in Manhattan Federal Court that their adversaries in the Law Department seemed in the dark about the scope of the hack now in its fourth day.

“Defense counsel said that due to the disruption of the Law Department’s computer systems — which the Law Department says has shut down their entire computer system, making even the most basic litigation tasks impossible — she could not say when Defendants will begin producing documents. Counsel had no specific information concerning the technical issues in her office, which appear to be caused by a hacker, nor an expected timeline for resolving them,” lawyer Remy Green wrote, recounting a Tuesday phone call with a city attorney.


Green and other lawyers seek a hearing to address the delays and want a technical expert from the city to attend and answer questions about the hack.

Judge Colleen McMahon is overseeing lawsuits, including one filed by state Attorney General Letitia James, alleging the NYPD violated protesters’ civil rights last summer following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“My sense on the call was that they very much do not have it under control and do not know what’s going on,” said Joshua Moskovitz, another attorney on the protest cases.

Meanwhile, city officials continued to dodge questions about whether the Law Department used multifactor authentication, which is widely considered a cybersecurity best practice.

A policy memo issued by the New York City’s Cyber Command two years ago stated the security measure is a requirement for city workers with “restricted” or “sensitive” information access as of April 23, 2019.

But city officials refused to say whether the Law Department used multifactor authentication at the time of the hack.

A Law Department spokesman declined to comment on the matter aside from saying that discussing it in public is…

Source…

More NYPD Reforms: Super-Violent Plainclothes Units Disbanded, Body Cam Footage Given A 30-Day Release Mandate

/in

A bunch of police reform efforts are underway in New York City. NYPD officers may not have been responsible for the killing that has sparked protests around the country, but they’ve provided plenty of ammo for police critics and reformers over the years.

With Mike Bloomberg no longer running front office interference for the PD, the department has found itself absorbing more un-deflected criticism. This criticism is finally turning to action, now that it’s incredibly inconvenient for ANY city to pretend its law enforcement agencies aren’t in need of an overhaul.

Early last week, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea decided to dismantle the NYPD’s plainclothes units. These officers didn’t look like police officers. And since they didn’t look like police officers, they didn’t behave like police officers. Removing the uniform seemed to remove all pretense of accountability as well, resulting in the so-called (and strangely-named) “anti-crime” units being the NYPD’s leader in crimes committed against citizens.

The plainclothes “anti-crime” units operated out of unmarked vehicles, and did not respond to 911 calls. Instead, they were charged with what Shea called “proactive” policing. The anti-crime teams across all 77 precincts will be disbanded.

“When you look at the number of anti-crime officers that operate within New York City, and when you look at a disproportionate, quite frankly, number of complaints, shootings—and they are doing exactly what was asked of them,” Shea said. “I think we can do better. I think that policing in 2020 is not what it was in five, ten, twenty years ago.”

While it seems strange Commissioner Shea would state that generating complaints and corpses is “exactly what was asked” of the anti-crime units, the good news is they won’t be roaming around menacing the public as a cohesive unit. The 600 officers were responsible for 31% of fatal NYPD shootings, despite only being 6% of the total police force. In recent years, “anti-crime” officers were responsible for a number of high-profile killings of citizens, including Eric Garner, whose death similarly prompted protests all over the nation. The disbanding scatters the plainclothes officers across several other units, giving more divisions a chance to be corrupted by these bad apples.

On a more positive note, the NYPD can no longer act like body camera footage is a proprietary good the public shouldn’t be allowed to have access to. The NYPD’s body camera policy — released months after the cameras were deployed (as the result of court-ordered reforms) — gave the department every excuse it wanted to never release footage.

This followed a lawsuit against the NYPD by one of the city’s police unions, which sought to block almost any release of footage ever under the state’s infamous “50-a” law, which forbids the release of police officers’ personnel files and disciplinary records. (Or at least it did… until it was taken off the books in another recent reform move.) How footage of interactions with residents fit these descriptions was left up to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association’s imagination.

The policy has been rewritten in light of national events. The previous version gave the NYPD up to 30 days to come up with a reason why it wouldn’t be releasing recordings. The new policy mandates the release of certain recordings within 30 days, flipping the old policy on its head.

The new policy obligates the NYPD to release and eventually publish online all audio and video of officers’ interactions that involve gunshots fired in public spaces, the deployment of tasers and the use of force that results in death or substantial bodily injury.

“Effective immediately, the NYPD’s 24,000 body cameras now have a mandatory 30 day release policy,” he tweeted Tuesday morning.

Certainly the NYPD will do everything it can to prevent release of these recordings, despite the mandate. It has two powerful unions willing to sue the city and their members’ employer over anything that might result in additional transparency or accountability. But the city’s tolerance for these unions may finally be running out. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who talked a tough police reform game while campaigning only to dial back his rhetoric once in office, is back on the warpath and calling out the unions for their contribution to the destruction of the relationship between city residents and the NYPD.

“The SBA leadership has engaged in racist activities so many times I can’t even count it,” he said of the NYPD sergeants’ union.

“I’m just sick of it, I’ve been sick of it for years,” he added. “What I’ve seen of the SBA, and too often the PBA, is efforts to divide us, to hold us back, to create all sorts of negativity, to push back progress, to undermine efforts at unity. It’s literally anti-social what these union leaders do.”

Whether these reform efforts result in lasting change remains to be seen. But it’s far more than anyone’s demanded of the NYPD in years.

Techdirt.