Drewbot • The NYT on the NYPD's Tactics Against Reporters

The NYT on the NYPD's Tactics Against Reporters

More than anything else surrounding OWS, this trend is what worries me most:

Over several days, New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers.

Reporters with The Associated Press and The Daily News were arrested while taking notes. A radio reporter was arrested as she recorded several blocks from the park.

All of this behavior “allegedly” occurred “on the streets of New York.”

This is the point in articles where it is customary to aver: the Police Department has done a fine, historic job battling crime. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly is a brilliant tactician, and he deserves much credit. That is true.

Another truth co-exists. At least since the Republican National Convention of 2004, our police have grown accustomed to forcibly penning, arresting, and sometimes spraying and whacking protesters and reporters. On Monday, The New York Times and 12 other organizations sent a letter of protest to the Police Department. “The police actions of last week,” the authors said, “have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory.”

Their letter offered five examples. I’ll mention one: As the police carried off a young protester whose head was covered in a crown of blood, a photographer stood behind a metal barricade and raised his camera. Two officers ran at him, grabbed the barrier and struck him in the chest, knees and shins. You are not permitted, the police yelled, to photograph on the sidewalk.

Covering New York can be a contact sport. We grunt, curse and toss elbows. I’ve run across the Brooklyn Bridge as protesters tossed bottles at cops, stood inside illegal squats on the Lower East Side as police massed outside, and walked through Crown Heights as communal tensions exploded. The rough rule was this: Treat cops reasonably and you can go about your business of recording and bearing witness. Those feel like ancient days.

Thank god for cheap, ubiquitous cameras.

There’s hegemonic tension bubbling between governments’ desire to constantly document us and their desire that we not document them. (Via NYT)