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NYPD
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2020-03-24
Mental Breakdown
My sister, Heidi, passed away in Washington, DC, on March 23, 2020. I wasn’t allowed to be with her when she died. My sister was my best friend. I was so lost. Her children, Significant other, my mother, her best friend, and I couldn’t have a funeral for her because of the rules put into place for Covid. So, we could not have a memorial for her till and year and four months later. At the same time, everything began to shut down. My husband works for the NYPD; I was terrified of him getting sick and losing him. Every day after he left for work, I would fall on the floor and break down in tears. I live next to a nursing home facility on Beach 119th St. in Rockaway Park. At this time, I would stare out my windows to look at the ocean to try to calm myself. For weeks, I would see out the right side of my windows and the ambulances and medical examiner vans showing up non-stop to the nursing home for ten days. Bodies were being taken out morning, noon, and night. The flashing red lights signaled that my mental health was in danger. I felt myself crashing many times. I was devasted. To this day, I carry so much internal trauma, I don’t know if I’ll ever recover. I hate this world and the cruel people in it. People have become so ugly because of Covid. I doubt I’ll ever be able to escape the mental anguish that lives in my soul... -
2020-06
Political Activism in the Midst of a Pandemic: BLM March Columbus Circle
A Black Lives Matter Protest is disbanded early due to the city curfew. I left this particular protest at 7pm to get home by 8pm but many people chose to stay. The NYPD started mass arresting groups of people who were out protesting after curfew. -
2020-06
Political Activism in the Midst of a Pandemic: Empty City Street After Curfew
This was taken while I was staying in Manhattan for the protests. I went outside at around 11pm to walk my dog but since De Blasio made the curfew 8pm, it had already been three hours past curfew. I had never seen my city so empty at 11pm; it was shocking. There were NYPD officers standing on every corner monitoring the streets to make sure no one was out. If I hadn’t felt trapped inside before because of quarantine and COVID, I definitely felt trapped now. -
2020-06-12
NYPD Brass: We're Arresting Too Many Prisoners on Early COVID Release
The architecture, system, and overcrowding in America's prisons make the spread of Covid-19 very quick inside the nations corrections facilities. To help slow the spread of the disease inside these facilities some jurisdictions have released inmates early. Most early release candidates are those that do not present a public safety risk, have served the majority of their sentence, are elderly, or immunocompromised. While some people support this plan others oppose. This article illustrates the concerns of the plans opponents. Of the 2500 people released from Rikers Island, a jail in New York, the NYPD says they have rearrested 250 individuals, for total arrests of 450. -
2020-05-07
"NYPD Officer Hopes Black Teen Only Coughing Because He Just Choked Him"
While the pandemic remains at the forefront of news coverage, in the beginning of May, a string of high profile murders made national news. In addition to the murder of Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery and a series of police shootings in Indianapolis that left three people dead just hours apart, reports from New York show that social distancing arrests have overwhelmingly and disproportionately impacted Black New Yorkers. This satirical article from the Onion, perhaps America's most well known satirical paper, uses dark and gratuitous satire to criticize police brutality in the time of COVID. Perhaps the most devastating line in the entire article is a quote from a fictional officer who says, "I promised my wife and kids that until this pandemic is behind us, I would just shoot black teens from a safe distance." -
2020-05-08
"Stop and Frisk, but in a Pandemic"
"Data Confirms Black New Yorkers Targeted for Social Distancing Violations at Higher Rates"