Brooding Cynyc

Thursday, July 16, 2020

DEMONSTRATIONS, PROTESTS, AND VIOLENCE FUELS

THIS SUMMER OF DISCONTENT

“Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz”

From “Jungleland” by Bruce Springsteen

Tags and Updated Links:

NYPD Strategic Response Group, Disorder Control Unit,

Mass Demonstrations, Random Destruction, Vandalism,

and Violence, Historical Perspective,

(Thursday July 16, 2020, Midtown North) We have seen this horribly distorted anarchic dance before. Certainly, the NYPD has within our collective memory banks the recollections of such turbulence, anti-Police street warfare, and the shotgun merging of disjointed factions of malcontents delivering the shit bombs of social unrest and violence onto our streets under the guise of “social justice”. Oh yes, we have seen this frenzied dance before. Legitimate protesters clear the way for scumbag looters, rioters, and those infected with a criminal instinct in an effort to deliver a nightmare scenario as the nights comes in. The darkness conceals what the next mornings light will reveal. Broken store windows, vile graffiti, embers of dying fires, shattered glass from attacked NYPD vehicles, and looted goods strewn across some of most famous thoroughfares. The acrid aroma of the previous night’s chaos lingers and the daily headlines describe the transpiring events that marked the early morning hours. While most of Our City slept the NYPD constricted, and effectively isolated the skirmish lines to a few limited pockets of lawlessness.

CAUSE AND EFFECT

On Memorial Day, May 25^th, a White Minneapolis Police Officer was filmed pinning a Black suspect, George Floyd, to the pavement shortly after responding to a 911 call. The senior Officer at the scene Officer Derek Chauvin used his body weight as he kept his knee on the neck of Mr. Floyd. For nearly nine minutes Chauvin applied his body weight pressure even as Mr. Floyd repeatedly begged for relief saying several times, “I can’t breathe”. The scene was captured on cellphone video by many bystanders. The other three Officers who accompanied Chauvin appeared to stand idly by as the life and death crisis unfolded. Mr. Floyd was pronounced dead within an hour at a local hospital. Within hours as the sunset a crowd began to gather in front of the Cup Foods market, the scene of Mr. Floyd’s death. It did not take long for the first small fire to be lit, to hear the first sounds of neighborhood shop windows being broken. As the night wore on the crowd turned into a mob, a mob hellbent on destruction. As is always the case the looters came out and had carte blanche in their thieving; the Minneapolis Police Department was instructed to basically “Stand Down” and allow the unrest to escalate unabated. On the third night of the upheaval rioters managed to gain access to a Police Precinct and burn it to the ground. It was this act of surrender that would define the riot that followed not only in Minneapolis but in cities large and small across the country. The Minneapolis Police Department will forever have this shameful episode of blatant abdication as a dark chapter of failure as part of their legacy.

THE PEBBLE IN THE POND

The death of George Floyd was the proverbial pebble in the pond. A small piece of stone dropped into a small urban pond that caused a cascading series of social unrest that rippled across the country from coast to coast. Night after night as late June turned into July “peaceful demonstrators” would march in our cities streets while the nights grew ever more hazardous to life and property as many communities with little to no previous experience with crowd control tactics became literal hotbeds of random and coordinated violence and looting. Oh yeah, there is ALWAYS looting. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King once said that “Rioting is the voice of the oppressed”. That may be so. However, vandalism, destruction, and looting are the language of the opportunistic criminal element.

As the weeks immediately following the worst of the rioting have given way to a more sober approach by many “activists” and “neighborhood organizers” in the Black Lives Matter movement and associated but less well defined “causes”, the mainstream media and commentators, analysts, and assorted “experts” and “academics” have sought to piece what they see has a simplistic puzzle into a coherent explanatory mosaic. But the world is not quite that simple despite how much such people wish it were. They are seemingly preoccupied with weaving together a broad range of issues with an unwieldy needle. Their determination to complete the mosaic includes weaving in the devastating effects of the Corona Virus across the country and particularly in the Black and Brown communities, the severe economic impact in those communities, a federal and local government who do not truly represent their issues.

HOLDING THE LINE

It did not take long for the ripples of near-anarchic lawlessness to invade the streets of Our City. On the weekend after George Floyd’s death, the hierarchy in 1PP sent an e-mail to all Members of Service (MOS) to “get your uniform ready”, that all MOS from every Command, Bureau, Unit, and Squad to be prepared to respond to any Precinct, in full uniform including “hats and bats” - (Riot helmets and Batons). The top brass in the Department was fully aware that it was just a matter of time, literally hours not days, before the criminal and social unrest would be unleashed on our streets. There is hands down no better trained and equipped Police Department in the country prepared for such widespread disorder (more to come on this at a later date). The Disorder Control Unit and its subsidiary Strategic Response Group have largely mastered the tactical and strategic art and science of mass demonstrations and the violent unrest that is certain to follow.

The challenge during this period of time was that there were “multiple hotspots” requiring NYPD intervention from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The upheaval in The Bronx was primarily the “typical” opportunistic vandalism and looting that was quickly extinguished relative to the huge throngs of people of various ideologies and violent intent that invaded sections of Brooklyn around the Barclays Center, in McCarren Park, Grand Army Plaza, and Crown Heights. In Manhattan several very large groups of marchers made their way along the West Side Highway toward Columbus Circle, from 110th Street and Central Park West to Washington Square Park, and several times they marched back and forth across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. There is nothing “peaceful” about obstructing the traffic on our City’s main thoroughfares, impeding the flow of Emergency Response Agencies including the FDNY – EMS, and NYPD. The looting was most severe just blocks from here in Midtown Manhattan, Times and Herald Squares, the locations of some of the most famous, iconic retailers including Macys.

LOOSING GROUND

As our City has poised for the next phase of “Reopening” from the last remaining Covid-19 restrictions the rioting has taken on a far more deadly, sinister complexion. In what has seemingly become nightly occurrences the rate of gun-related crime has soared, direct attacks on MOS of the NYPD have risen to unprecedented levels, and the hard fought and won victories in sharply curtailing violent crime over the last 25 years is rapidly dissipating in the summer heat. The facts on the ground are in no way a reflection of the men and women of the NYPD. Not at all. The widespread disorder and violence can be laid directly in the lap of the useless Mayor, Bill de Blasio.

The hapless Mayor embarrasses himself daily while holding during press conferences. He is completely devoid of any understanding about Our City, the diversity and complexities that are unique to NYC. His politics, for lack of a better word, and pursuant policies as stated in his press conferences expose a man epically unfit for the Office he now holds. It has become grossly obvious in a short period of time how his liberal views skew his approach regarding how Our City is governed, the role of the NYPD, and his disgusting desire to appease the left-wing extremists, even those who have perpetrated acts of wanton civil disruption and frenzied turbulence on our streets.

SUMMERS PAST

We have lived through long hot summers many times in the history of Our City. Those of us of a certain age can remember all too vividly those long-ago days when it felt that NYC was transforming into an armed encampment by radical groups. Their goals and objectives may have varied but their tactics were the same. We suffered through race riots several times in the 1960’s, as well as many anti-Vietnam war demonstrations. We knew days of palpable fear in Our subways and the long burning inferno that leveled large swathes of the South Bronx from arson. There were two summers when a faceless murderous entity who called himself the “Son of Sam” roamed the hot, still, muggy nights searching for prey around various “lovers’ lanes”. Yes, in many ways this is a dance we have seen before. Perhaps among the social phenomenon that does distinguish today from those similar epochs are the facts that much of the violence is organized by technology. Like-minded people can rapidly communicate and coordinate their activities via “smart phones” and a range of social media “apps” that serve as meeting places. What are now designated as “flash mobs” can appear very quickly as organizers can instantly orchestrate their adherent’s movements, hide caches of crude but effective weapons such as bricks, baseball bats, and Molotov cocktails to be used against the MOS of the NYPD.

Is what is transpiring in several large cities across the country a harbinger for the future happenings in NYC? If so, we very well may be doing battle with this civil and social turmoil for quite some time. In cities such as Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Austin, Texas, Louisville, Kentucky just to name a few, the protests persist with varying degrees of militancy. Indeed, we may be compelled to more aggressively operate to protect the greater good of NYC and all Our people in every Borough and Command. It may be a long, hot, protracted deployment of “Hats and Bats”.

May the Good Lord Protect

The Men and Women of The NYPD

Saturday, July 11, 2020

ONCE, WE DID OWN THE NIGHT

COMMISH SHEA ABRUPTLY DISBANDS

THE ANTI-CRIME UNITS

TAGS: NYPD, ANTI-CRIME UNITS,

NYPD HISTORY, FORMATION OF

STREET CRIME UNITS, COMMISSIONER DERMOT SHEA

CAPITULATES, US HISTORY 1960's - 1990's

(Friday June 19, 2020, Midtown South, NYC) In a startlingly head spinning capitulation to the recent groundswell in some quarters to “abolish”, and/or “defund” the Police, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea announced the elimination of the 82 elite Anti-Crime Units. He said all affected Officers and Detectives will be “reassigned”. Such a blatant display of pacifying, placating, and pandering to the most vocal of the protest groups that have found a platform in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an African American man at the hands of White Minneapolis Police Officers, is not only discouraging; it allows for the rank and file of the NYPD to realize that we have no backing, no support from the command level in One Police Plaza and in City Hall. What the future will look like is hard to speculate but all (or most) of us can recall the days when the first iteration of the Anti-Crime Units were formed and designated Street Crime Units back in the simmering cauldron of wide spread social unrest and crimes of every category were staggeringly high in from the late 1960’s and into the early 1980’s.

SMOKE IN THE AIR, BLOOD ON THE STREETS

The 1960’s will forever be known in American history as the most divisive, tumultuous, violent, and corrosive of our modern age. While engaged in an increasingly misunderstood and unpopular war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights struggle spawned riots and events of civil and social disobedience that bordered on sheer anarchy. The widening “Generation Gap” contributed to the vast disconnect between the “Greatest Generation” and their children and grandchildren comprising the ever growing “Baby Boom” The ugly triplets of White and Black populations living in hunger, grinding poverty, and neglect from, the inner cities of the north through the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and beyond becoming known via TV news lead many in the White audience to begin to examine their conscience and take a stand on Civil Rights. While the last vestiges of an overtly “Jim Crow” South were bitterly hanging on, a “Black Power” movement came to be in the choked urban ghettos. The most prominent and active of these groups were the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam. They disregarded Dr. Martin Luther King’s philosophy of “peaceful resistance” and “non-violent activism” and went on the prove far more militant than Malcolm X had been at the height of his influence. Both of those men would lose their lives to assassin’s bullets.

The “Counterculture” was beginning to ascend from the suburbs as boys of draft age refused to reply, burned their draft notices in protest, fled the country for Canada, and began to engage in behaviors that their parents couldn’t understand and certainly disapproved of. This was the genesis of the Generation Gap. While their protests were largely more peaceful than those related to Civil Rights there were any number of high-profile skirmishes reaching a crescendo when Governor Jim Rhodes dispatched Ohio National Guard troops to restore order on the Kent State campus after 4 nights of rioting. In 13 seconds, the National Guardsmen killed four students, wounded another nine, and leaving one paralyzed. This event galvanized protestors from a wide range of issues.

These events were played out to a lesser and greater degree in the streets of New York primarily as a “declared war” on the NYPD issued by Black activists like Eldridge Cleaver, Louis Farrakhan, Huey Newton, and others. They declared war and it was war they would be met with after several brutal Officer ambushes, assassinations, and murders. This had all gone on long enough. It was, as one seasoned Captain in the 34^th Precinct commented, in a long-lost candid TV soundbite from a moment of sheer chaos on the front line, “now it’s time to take back our streets”.

WE RECLAIMED THE NIGHT

And so it was into this breech the Street Crime Unit was born in 1971. Initially formed as the "City Wide Anti-Crime Unit” it did not take long for them to make their presence known. Operating in three member teams of plain clothes Officers they became a force to reckon with. Often, they would use “decoys” to attract those with a criminal bent. One Officer would lay on a bench in a subway station, a bus stop or park reeking of alcohol, appearing disheveled, and drunk; an easy target for the predators that roamed the night. The SCU patrolled the streets in confiscated taxis hoping an opportunistic thief would approach the cab when it was stopped at a red light. Little did the scumbags know there were three Cops in the taxi and they were going to be spending some time in Central Booking. The exploits of the Street Crime Unit are widely documented, their success still demands respect. They were officially disbanded in 2002 in the wake of the controversial shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999.

RECONSTITUTED

The SCU was reconstituted in 2002 and has been widely credited in the increasingly lower crimes that NYC has seen over the last two decades. Their aggressive tactics and underlying strategy was largely based on the “Broken Windows” theory as employed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his first Police Commissioner William Bratton. The results, while controversial to some in the minority communities, were highly effective. Others in the most crime ridden neighborhoods of color were grateful that the NYPD was in fact removing dangerous offenders from the streets. They welcomed the Anti-Crime Units presence. By the end of the sixth year of the Giuliani Administration NYC was unquestionably the “Safest Big City” in the United States. The statistics were undeniable (see CompStat) major crimes across the board, in all categories were ebbing down to levels not seen in a generation. CompStat was not without its detractors both in and out of the NYPD but after the rank and file MOS saw proof of the decreasing crime rate many were sold on the concept.

The world of Law Enforcement is like no other “business”, for lack of a better word. Construction workers take years to erect a structure, upon completion they move on to the next project. Lawyers argue cases and, upon conclusion they move along to the next case, their next client. This most certainly not true in the streets that are patrolled by the NYPD, nor is it true in keeping the gains of lowered crime rates down. It cannot be so. It seems the most ardent supporters of wide-ranging, vast “reform” in Policing that it is a time to put an end to real Policing.

Is there room for “better” Policing? Sure. The Police across the country have to examine their practices and procedures, their hiring and training, yet never losing sight of the often gritty realities of Policing. New York City is a most diverse, disparate, densely populated urban environment as there is anywhere in the USA and abroad. Once the smoke clears, the activists retreat rhetorically, and the tensions recede, the debate of how we Police, how our population is Policed can begin in earnest. In the heat of the current climate rational discussion about anything under the rubric of Police “reform” is simply not possible.

Until such time the men and women of the Finest Police Department in the world will show up to work tour after tour and do what it is that they do best.