A New York Police Department (NYPD) officer keeps guard during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square December 31, 2014. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith (UNITED STATES – Tags: SOCIETY CRIME LAW) – RTR4JS50

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is sending out letters telling gun owners to turn over their rifles and shotguns — or else face the consequences.

New York City’s ban on rifles and shotguns that hold more than five rounds is now being enforced, according to a letter the NYPD is sending out to targeted city gun owners.

“It appears you are in possession of a rifle and/or Shotgun (listed below) that has an ammunition feeding device capable of holding more than five (5) rounds of ammunition. Rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than five (5) rounds of ammunition are unlawful to possess in New York City, as per NYC Administrative Code 10-306 (b).”

“You have the following options,” the letter explains.

“1. Immediately surrender your Rifle and/or Shotgun to your local police precinct, and notify this office of the invoice number. The firearm may be sold or permanently removed from the City of New York thereafter.

2. Permanently remove your Rifle and/or Shotgun from New York City and provide the following…Disposition Report/Registration Certificate…Notarized statement of permanent removal…Utility bill or other proof of residency regarding the address where the firearm will be stored outside the City of New York.

3. You may call to discuss the matter if you believe your firearm is in compliance…”

Departing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a major gun-control activist, with his coalition recently sponsoring an ad that depicts an Adam Lanza-type character entering a school full of children.

New York state, meanwhile, passed the NY SAFE Act in 2013 in response to the Sandy Hook shooting. The law, which bans “high-capacity magazines” and puts in place other stringent controls, was signed by governor and 2016 presidential hopeful Andrew Cuomo.

Patrick Howley, Political Reporter

ROTTERDAM, N. Y. — “Early this morning we issued an arrest warrant for Jeremy Pullen,” Lieutenant Michael Brown explained.

The arrest warrant was issued for the alleged involvement of 27-year-old, Jeremy Pullen of Valatie, in the planning and execution of the January 6, 2016 robbery of the Rotterdam Trustco Bank.

Brown added, “For that robbery we also arrested Zachary Dennis on January 18th of this year.”

Dennis called 911 with a bogus threat to Mohanosan High School, only to rob the Trustco Bank on West Campbell Avenue five minutes later.

According to Lt. Mike Brown, Dennis and Pullen were high school classmates at Christian Brothers Academy.

“We believethat their relationship in the later years may have been related to the abuse of perscription drug use,” Brown said.

Pullen seen here as an amateur mixed martial artist for the Death Roll Fight Team. He was also employed with the Village of Catskills Police Department for five months in 2013 before leaving to work for DOCCS as a corrections officer until June of 2015.

“We believe that he may have used some knowledge he gained as a police officer in planning and ensuring the robbery was successful,” Lieutenant Brown said.

Charged with robbery and grand larceny in the third degree, both felonies, Pullen appeared before Judge Kenneth Litz and his attorney who tried to lower a $100,000 cash bail.

The judge denied it, for fear of Pullen fleeing out of state for a job opportunity.

Pullen was remanded to custody of the Schenectady County Sheriff’s Department.

The case is being adjourned until Wednesday, February 10 at 5 p.m. for preliminary hearing.

Robert Hinton, 28, was killed just before midnight on Thursday, the day before he was scheduled to receive a $450,000 settlement from the city. Hinton had won the settlement roughly two months ago when it was decided in court that corrections officers used unjust force against him during his stay at Rikers Prison.

Surveillance footage at the prison revealed that corrections officers hog-tied Hinton and assaulted him, all while he was already shackled and not threatening them harm in any way. Hinton was being transferred to another part of the jail but refused to leave his cell. According to the lawsuit, that is when five corrections officers, including a captain, entered his cell and assaulted him.

The judge said in her decision that, “I find that Hinton was never uncuffed during the use of force and was incapable of defending himself, Once inside the cell, [the officers] left Hinton handcuffed and shackled and administered a brutal beating that was contemplated before they entered the cell.”

“You don’t get what you want, you get what you deserve, which is an ass-whipping,” the captain reportedly said during the beating.

“Unfortunately, what happened to Robert happens every day on Rikers Island. Robert’s the lucky one who got his day in court,” one of his lawyers, Nicole Bellina said during his trial.

Rikers is notorious for mistreatment of its inmates, earlier this year it was reported that Rikers allowed guards to rape female inmates with the consent of public officials. Prior to that, there were concerns about rat poison being found in the food that was served to prisoners. After the poison was found in their food, they were then denied medical attention so the prison could avoid any evidence being collected.

“We had a conversation about how hopeful he was, about how the settlement money was going to give him a chance for a fresh start,” Bellina said recently after hearing the news of his death.

The timing of his death is extremely strange, and there will undoubtedly be suspicion thrown towards the city and the police department who may now get out of paying nearly a half million dollars towards his settlement.

His mother had a strange conversation with him just before his death, where he said that he had a feeling that something bad was going to happen.

“He felt like something was going to happen to him,” Robert Hinton’s mom Parys Johnsontold the Daily News Saturday.

“We had this conversation Thursday. And his words to me were, ‘You know mom, if something happens to me, make sure (my girlfriend) Michelle and the baby’s all right.’”

So far there are no suspects or leads in the case.

Keeping up the tradition of seasonal scares, theNew York Post(10/26/15) published a story about a potential “Halloween Revolt”: an attack by anarchists on police nationwide.

A group known as the National Liberation Militia, the Post reported, has been planning to dress up in masks like normal trick-or-treaters and use this disguise to sneak up on and assault cops in some coordinated fashion. The story was quickly picked up by CBS News, Fox News and NBC News, all of whom breathlessly alerted the public about this spooky-themed threat to police.

A couple points before dissecting the journalistic efficacy of disseminating these vague, half-assed threats. Firstly, it’s odd that the New York Post is and continues to be the sole source of this bulletin. The FBI typically posts major threats on its website, but this one, according to the FBI press officer FAIR contacted, was “meant for law enforcement and not to be disseminated.”

This “alert” originated from the FBI, but from the looks of it was handed off by the NYPD to the New York Post. Why? The subsequentFox News report hints at a motive:

The paper reported that the NYPD is monitoring the threat. The report of the threat comes at a time of unease between many police departments and the neighborhoods they patrol. The weekend before the threat was reported, Patrick Lynch, the head of the NYPD’s union, called for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino’s films after the director took part in an anti-police rally in the city’s Greenwich Village neighborhood….

The rally was held days after New York City Police Officer Randolph Holder was shot dead while pursuing a bicycle thief in East Harlem.

This was soon followed by a TV segment on Fox News—that pinned the threat on an “offshoot of the Black Panthers”:

The FBI is saying a potentially dangerous anarchist group known as the National Liberation Militia; it was founded by former Black Panther members. Well, that group has proposed what it calls a “Halloween revolt”; it encouraged supporters to ambush police officers. That group is also asking members to wear Halloween masks and use bricks, bottles and firearms to attack our nation’s police officers.

There’s no mention of the Black Panthers in the New York Post piece–but they do come up in a piece of wild speculation offered by Republican congressmember and Fox News contributor Allen West after a short visit toGoogle:

A quick search online yields no information about a group called “National Liberation Militia,” although there is a known group called the “New Black Liberation Militia.” Is this politically correct, selective editing by the FBI?

FAIR reached out to the FBI for specifics on the threat, but via email it declined to do so.

Why was this “alert” subsequently carried by a dozen mainstream media outlets without anyone questioning the core substance? Even the claim of an “anarchist” group with “national” in its name is manifestly dubious–since anarchists, by definition, decry nationalism.

The fundamental problem with FBI terror warnings, as I’ve discussed before, is that there’s no downside. FBI terror warnings are polluted with moral hazard: Don’t warn and something happens, you’re in trouble. Warn, and nothing happens, no one cares. Warn and something happens—which it never does—and you’re a hero.

Especially in the context of increased scrutiny over police abuse, the incentives for the FBI to mindlessly issue warnings of lurking police killers are great–providing police with PR cover in the coming weeks and sowing the “war on cops” narrative in the hearts of scared, low-information viewers and tabloid consumers.

If fear is the currency of control, then this never-ending string of FBI warnings is a blank check that never needs to be cashed. Is there an “anarchist revolt” scheduled for Halloween? Unlikely. But millions of Americans now think there is, and ultimately that’s all that matters.

Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc.

Messages to the New York Post can be sent to [email protected] (or viaTwitter: @NYPost). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

After police have been looking for a man accused of masturbating at a Midtown subway station—and then flashing a gun at someone who tried to record him, they now arrested him thanks to a short video recorded by a passenger. Worse yet, it turns out that the masturbator is a retired cop named Steven Esposito.

According to the NYPD, the masturbation took place on Monday, October 19th, at 11:56 p.m. when a 38-year-old woman was on the southbound platform of the 5th Avenue N/R station “when she heard a hissing noise beside her. When she looked to see what the noise was, she observed the suspect manipulating his penis outside of his pants.”

Police say that when Esposito began to leave, the woman began to cry. A man asked her what was wrong, and she explained what happened—prompting the man to take out his cellphone and followEsposito to record him.

As he reached the exit, the suspect allegedly “pulled out a black handgun, pointed [it at the man]” and told him to mind his own business.”

There were no reported injuries. The police released the cellphone footage, showing a man with a mustache wearing a grey suit.

The 56-year-old retired cop admitted to brandishing his gun to threaten the man, was charged with misdemeanor public lewdness and menacing.

He was released without bail and is scheduled back in court on December 1, according toDNA Info.

While New York City has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, Esposito is allowed to carry a gun after he obtained  “good guy letter” from his former agency.

Dystopian truth is stranger than dystopian fiction.

In New York City, the police now maintain an unknown number of military-grade vans outfitted with X-ray radiation, enabling cops to look through the walls of buildings or the sides of trucks. The technology was used in Afghanistan before being loosed on U.S. streets. Each X-ray van costs an estimated $729,000 to $825,000.

The NYPD will not reveal when, where, or how often they are used.

“I will not talk about anything at all about this,” New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told a journalist for the New York Post who pressed for details on the vans. “It falls into the range of security and counter-terrorism activity that we engage in.”

He added that “they’re not used to scan people for weapons.”

Here are some specific questions that New York City refuses to answer:

• How is the NYPD ensuring that innocent New Yorkers are not subject to harmful X-ray radiation?
• How long is the NYPD keeping the images that it takes and who can look at them?
• Is the NYPD obtaining judicial authorization prior to taking images, and if so, what type of authorization?
• Is the technology funded by taxpayer money, and has the use of the vans justified the price tag?

Those specifics are taken from a New York Civil Liberties Union court filing. The legal organization is seeking to assist a lawsuit filed by Pro Publica journalist Michael Grabell, who has been fighting New York City for answers about X-ray vans for 3 years.

“ProPublica filed the request as part of its investigation into the proliferation of security equipment, including airport body scanners, that expose people to ionizing radiation, which can mutate DNA and increase the risk of cancer,” he explained. (For fear of a terrorist “dirty bomb,” America’s security apparatus is exposing its population to radiation as a matter of course.)

A state court has already ruled that the NYPD has to turn over policies, procedures, and training manuals that shape uses of X-rays; reports on past deployments; information on the costs of the X-ray devices and the number of vans purchased; and information on the health and safety effects of the technology. But New York City is fighting on appeal to suppress that information and more, as if it is some kind of spy agency rather than a municipal police department operating on domestic soil, ostensibly at the pleasure of city residents.

Its insistence on extreme secrecy is part of an alarming trend. The people of New York City are effectively being denied the ability to decide how they want to be policed.

“Technologies––from x-ray scanners to drones, automatic license plate readers that record license plates of cars passing by, and ‘Stingrays’ that spy on nearby cell phones by imitating cell phone towers—have brought rapid advances to law enforcement capacity to monitor citizens,” the NYCLU notes. “Some of these new technologies have filtered in from the battlefields into the hands of local law enforcement with little notice to the public and with little oversight. These technologies raise legitimate questions about cost, effectiveness, and the impact on the rights of everyday people to live in a society free of unwarranted government surveillance.”

A New York Police Department (NYPD) officer keeps guard during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square December 31, 2014. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith 

For all we know, the NYPD might be bombarding apartment houses with radiation while people are inside or peering inside vehicles on the street as unwitting passersby are exposed to radiation. The city’s position—that New Yorkers have no right to know if that is happening or not—is so absurd that one can hardly believe they’re taking it. These are properly political questions. And it’s unlikely a target would ever notice. “Once equipped, the van—which looks like a standard delivery van—takes less than 15 seconds to scan a vehicle,” Fox News reported after looking at X-ray vans owned by the federal government. “It can be operated remotely from more than 1,500 feet and can be equipped with optional technology to identify radioactivity as well.”

In her ruling, Judge Doris Ling-Cohan highlights the fact that beyond the privacy questions raised by the technology are very real health and safety concerns. She writes:

Petitioner states in his affidavit, and respondent does not dispute, that: backscatter technology, previously deployed in European Union airports, was banned in 2011, because of health concerns; an internal presentation from American Science and Engineering, Inc., the company that manufactures the vans, determined that the vans deliver a radiation dose 40 percent larger than delivered by a backscatter airport scanner; bystanders present when the van is in use are exposed to the radiation that the van emits… moreover, petitioner maintains, and it is not disputed by the NYPD, that ‘there may be significant health risks associated with the use of backscatter x-ray devices as these machines use ionizing radiation, a type of radiation long known to mutate DNA and cause cancer.

Finally, petitioner states, again without dispute, that, on August 2011, the United States Customs and Border Protection Agency, which used the vans to scan vehicles crossing into and out of the United States, despite repeated testing and analysis of the amount of radiation emitted by such devices, nevertheless, prohibited continued use of the vans to scan occupied vehicles, until approval was granted by the United States Custom and Border Protection Radiation and Safety Committee…

And since the technology can see through clothing, it is easy to imagine a misbehaving NYPD officer abusing it if there are not sufficient safeguards in place. Trusting the NYPD to choose prudent, sufficient safeguards under cover of secrecy is folly. This is the same department that spent 6 years conducting surveillance on innocent Muslims Americans in a program so unfocused that it produced zero leads—and that has brutalized New York City protestors on numerous occasions. Time and again it’s shown that outside oversight is needed.
Lest readers outside New York City presume that their walls still stand between them and their local law enforcement agency, that isn’t necessarily the case. Back in January, in an article that got remarkably little attention, USA Today reported the following:

At least 50 U.S. law enforcementagencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to effectively peer through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside, a practice raising new concerns about the extent of government surveillance. Those agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, began deploying the radar systems more than two years ago with little notice to the courts and no public disclosure of when or how they would be used. The technology raises legal and privacy issues because the U.S. Supreme Court has said officers generally cannot use high-tech sensors to tell them about the inside of a person’s house without first obtaining a search warrant. The radars work like finely tuned motion detectors, using radio waves to zero in on movements as slight as human breathing from a distance of more than 50 feet. They can detect whether anyone is inside of a house, where they are and whether they are moving.

The overarching theme here is a law enforcement community that has never seen a technology that causes it to say, “We’d better ask if the public wants us to use this or not.”

Instead, the usual protocol is not only to adopt new technology without permission—regardless of the privacy, health and safety, or moral questions that it raises—but to keep having done so a secret as long as possible, and to hide the true nature of the technology in question even after the public has been alerted to its existence. The fact that this pattern has held in regards to a device that can look through walls while emitting radiation on the streets of New York City raises questions including “What’s next?” “What else don’t we know about?” and “Will any technology on the military-to-police pipeline ever cause cops to ask permission first?”

By Conor Friedersdorf for The Atlantic

The New York City Police Department is turning to a new tool in its effort to teach its future officers about tolerance and understanding – drama.

The city’s Police Academy has added the one-act play “Anne & Emmett” by Janet Langhart Cohen to its recruit training this fall. The play is an imaginary conversation between Anne Frank, who died in a Nazi concentration camp, and Emmett Till, who was killed by racists in Mississippi in 1955.

The play will be performed for some 1,100 recruits at their academy in Queens over two performances on Thursday, part of a push by the department to prepare future police officers to overcome community mistrust and their own bias.

“Sometimes you can’t get it in a text book. Sometimes you can’t get it in a lecture. But you can get it when human emotions are played live on the stage and that humanity can connect,” Cohen said Friday.

“If the play can reach one man or woman with a badge and a gun, I’m happy. Their training can take them only so far. The body cams will only cover so much. At some point, I’m hoping their humanity will kick in and hopefully this play with revive that humanity.”

It was Commissioner William J. Bratton who, after seeing a production downtown, asked to take it to the recruits. In a statement, he called the play “a poignant and thoughtful production that explores the respective histories and common experiences of two people cruelly victimized by racial and religious prejudice.”

Since Bratton took office in 2014, he has sought to change how the department interacts with the communities it serves, following years of rising mistrust and a stop-and-frisk policy that was found to have targeted minorities. But the death last year of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, helped fuel a national public outcry over how communities of color are treated by police.

In the play, the two teens meet and find similarities between their harrowing experiences. Cohen, a former journalist who grew up in segregated housing in Indianapolis and is the wife of the former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, said she jumped at Bratton’s idea.

“I thought, ‘Where better than at the tip of spear of law enforcement, where we African-Americans, in particular, are having so much trouble with excessive force, with police brutality, with disproportionate stop and frisks?'” Cohen said. “They don’t always see us the way they see each other.”

“Anne & Emmett” premiered in 2009 at the United States Holocaust Museum and has been performed in Washington, D.C., Indianapolis and Chicago. Its message of humility, dignity and empathy has played for students and Supreme Court justices. The New York police department is discussing making it a permanent part of its recruit training.

“We’re always looking for new ways for recruits to tackle the challenges of policing in a multicultural society like we have in New York City,” said Inspector Richard Dee, the executive officer of the police academy. “It’s a way for recruits to self-reflect. I think the production is going to cause them to reflect on the history of race relations and now their new-found role.”

From khpo.com

Kadeem Arrindell-Martin leaves Judge John Brunetti court after being arraigned. He was shot by cops after police said he tried to run them over with a car

The lawyer for a Syracuse man shot by police during a confrontation said today that “police were wrong” when they stopped the man for suspected drug activity.

Kadeem Arrindell-Martin, 24, was shot once in the abdomen after three Syracuse detectives said Arrindell-Martin sped at them in a car after they approached him. A grand jury found the officers acted in self-defense and they were not charged.

But defense lawyer Charles Keller said the fact his client was not charged with drug crimes speaks volumes.

“In the first days after these allegations, we heard a lot about drug deals, things like that,” Keller said. “And I would say that, conspicuously, the indictment has not one word or mention of drugs. No one else is charged with possessing, receiving or selling drugs whatsoever. I think that speaks volumes about the credibility of the case here.”

His client was “talking to a friend, completely innocent” when the police approached him, Keller said.

Arrindell-Martin was arraigned today on charges of felony attempted aggravated assault of a police officer, accused of trying to hit the officers with the car. He also faces two counts of reckless endangerment and unlawfully fleeing a police officer in the July 22 incident on Columbus Avenue on the city’s East Side.

Arrindell-Martin was in-and-out of the hospital with complications from the injury in the weeks afterward. He has been out of jail on $100,000 bail. Today, he arrived at the courtroom with a slight limp, with his mother and others arriving a few minutes later.

“He’s around and about, as you see, but he’s still not without complications,” Keller said, declining to elaborate further.

Prosecutor Joseph Coolican declined comment after court. District Attorney William Fitzpatrick did not address the lack of drug charges in a news release Tuesday on the indictment. He did say that the officers were involved in a “drug investigation” at the time.

Keller said repeatedly that there was no proof Arrindell-Martin was involved in drugs.

“So no matter what, we know the police were wrong,” the lawyer said.

But Keller also wouldn’t say that police “botched” the investigation, or that officers stopped Arrindell-Martin for no reason.

“Whatever (the police) thought, whether appropriate or inappropriate, they were wrong,” Keller said. “And that wrong belief is how we get here today.”

Keller also didn’t defend the accusations of his client driving at the officers, saying he’s not going to litigate the case in the media.

Arrindell-Martin’s mother attended court today. She declined comment afterward, deferring to the lawyer.

Syracuse.com learned after the shooting that Arrindell-Martin’s arrest was part of a crackdown of East Side gangs in the wake of a Fourth of July homicide at Thornden Park.

There was an extensive grand jury presentation including dozens of witnesses that lasted two weeks.

Keller said prosecutors attempted to talk to another man with Arrindell-Martin that day. He did not know if they were successful and he isn’t allowed to see grand jury testimony.

Fitzpatrick described what Arrindell-Martin is accused of doing after being stopped:

“Syracuse Police Detectives Jason Eiffe, Jeffrey Ballagh and Edward Falkowski were participating in a drug investigation when Arrindell-Martin attempted to flee in a motor vehicle. As Arrindell-Martin drove at the officers at a high rate of speed, they opened fire striking Arrindell-Martin once in the abdomen,” Fitzpatrick wrote in his news release.

by Douglass Dowty for Syracuse.com

The Buffalo Police Department has started an internal investigation into one of its officers after a video surfaced which appears to show a forceful act against a civilian.

But officials now believe that a controversial cell phone video that showed a Buffalo Police officer subduing a suspect is not evidence of excessive force, but rather proof that the officer was trying to save the suspect’s life.

The incident was captured on video by a bystander on Busti Avenue near Hudson Street on the city’s lower West Side.

In the video, a woman frantically screams that the officer on top of the subject, is choking him and needs to stop. Others also implore restraint, claiming the subject’s eyes are bugging out due to the force being exerted. Eventually, the man is cuffed and, with assistance, is able to walk to a patrol car.

Police will not confirm what led up to the confrontation, or the name of the man involved, or what if anything he is being charged with.

Relatives, however, identify him to us as Parris Stevens, and say he was taken to Erie County Medical Center following the altercation. ECMC says he has already been discharged.

According to a police spokesperson: “As soon as the department became aware of the video, an internal affairs case was opened,” but he said he could add nothing further because the investigation is in its early stages.

While the Buffalo Police Department is now conducting an investigation, many in the law enforcement believe Stevens could have choked to death or even died had the officer not acted.

James Conte, Niagara Falls cop beat driver unconscious with his motorcycle helmet

An off-duty Niagara Falls Police officer accused of using his motorcycle helmet to beat a motorist unconscious during a road rage incident is now suspended without pay.

Officer James Conte is suspended without pay following an internal investigation into what took place on September 5 in Wheatfield.

Authorities say Conte tailgated a driver, who pulled into a restaurant parking lot. Once there, Conte allegedly got off his motorcycle and used his helmet to knock the man unconscious, kicking him before leaving the scene.

The 48-year-old Conte pleaded not guilty to an assault charge. Even if he’s exonerated, he could still be fired from the police department.

Conte was suspended in 1997 for shooting and wound a dog. An internal investigation cleared Conte of any wrong doing but the city had to pay for the dog’s veterinarian bills.

In 2002, the city settled a federal lawsuit for alleged police brutality involving Conte. In that case from June 2001, Conte was accused of handcuffing and beating a woman who had called 911 about her wallet being stolen.

The internal investigation found Conte not guilty and he was never indicted in that case. However, an attorney for the City of Niagara Falls says the case was settled out of court for more than $22,000.