Bratton Blames Citizens For Filming Cops Breaking The Laws.….….

Have you ever won­dered why Police abuse and kill peo­ple and there nev­er seem to be redress or a seri­ous attempt to cease and desist from those practices ?
Here’s what Commissioner William Bratton the leader of the NYPD, the world’s largest police depart­ment had to say about film­ing cops who abuse citizens.

“The cam­eras are every­where, but when they start lit­er­al­ly get­ting in your face, inter­rupt­ing arrests, it starts to become prob­lem­at­ic,”. Bratton spoke crit­i­cal­ly about the prac­tice of film­ing police

encoun­ters, say­ing it is often “agi­tat­ing sit­u­a­tions.”Bratton was speak­ing at The Atlantic’s “New York Ideas” symposium.
This com­ment is the most brain-dead as well as tone-deaf thing that Bratton could have said on the issue, and you know what in most cas­es it’s a total lie.
Police gen­er­al­ly are opposed to being filmed when they oper­ate. Even though cit­i­zens are well with­ing their legal rights to film police action as long as film­ing does not place offi­cers in dan­ger or hin­der their work.Generally police quick­ly estab­lish a perime­ter when they oper­ate, this they usu­al­ly do to pre­vent peo­ple film­ing them.
They are gen­er­al­ly abu­sive and abra­sive when they do. So Bratton’s com­ments have no basis in fact.

Bratton’s com­ments are par­tic­u­lar­ly appalling in light of a litany of police killings and abuse of cit­i­zens many of which are right there in the behe­moth New York Police Department which seem to be a de-fac­to gov­ern­ment in the city all by itself, answer­able to no one.
Rather than mov­ing to trans­form the way his agency is per­ceived , Bratton’s com­ments indi­cate a dou­bling-down on abro­gat­ing the rights of citizens.

In a state­ment, Loyda Colon, co-direc­tor of The Justice Committee, called Bratton’s remarks “out­ra­geous and offen­sive.” Colon not­ed that The Justice Committee “encour­ages all New Yorkers to sup­port pub­lic safe­ty by watch­ing and film­ing police activ­i­ty as a means of deter­ring and doc­u­ment­ing abuse, a prac­tice we call ‘Cop Watch.’ ” “Bratton’s mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of this prac­tice rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about why he wants to avoid pub­lic scruti­ny and demon­strates his unwill­ing­ness to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for his offi­cers’ dis­re­spect of and vio­lence against our com­mu­ni­ties,” Colon added.

Bratton is engaged in clas­sic blam­ing of the vic­tim, the absur­di­ty of those com­ments ought to give every sane per­son, even the most ardent cop-apol­o­gist seri­ous pause.

Every per­son has a fun­da­men­tal right to film or pho­to­graph events occur­ring in pub­lic. No per­son can have an expec­ta­tion of pri­va­cy while in pub­lic spaces.
Cops gen­er­al­ly see them­selves above the laws , yet these rules apply to them also.
Police have wide lat­i­tude to do their jobs. They are vest­ed with fright­en­ing pow­ers includ­ing the pow­er to take life.
They have pow­er to arrest any­one who gets in their way while they are car­ry­ing out their law­ful duties. Obstruction of Governmental Administration is pun­ish­able by up to a year in jail. For defen­dants arrest­ed in New York City (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island), this sen­tence will be served on the infa­mous Rikers Island.
Cops gen­er­al­ly tack on the charge of resist­ing arrest for good mea­sure when charg­ing “Obstruction “. The resist­ing charge gen­er­al­ly car­ry the same penalty .
Fortunately for many arrest­ed by NYPD cops, some Judges are able to see through the lies.
Fair judges cor­rect­ly dis­miss the resist­ing charge, oth­ers in the pock­ets of the police union don’t.
In many instances NYPD cops charge sus­pects with resist­ing arrest with­out a sup­port­ing charge that neces­si­tat­ed the arrest in the first instance.

Why then is Bratton and his boys opposed to being filmed?
For the sim­ple rea­son that they will not be able to use those lies to incar­cer­ate peo­ple they don’t like or deem trou­ble makers.
Incredibly the res­i­dents of NYC are inclined to believe the police depart­ment is work­ing to trans­form itself from a good ‑old-boys net­work of blue-clad thugs who inher­it the job passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. Some res­i­dents actu­al­ly believe that the depart­ment no longer beat and kill peo­ple unlaw­ful­ly. Some are inclined to believe that they do not plant evi­dence, sum­mar­i­ly lie and fal­si­fy reports. Some actu­al­ly believe these guys are work­ing in their interest.
The fact is for a large cross-sec­tion of the city the only cops they see are the abu­sive crim­i­nal cops who show them no respect. Bill Bratton was just in front of the city coun­cil ask­ing for an addi­tion­al 1000 cops to add to the over 35,000 stand­ing army he present­ly have under his con­trol. Many in the city coun­cil are quite will­ing to add anoth­er 1000 blue clad un-account­able cops to the mam­moth army that is already on the city’s payroll.

If you thought Bratton was done you are wrong he went on to say quote :
“There are so many cop-haters out there. Everybody wants to get that cam­era out, and not record the good things that are hap­pen­ing. They are all try­ing to incite or record an offi­cer step­ping out of line.”

Are you kid­ding me ? Of course it’s about record­ing them step­ping out of line.
Why would Bratton not see a prob­lem with cops step­ping out of line?
Fix your cops com­mis­sion­er, and stop wor­ry­ing about cit­i­zens engag­ing in their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed func­tion of film­ing them to ensure that peo­ple’s rights are protected .

Cops on the beat do what they are told to do. They hear the con­ver­sa­tions from their seniors at the precinct lev­el , they hear from their union and they sure as hell hear from their bosses.
In a city run by a Mayor and not the Police depart­ment, the Mayor would be all over these unsa­vory , ill-advised and das­tard­ly com­ments from a police chief whose offi­cers are fre­quent­ly being accused of exces­sive use of force.
Unfortunately de Blasio can­not get involved in dis­ci­plin­ing Bratton his sub­or­di­nate. After all it was Bratton who gave him cov­er recent­ly when the two cops were killed in Queens. NYPD’s finest staged a insur­rec­tion which start­ed with them turn­ing their backs on him.
It took Bratton to smooth things over, since then deBlasio can­not extri­cate his nose from the rear end of the police department.
Mayor de Balasio is not about to chas­tise Bratton , on that we are sure.