NYPD Claims Wikipedia Edits Were Made From Outside Computers

Edits made to the Wikipedia pages of Eric Garner and other alleged police brutality cases originated from NYPD servers, but were not made from computers inside Police Headquarters in Manhattan, a spokesman for the departmenttold Capital New York.

Police identified the editor of the Garner page as working from Police Department commuters outside 1 Police Plaza, according to the report, but would not identify the person.

“We are conducting an internal investigation to identify what member of the service may have accessed the Department’s server. These incidents did not originate from computers located at Police Headquarters,” Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis told Capital New York of the two edits to the “Death of Eric Garner” Wikipedia page on Dec. 3, 2014.

Capital reported last week charges to the Garner page, as well as pages for Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo, were linked by Internet Protocol addresses back to NYPD computers.

In an interview with Capital on Sunday, Davis emphasized that these edits may have originated from 1 Police Plaza or from precinct computers, but that a conclusive investigation would prove difficult.

According to Davis, the NYPD only maintains one-year logs of computer activity. While this allows officials to inspect computer records for more recent activity, like the 2014 edit to Eric Garner’s Wikipedia page, the department is currently unable to track down older activity. This means NYPD computer activity, like a 2007 attempt to delete the Wikipedia page for shooting victim Sean Bell, might go uninvestigated. Capital has identified at least 10 years of edits to Wikipedia from NYPD computers.

Using recent computer activity logs, the NYPD was able to locate the computer used to edit Garner’s Wikipedia page. But even if officials identify the user responsible for making the edits, Davis says the person’s chief offense is using department computers for non-work-related purposes.

“If this had been done at someone’s home computer, there wouldn’t be an issue,” Davis said. “The only issue here is that you’re not supposed to use a department computer for personal purposes, whether that’s shopping, whether that’s browsing, whether that’s going onto a website or whatever, you shouldn’t be doing that.”

Among the changes made to the Garner page were editing “Garner raised both his arms in the air,” to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”

Garner, a 43-year-old father of six from Port Richmond, died of a police chokehold July 17 in Tompkinsville.