Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors.

He recorded precinct roll calls. He recorded his precinct commander and other supervisors. He recorded street encounters. He recorded small talk and stationhouse banter. In all, he surreptitiously collected hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs.

Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes—made between June 1, 2008, and October 31, 2009, in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant and obtained exclusively by the Voice—provide an unprecedented portrait of what it's like to work as a cop in this city.

They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don't make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statistics. The tapes also refer to command officers calling crime victims directly to intimidate them about their complaints.

As a result, the tapes show, the rank-and-file NYPD street cop experiences enormous pressure in a strange catch-22: He or she is expected to maintain high "activity"—including stop-and-frisks—but, paradoxically, to record fewer actual crimes.

Haven't had a chance to listen to the recordings yet (they're on the same page as the linked article below), but I figured this might be of interest to folks here:



This is the kind of sh*t that makes me doubt the wisdom of things like the AZ law.

That still means your problem is not with the Arizona law, but with idiot precinct bosses. I just don't like the logic of saying we shouldn't pass a law because it could be abused despite the fact it is constitutional.

I think the logic is that we should design laws that take reality and potential/probable unintended consequences into account.

I think the logic is that we should design laws that take reality and potential/probable unintended consequences into account. For instance, I was reading an article this morning about how well-intended but poorly-designed financial regulations contributed to the failures we've seen with the big ratings agencies. In that case, was the problem that the ratings agencies and banks didn't stick to the spirit of the regulations (even though they followed the letter), or was the problem that the regulations themselves didn't account for how they would likely be applied in the real world?

I think the logic is that we should design laws that take reality and potential/probable unintended consequences into account. For instance, I was reading an article this morning about how well-intended but poorly-designed financial regulations contributed to the failures we've seen with the big ratings agencies. In that case, was the problem that the ratings agencies and banks didn't stick to the spirit of the regulations (even though they followed the letter), or was the problem that the regulations themselves didn't account for how they would likely be applied in the real world?

I don't see what this issue has to do with either the way laws are designed, or the Arizona situation in particular.

Aside from the fact that the article studiously avoids mention of any specific instances and just wants us to trust its characterization (it doesn't even say what precinct this is in), this is a problem specific to the NYPD and probably specific to the precinct this guy works in.

So, are you guys just being argumentative because you assume there's some liberal agenda here, or do you really think legislators should just assume everything will go according to plan when they draft laws?

My point in mentioning the AZ law was that my objection there was that even though the law doesn't technically allow racial profiling, that in practice, cops would feel external pressure and a personal desire to nail illegal aliens and would thus skirt the rules in order to boost their stats. This is an example of that kind of stat-boosting behavior.

I think you should take another look, DE. The article says, right in the part I quoted, that it's the 81st precinct in Brooklyn, and it includes like 8 pages of excerpts from the recordings, plus links to the recordings themselves.

So, are you guys just being argumentative because you assume there's some liberal agenda here, or do you really think legislators should just assume everything will go according to plan when they draft laws?