After New York City Chokehold Ban, Schenectady Protesters Push For Similar Legislation

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SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — By 9:10 p.m. the only sound audible between protesters’ chants was the distant buzz of two drones high above City Hall on Monday. One belonged to the Schenectady Police Department (SPD), which monitored over 100 protesters who had locked arms at the intersection of Clinton and Liberty streets. The other belonged to a local photographer who had joined the protest, and monitored the police presence in the surrounding blocks. As Monday night turned to Tuesday morning, the crowd, which had occupied the City Hall area and the surrounding streets for nine hours, prepared for police to come after them. Some wore vests that could stop rubber bullets, others long pants to protect against tear gas.

social media: Woman with braids, bright blue hoodie puts cards in envelopes on poster board on stand as several people stand around watching.

New York City’s Internet Surveillance System Needs Overhaul, Report Says

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NEW YORK — While working as a monitor in the dean’s office her freshman year of high school, Alexis Lanysse spent most of her time filing papers and signing late passes. But she sometimes had another task: She’d log onto Facebook or Snapchat to track incidents that the dean’s office would investigate. The office at the Brooklyn high school would use the evidence to help decide how they punished students. Sometimes they handed out suspensions and mandated transfers. Once, her school called a group of monitors to track a Snapchat story of a student getting shoved into a locker.

homelessness: Teenage girl sleeping on street, sitting against brick wall

Opinion: America’s Biases Marginalize Youth, Drive Them to Homelessness

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 (Part 2 of 7) | Read Part 1 here

Social psychology has found that someone may decide someone else's behavior has one of two causes: dispositional or situational. Dispositional attribution assigns the cause of behavior to some internal characteristic of a person — personality traits including attitudes, values and belief — rather than to outside forces. Situational attribution assigns cause of behavior to some situation or event outside a person's control rather than to some internal characteristic. Take, for example, those times when we feel compelled to explain a remark or conduct that offended someone. We tend to explain that our comment or act was influenced by something that happened earlier that day or what somebody else had said to deflect it from being seen as a flawed personality trait. 

But this is where the two attribution causes can be difficult to assign.

man with bicycle, in the rain, rain coat, young man on stool, small hut with signs.

Citing New Laws, NYPD, Police Unions Tell Officers to Exercise Caution When Making Arrests

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UPDATE: The original Instagram video was taken down. The updated video linked below is to a news story of the June 30, 2020, protest. Watch video below

NEW YORK — After a slew of new laws were passed in the last month aimed at reining in aggressive policing tactics, police unions in New York City are now instructing officers to wait for a supervisor or call in a specialized unit if someone is resisting arrest. In a July 1 newsletter sent to NYPD officers, the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) instructed officers to wait, saying that officers' jobs have “changed radically over the past few weeks,” citing new laws. Frustrated by an apparent lack of guidance from the city on how officers should comply, the PBA is now demanding clear legal interpretations of how officers can comply with the new laws.