the citizen-viewer

Oh, irony of delightful ironies. New York City police are in an uproar because off-duty cops who were demonstrating on the street for a union contract were videotaped by, get this, the police! Read the delicious New York Times article here.

...officers from a special unit videotaped their faces, evoking for one demonstrator the unblinking eye of George Orwell's "1984."

"That's Big Brother watching you," the demonstrator, Walter Liddy, said in a deposition.

Mr. Liddy's complaint about police tactics, while hardly novel from a big-city protester, stands out because of his job: He is a New York City police officer.

According the to police department, they are fighting terrorism and gathering information just in case there's trouble. Just as they've been doing at almost every event where citizen-viewers express any opinion that Mayor Bloomberg doesn't like. I was at the demonstrations during the Republican party convention in 2004, and at others, and these guys are everywhere with their video cameras, taping regular people who are doing nothing illegal.

(And not just taping of course. They also rounded up and arrested hundreds of people who were doing nothing more than standing on the sidewalk carefully following police instructions not to impede traffic on the street. As soon as they formed a compact group, the police surrounded them, arrested them, and clapped them into a filthy bus repair depot on Pier 57 where they were held, some for several days, sleeping on concrete slick with motor oil. On no legal grounds.)

Somehow, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has escaped personal criticism for the police force that he leads and whose thuggish commanders he selects. This is why I will never, ever vote for Bloomberg. He is responsible for the systematic violation of our constitutional rights. Imagine if we had a mayor who would tell the police: "You are responsible not just for keeping order, but for respecting the rights of the citizens to express their political opinions, no matter what they are. And if you don't, you will be disciplined to the fullest extent possible."

By the way, on that same page, you can find a link to a video made by the NYT's Jim Dwyer. Cops are shown infiltrating protests, wearing anti-Bloomberg buttons. One group of cops is even arrested, only to be released soon after to infiltrate more protests. This is how they spend their time and our money--undermining our constitutional rights, building up databases of troublemakers whose political opinions they oppose?

I hope that these police officers who are now suing the police department over the surveillance at their rally spread the word. Violate the rights of any of us, and you violate the rights of all.