dispersant gases, like CS (tear gas) are nonlethal ways used to break up mobs. The whole point is to use something that wont do permanent harm to the unarmed people being routed. If the OWS crowd were armed, there are other methods that would be used to disperse them, based on what they were doing, up to and including lethal force directed at those who are carrying weapons.

I am a born New Yorker but was not raised here but have cjhosen to live here for 2/3rds of my life, from the bad days of the 1970's thru Gulliani and Mayor Mike. I worked as a TV news camerman/producer for some of that time and got to know many NYPD Officers, including the ESU crews that respond to the worst situations.
NYPD policy os NOT to use CS/Tear gas or Rubber bullets in a crowd situation. It serves no purpose other than to inflame an already bad scenario into a full blown riot. We haven't had too many of those of late.
The Emergency Services Unit has a bunch of ways to dissuade people before physical or chemical actions are taken. Sometimes merely soaking the crowd with a fire spray nozzle directed upward so as to create a drenching rain works on cold nights. Believe me that they have a serious monitoring capacity. Vidcams are installed in every lamppost and building entrance and can be accessed remotely from the ESU truck. they can photograph you, digitize, run you thru the database and know exactly who you are in less than 5 minutes. Same with license plates. In addition they have people inside the OWS crowd in street dress and have been stopping and searching folks who they ID as "smugglers" and a fair amount of "offensive" weaponry had already been confiscated before they moved in.

All in all, the Boys in Blue OTN NY's Finest did a damn good professional job. Minimal physical contact, all materials confiscated were available for retrival that afternoon at an Impound yard on the Westside piers.

Compared to Oakland, Atlanta and elsewhere, you are safer in NYC than almost any city of its size. Including London.

The NYPD is far better trained and equipped than 99% of the PD's around the country. They are professionals at work.

I've seen the same guys who were in the squads the orther morning, jump into a freezing river with a fast current to save a street skell and we have one of the most diverse forces in the nation. They speak 27 languages, They even speak ASL.

Amongst the 38,000 NYPD Officers there are certainly some scumbags and miscreants but in general Thuggery is a thing of the past at the NYPD.

"In general", sure, but the last six months have had a number of NYPD cases involving corrupt/ criminal activity by officers. They do as they please with seemingly zero accountability.

Then again, I suppose when your cat is in a tree, who else are you going to call?

Back to the topic at hand - I'm work downtown as well and it's cop central down here today.

Speaking of NYPD corruption, Frank Serpico anyone????

Frank Serpico - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

" Serpico called out to his partners who did not come to help him"

NYPD is far from perfect, but it's a lot more professional and less corrupt than departments in other big US cities. It also lives under a media microscope (NYC is pretty much media central), so any abuses tend to be outed with extreme prejudice in a national forum. And rightly so -- sunlight disinfects.

..........and your evidence of this tidbit is................???


..........not a bit of bias there.............right???


I find the NYC police department to be downright stupid and consistently lazy. They couldn't solve a real crime if their lives depended on it.

However, sitting in a police car doing absolutely nothing is perfectly OK with them.

I had a group of them doing a ticket blitz on people who were waiting in line to speak with them............they had a cushman blocking the road.

The turds ticketed everybody for failing to stop at the stop sign............even though they created a line of cars that preceded the stop sign.

There goes $130. for nothing.............

Were those "real" cops or traffic cops (glorified meter maids, IMHO, and yes a bit on the dumb side)?

BTW, as far as gratuitous ticketing, they have nothing on Boston area (they'll ticket you if you don't have a guest parking permit and overstay your time by 0.2 sec) or Hell Ay area (hellllo ticket for jaywalking).

NYPD isn't perfect. They're just less evil than many other city police departments. And trust me, I'm no friend or lover of the police.

Full NYPD uniformed officers.

Location at 90th and York. There is a stop sign on 90th right at York. York ends right at 90th, so it's a 90 degree right turn only.

The cushman was sitting in the middle of York and the traffic was backed up along 90th. As the line moved forward to the cushman, the POS watched to see who came to a complete stop at the stop sign. Of course, nobody did...........because the line gradually moved forward to the cushman.

They ticketed everybody.


Let's say that I beg to differ.............


...........and I'm still waiting for some facts to backup that claim............