NYPD sexually assaulting female OWS protestors

May 4, 2012 9:54 AM

I suspect one reason so many shy away from confronting the obvious is because it raises extremely troubling questions about the role of police in American society. Most middle class Americans see the primary role of police as maintaining public order and safety. Instances when police are clearly trying to foment violence and disorder for political purposes so fly in the face of everything we have been taught that our instinct is to tell ourselves it isn’t happening: there must have been some provocation, or else, it must have just been individual rogue cops. Certainly not something ordered by the highest echelons. But here we have to remember the police are an extremely top-down, centralized organization. Uniformed officers simply cannot behave in ways that flagrantly defy the law, in full public view, on an ongoing basis, without having at least tacit approval from those above.

David Graeber (previously) reports that the NYPD are now carrying out an apparently coordinated tactic of widespread sexual assaults against female protestors.
posted by crayz (14 comments total)

To be honest my first impulse was to call a sympathetic Times reporter. He said he was going to see if he could spin a story out of it. Apparently his editors told him it wasn’t news.

Here is the public contact info for the NYTimes ombudsman.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:05 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Not as much fun as Cops in MN giving occupy protesters free drugs just to see how high they get.
posted by delmoi at 10:05 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

If you're an occupy protester in NY, you should probably have a camera/microphone on you when you go near the cops.
posted by delmoi at 10:06 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

You know, this is terrible and tragic if true, but it still really irks me when I simply have questions about an acusation to automatically dismiss my questioning because giving the bad guys the same benefit of innocence until proved guilt just makes me a sheep while accepting annecdote and conspiracy theory at face value makes me the enlightened one.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:08 AM on May 4, 2012

Graeber's argument strikes me more as an analysis of systemic faults in US policing and government than a conspiracy theory.
posted by audi alteram partem at 10:10 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

You know, this is terrible and tragic if true, but it still really irks me when I simply have questions about an acusation to automatically dismiss my questioning because giving the bad guys the same benefit of innocence until proved guilt just makes me a sheep while accepting annecdote and conspiracy theory at face value makes me the enlightened one.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:08 AM on May 4 [+] [!]



Hey 10th, he responds to that kind of doubt and skepticism in the article.

If we're going to do this in good faith, as you proclaim to desire, maybe respond to that first instead of worrying about previous bad encounters. If that doesn't work out, well, we have mods.

Calling it conspiracy theory isn't a great way to set the tone; I really would encourage you to read the article and then do this conversation right.
posted by Stagger Lee at 10:12 AM on May 4, 2012

Graeber's argument strikes me more as an analysis of systemic faults in US policing and government than a conspiracy theory.

Perhaps, but only if you drop the assumption that there was a tactical decision made and an order given. There are a lot of individual scumbags on the NYPD after all.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:14 AM on May 4, 2012

He addresses that as well.
Go read the article now. Shoo.
posted by Stagger Lee at 10:15 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Systemic problems do not require an explicit command structure. Whether or not officers are ordered to rough up protesters, their actions can still be influenced by implicit cultures of violence, racism and sexism in ways that contravene justice and decent human behavior.
posted by audi alteram partem at 10:16 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

You know, this is terrible and tragic if true.

Photographic evidence of bruises above a woman's breast. A lady's broken wrist. Eyewitnesses of assault. Where does the if true come in? Why is it so hard to believe that a police state is mobilizing sexual assault against protestors?
posted by ChuraChura at 10:17 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

If you're an occupy protester in NY, you should probably have a camera/microphone on you when you go near the cops.

Take out "occupy," "in NY," and "probably," and you've got it.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:17 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

'You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride.'

People like to call these a few 'bad apples,' but they always seem to leave off the rest of that phrase.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:18 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

I have to say, after reading the article, it doesn't sound like there are actually very many cases of this, just a couple, and even then it was during an arrest. And subduing someone for arrest in a protest situation isn't exactly a precision maneuver. If someone is trying to get away from a cop, the cop is going to grab that person bodily, and as the chest area is a pretty big target on women, it seems likely that some people are going to be grabbed there.

It seems more likely to me that this is just a very unpleasant side effect of excessive force on the part of the police. I just don't see anything to his argument that it is intentional on an institutional level. But right now there is very little data. He is interpreting it one way, I am interpreting it another.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:18 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

We badly, badly need law enforcement reform in the US. The things cops do and get away with, over and over again, from unabashed brutality to a nearly limitless capacity to declare any behavior as grounds for arrest (and thereby, grounds for the aforementioned brutality) to unpunished murder, are outrageously offensive to the putative mandate of their office, in addition to being uniquely and powerfully corrosive to the state of the US as a free society. I don't think anything is quite as destructive to an ordinary citizen's sense of equity and positive relationship to the state as being gratuitously brutalized by a peace officer.

I think the federal government needs to step up and take some action to get the police in line, but I also can't really even imagine that happening. Depressing. I wonder what it would take to make it happen, though.
posted by clockzero at 10:18 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]