Inside The Police State

Police officer Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded his supervisors telling officers to manipulate crime statistics and make illegal arrests from 2008 to 2009. The Village Voice series that broke Schoolcraft's story was written by Graham Rayman. Ira Glass narrates the story.

Police Officer Adrian Schoolcraft claims the NYPD cast him as a lunatic because he blew the whistle on supervisors who fudged crime stats and badgered victims trying to report felonies.

"Police Officer Schoolcraft, who worked in the relatively high-crime 81st precinct in Brooklyn, was not a happy camper. Some might call him a malcontent.

In 2009, he began to secretly tape-record precinct roll calls at which commanding officers ordered cops like himself to refuse to take robbery victims’ crime complaints. Cops were also ordered to downgrade felonies — which are serious crimes — to less serious misdemeanors so that the precinct would appear safer than it actually was.

Schoolcraft’s secret tape recordings might well have been ignored, had not the police department then done something shocking.

On Oct. 31, 2009, Schoolcraft left his tour early, saying he felt sick, and returned to his apartment in Queens. A few hours later, a police posse, led by Brooklyn Deputy Chief Michael Marino, entered his apartment and, saying he needed medical help, forcibly brought him to Jamaica Hospital.

Despite his protests, the hospital admitted him and held him for six days. For part of that time, he was kept in its psychiatric ward. ... After six days, Schoolcraft was released from the hospital. He and his father then left the city for upstate Johnstown, where Larry Schoolcraft had grown up.

Meanwhile, Larry Schoolcraft alerted the media to what the department had done to his son.

The Schoolcrafts then hired an attorney, who sued the NYPD in federal court for $50 million, claiming that Adrian’s forced hospitalization was retaliation for his having blown the whistle on his precinct commanders.

Amidst the media’s hue and cry, the department was forced to address Schoolcraft’s allegations about the 81st precinct.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced an internal investigation, which determined that Schoolcraft’s precinct commanders had indeed downgraded crimes. The precinct’s top commanders were all transferred and disciplined. ... This was not merely a crime-reporting problem. Misclassifying crimes has consequences. In Upper Manhattan, as Rayman reported for the Village Voice and notes in his book, police downgraded an attempted rape to “criminal trespassing,” a misdemeanor." ~ Leonard Levitt
Source: This American Life: 414: Right to Remain Silent
NSA Threatens National Security

Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist. Bruce discusses how the NSA threatens national security by breaking the “trust of the internet” and how to push back against the NSA using technical and legal means. Bruce is interviewed by Scott Horton.
Source: The Scott Horton Show: Bruce Schneier
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