It's okay; I wasn't using those civil rights anyway

[sabotabby]

New York puts up surveillance tower to protect yuppies from black people in Harlem. Someone please tell me that this is a joke. (via brownfist.)

Hey, let's give the NYPD even more power. They're responsible, right?

Comments

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

For fuck's sake! When are you g0rram whites going to stop invading other peoples' lands?!

[sabotabby]

Hey, it's a cultural tradition.

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

That land belongs to the whites, they're just letting the browns rent it.

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

Because god said so?

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

I don't know about God, but Columbus was a pirate!

[sabotabby]

Not the fun kind of pirate, alas.

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I like to pretend Columbus wore lots of makeup. It just makes me feel better. I can't explain it.

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

Well, I was about to say, "If god said so, then it must be true! All your land are belong to us."

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

Actually, God gave the land to Columbus via the Pope, right? But I'm not Spanish or Italian!

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

Well of course! If god didn't want Europeans to colonise the americas, why did he let Columbus find it?

[andreazenith.livejournal.com]

*blinks*

*blinks again*

Holy shit.

[sabotabby]

Yeah. I wasn't sure if I read that right at first.

[gabski.livejournal.com]

well, i hope the cops know where the visible spots are... they'll have to steer clear when they beat up the brown people.

[sabotabby]

Nah. If no one objects to a big open-air prison with a surveillance tower, no one's going to object to cops beating up brown people.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

I wish it were a joke. Keep in mind, the NYPD has 35,000 officers. That is more than the number of active duty military troops in half the independent states on the planet, including such wide-ranging (and more heavily populated than NYC) places as Sweden, Zimbabwe and Guatemala. When anti-police brutality activists here refer to the NYPD in neighborhoods with people of color as an "occupying army", it's not an exaggeration.

[sabotabby]

That's unbelievable. That's the population of the town I grew up in.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

How does comparing police force sizes with military force sizes make any sense? Armies respond to national emergencies, warfare and foreign conflict, and police forces respond to every goddamn cat stuck in a tree and domestic dispute calls. Of course there is going to be more police officers than active duty troops.

I mean I don't doubt that NYC is heavily policed, but compare apples to apples. Like for example, Toronto, with a bit more than a quarter of the population of NYC, has only 5200 police officers. Montréal, with 1.8m inhabitants, has 4,200 police officers. Comparisons with Chicago, Dallas, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Djibouti and Mumbai could be even more illustrative.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

police forces respond to every goddamn cat stuck in a tree and domestic dispute calls

Please! Around here the police don't even respond to assaults in progress if they happen in the wrong neighborhood, as I discovered when I witnessed one. "911 Is a Joke" is not just a catchy tune by Public Enemy.

Most armies in most countries primarily serve the purpose of domestic repression. So does the NYPD. How do ya like them apples?

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Fine. But I still find it an odd rhetorical device, if it has to be explained in order to make sense.