Should we call this the age of the citizenrazzi?
A week ago last Friday, during the monthly Critical Mass bike ride around the city, a rider zipping down Seventh Avenue through Times Square was arrested and charged with several offences, including attempted assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. The arresting officer, a rookie cop named Patrick Pogan, reported that Christopher Long had ridden his bicycle directly into him, causing Pogan to fall to the ground and suffer lacerations on both arms. Long was held for 26 hours before being released without bail.
Late that Sunday night, however, a fellow rider posted a video of the alleged assault on YouTube that suggested the officer was living in upside-down world. The video appears to show it was in fact Pogan who had assaulted Long, slamming the rider off his bike with a horrific body check that left the cop entirely unscathed. Hours after its posting, Pogan was stripped of his badge and gun, and placed on desk duty pending an investigation.
TORONTO — The changes are subtle, but Debora McIntosh, a 56-year-old grandmother raising four boys in the inner-city public-housing labyrinth called Alexandra Park Cooperative, perceives a flicker of hope.
When she opens her front door in the morning, she often sees a policeman on a bicycle. When a marked cruiser pulls up in the grimy courtyard, no longer do all the loitering teenagers scatter: Some stick around to talk to the cops.
"I think it's fair to say that I had a real problem working with this group"
It appears that changes to the existing legislation may be part of a long-term means of making the public complaints process responsive to the citizens whom it is intended to serve. It’s our hope that any legislation will be very carefully and sparingly drafted to avoid creating a situation which is no better, and perhaps even worse than the one we have now.
Dennis Jay Kenney, Crime, Fear, and the New York City Subways. Crime and Citizen Action. Praeger, New York. 1987.
P.1: "Having identified several law enforcement problems within their city, the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department began, in 1971, searching for workable remedial strategies. As they considered their options, it became evident that any concentration by the department on these specific problems would significantly interfere with their normal preventive patrol operations. Because patrol is considered by many, perhaps most, police officials to be the "backbone" of modern police technology, this was no insignificant problem.