i wanted to post about a protest-y article from last Sunday’s New York Times, but didn’t want to be that guy who always posts the political stuff. so this post is a double-feature, bicameral, dual.

for anyone who remembers 2004′s Republican National Convention protests in NYC, the idea that New York is a burgeoning police state isn’t very farfetched.

more than 1,800 protesters and uninvolved passersby were rounded up by the NYPD during that weeklong political circus in Madison Square Garden, and detained for up to 72 hours in filthy, overcrowded razor-wire pens in Pier 57 along the Hudson River.

charges were dropped in the vast majority of these cases, and many people were simply shoved out the backdoor of Central Booking (known as the “Tombs”) after a judge called the NYPD out on holding hundreds of people on charges that normally would’ve warranted a ticket. i thankfully escaped arrest that week (barely), but it was still quite a thing to see–and it certainly suggested some preditated repression on the part of the powers-that-be.

so what did i find on the front page of the New York Times last sunday?

City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention

…a full-length article about the drastic lengths to which the NYPD’s intelligence division went to target and nullify dissent during the RNC. one highlight:

Police records indicate that in addition to sharing information with other police departments, New York undercover officers were active themselves in at least 15 places outside New York — including California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montreal, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C. — and in Europe.

fact: if the NYPD were considered a standing army, it would be the sixth-largest army in the world.

i have a Flickr account! some samples below.

i haven’t taken purposeful photos in a long time, but now that i finally have a place to post & share whatever ends up in my camera, maybe i’ll start doing it more.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 11:03 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.