muckrakingiswomenswork:searchingforknowledge:anarcho-queer:NYPD Stalks, Harass And Monitors Youth To
muckrakingiswomenswork:searchingforknowledge:anarcho-queer:NYPD Stalks, Harass And Monitors Youth To Dissuade Them From Committing CrimesIt’s like Father Connoly’s attempts to keep kids on the straight and narrow, but with fake Facebook accounts of hot teen chicks. The New York Times reports on an innovative (and highly invasive) program to keep kids who’ve been arrested from committing robbery.The involuntary NYPD program called Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program (JRIP) targets youth (almost exclusively minorities living in housing) and subjects them to continual harassment at their school, home and in the streets and monitors their every move online with fake profiles:Officers not only make repeated drop-ins at homes and schools, but they also drive up to the teenagers in the streets, shouting out hellos, in front of their friends. The force’s Intelligence Division also deciphers each teenager’s street name and gang affiliation. Detectives compile a binder on each teenager that includes photos from Facebook and arrest photos of the teenager’s associates, not unlike the flow charts generated by law enforcement officials to track organized crime. Detectives spend hours, day and night, monitoring the Facebook pages and Twitter accounts of teenagers in the program, known as the Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program, or J-RIP, and of their criminal associates. To do so, detectives create a dummy Facebook page — perhaps employing a fake profile of an attractive teenage girl — and send out “friend requests” as bait to get beyond the social network’s privacy settings. Joanne Jaffe, the department’s Housing Bureau chief, commented on the program saying, “We are coming to find you and monitor every step you take”. “And we are going to learn about every bad friend you have. And you’re going to get alienated from those friends because we are going to be all over you.” Talk about creepy…The program was started in 2007 in Brownsville, known as the highest concentration of low income public housing development in the North America and the worst neighborhood in New York City. In 2009, the program was expanded to East Harlem, the second highest concentration of public housing in the nation, closely following Brownsville. Both Brownsville and East Harlem are largely black and Latino, making over 85% of the population in each neighborhood, meaning JRIP disproportionately targets minorities who live in public housing and subjects them to continual harassment by the NYPD who claim to be practicing tough love.I… WHAT????? SERIOUSLY??????purposefully trying to alienate these kids from their friends and support systems and then leaving a giant void filled only by constant police harrassement and degradation will just about guarantee these kids will have either to double down on whatever activities put them on pig radar or allow themselves to be emotionally/physically annihilated via isolationLets be real this same amount of money and effort spent on afterschool sports, music and arts programs - even the fucking police athletic league - would go exponentially farther in redirecting kids into what the mainstream considers pro-social activitiesbut let’s be even real-erThe police and prison industrial complex are not in the business of putting themselves out of businessCrime reduction means police reduction - less man power needed on payroll and fewer budgetary justifications for buying their militarized toysAND THEY AINT HAVING THAT!so they do shit like this to ENSURE they will always have a mass of people to police from cradle to graveWhenever you see police “interventions” in juvenile communities that dont focus on skill building, support,and mentorship - what they are doing is fertilizing their next crop of state germinated criminals to make sure they can always bring in a harvest, take it to market, and stay getting paidWhen the police create and deploy criminogenic policies the GOAL is to create more criminals, not lessRemember that. -- source link