This is bananas.
Is this what JP Morgan donated 4.6 million dollars to the NYPD for? “Crowd control”?
JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.
Good grief.
For another perspective, the NYPD has been severely underfunded for years. Private donations are not uncommon as the city demands longer hours and mandatory overtime for officers without any additional funding to cover those man hours. Technology–like computers–has taken a backseat for years just to get by with law enforcement in a huge city.
I’m not buying the idea that the banks could force them to crack down harder on Occupy Wall Street. Whenever there is a large gathering of people–be it a parade, party, festival, protest, or event of another kind, the NYPD sends extra officers for crowd control. This is nothing new or special just for this protest.
Some officers have crossed the line in their response to the protesters, but that does not prove that they are being commanded to respond like that. That’s like saying (mind you, it’s not a particularly good analogy) that your blog is being paid to not write nasty things about Ron Paul because his ads are all over your site. I told you it was a bad analogy. It’s the touch-tunnel exhibit at the children’s museum version of the bigger point. Receiving money does not mean that your policies change to reflect that person/company’s interests.