“This Culture Has Got To Change”

The issues raised in the Voice series that showed the NYPD was cooking the books actually were investigated by the NYPD, except the findings were kept secret:

The implications of the report are obvious: If the 81st Precinct was a typical station house, then crime manipulation is more widespread than city officials have admitted.

John Eterno, a criminologist at Molloy College and a former NYPD captain, says that what was happening in the 81st Precinct is no isolated case. “The pressures on commanders are enormous, to make sure the crime numbers look good,” Eterno says. “This is a culture. This is happening in every precinct, every transit district, and every police housing service area. This culture has got to change.”

As for [the 81st Precinct Commander], he’s no rogue commander, says Eterno, who has published a book about crime reporting with John Jay College professor Eli Silverman. “[The commander] is no different from any other commander,” he says. “This is just a microcosm of what is happening in the entire police department.”

If Only Every Applebee’s Could Be Like This!

You certainly have to appreciate the rhetorical effort:

CB12 rejected the proposal after hearing the owners had presented a plan to the economic development committee in early February, which stated that the restaurant was slated to entertain 120 to 200 people with live music and DJs and remain open from 5 p.m. to 4 a.m. on weekends and 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Monday through Thursday.

“It will be similar in style to Applebee’s,” Miguel Acosta, a restaurant representative, told the committee, referring to the national restaurant chain.

Is This On Company Time?

Apparently Marc Ecko is otherwise occupied this week cleaning drapes at his estate or something:

City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. is calling for a boycott of a new ABC show he says attacks Christianity.

Keep in mind there are 51 of these guys.

The Brooklyn Nets Are Slowly Killing Our Children

One thing the ridiculous Barclays Center promotional video didn’t mention was how much the arena is doing to encourage healthful eating:

Burger joints are bouncing up around the nearly completed home of the Nets like loose balls as national chains vie with local businesses to win over thousands of hungry fans expected to hit the neighborhood in search of game-time grub.

No less than five new burger spots have opened in the last year within a half mile of the arena — and while the Nets won’t tip off there until September, restaurant owners say the game is already on for them.

Next Time They Parade Around Some Dumbshit Who Says He’s Angry At “Obama” Or “Jews” Or Whatever, Remember That This Is The Same Police Force That Fills Quotas By Picking Off People Who Rest Their Feet On Subway Seats

The biggest misconception in the issue of whether it’s OK to have the NYPD act like the CIA is that they’ve prevented actual terrorist attacks. Take Mike Lupica’s fawning column today, for example:

Let Kelly continue to use NYPD surveillance of conversations inside an Islamic bookstore in Bay Ridge, one attached to a mosque, that helps New York cops keep a Herald Square subway station from being blown sky high.

The names you want to know about on that one, guys who certainly were a threat to public safety, were Shahawar Matin Siraj and James Elshafay, eventually arrested and tried and convicted in federal court. Siraj, who worked in that bookstore, ended up getting 30 years. And there is the “spying” that last year resulted in the arrests of Ahmed Ferhani and Mohammed Mamdouh and a plan from radical Islam to bomb a Manhattan synagogue.

This is just the start of a much longer list of how the countersurveillance blueprint Kelly has given his city and all big cities in a Sept. 11 world has worked.

The problem is that both the Herald Square and the 2011 synagogue bombing “plots” were actually NYPD sting operations. And federal prosecutors even declined to pursue the synagogue “plot” case.

(And then there are the times when the NYPD is actually in the way of legitimate counter-terrorism efforts, like in the Najibullah Zazi case.)

Supporters of the NYPD find it easy to twist the details of alleged plots, but there’s a huge difference between a plot that is actually a terrorist plot and some cheap sting operation where informants give some dopey kids the idea in the first place. This kind of cheerleading is dangerous and relies on the fact that no one really pays attention when they hear a “terrorist” has been caught, because everyone hates terrorists, right?

Terrorism won’t be fixed by a NYPD sting — limit stings to stuff like teens stealing iPods — because those kids really are pieces of shit.