Couple arrested for dancing while waiting for the train in New York.

beverages?

on what is happening with regard to the police in this country. They are becoming very officious killjoys to say the least.

I would have clapped and cheered on Caroline and George for doing this - for making the world just a little lighter and brighter for a few moments.

How do me and my queer BF threaten your marriage?

I'll tell you now, you might have to admit to your wife's doctor where the chlamydia came from. Of us gave it to.

Fuckers.

Are people in NYC actually required to carry ID cards?

cops on your ass. Recently some guy here was waving a couple of pam-pams walking down the street while listening to music with earbuds. The cops pulled up and questioned him what he was doing. I was stopped at a red light watching the episode. It was yet another WTF monument in Gestapo USA.

Each day many cops ratchet it up a bit. Give people in these situations a little authority and they will take a lot, an awful lot. TPTB still don't get that, or maybe that's their goal. Authoritarianism, suppression and persecution.

the problem is they are never held accountable for those mistakes.

So the mistakes become worse and worse because the police are never held accountable.

There are no consequences when the police do this stuff.

After a few times, it's not a mistake anymore. It's just harassment.

The police are allowed to harass people just because they are bored and have nothing better to do.

Like rabies, the only cure is to put the sick animal down, for the continued safety of pretty much every other person and animal in the area.

it's amazing that we have zero tolerance for kids bringing their own aspirin to school, but cops can kill and suffer nothing for it.

The police have NINJAS!!

The police were probably just dancing to "Send in the Clowns"

This looks to me like a police state.

I guess we can't fight police brutality because we're living in a fascist system.

NYPD arrests, detains couple for 23 hours for dancing while waiting for the subway
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

Monday, July 9, 2012

Here’s yet another story from the “police have gone insane” department with past stories including the NYPD labeling people “professional agitators” for filming them, police defending handcuffing a six-year-old girl, a man being arrested for pointing his finger at police, a police officer getting targeted for discipline for stopping a beating, an NYPD officer getting put in a psych ward by his superiors for reporting corruption and more.

Interestingly, this case seems to also bring in the fascinating and troubling trend of police arresting people (and in at least one case even brutally assaulting someone) simply for exercising their right to film officers in a public place performing their public duties.

This particular incident – which actually occurred last July but is just now being brought up in a lawsuit – involves a couple, 55-year-old Caroline Stern and 54-year-old George Hess, who were allegedly dancing on the empty Columbus Circle subway platform in New York City after listening to jazz at Lincoln Center.

No, this isn’t quite like the people who were arrested for dancing in Washington D.C. at the Jefferson Memorial, as this was in no way an act of civil disobedience or protest. It was just dancing.

According to Fox News Insider, the couple was arrested for “impeding the flow of traffic” because they were dancing while waiting on the subway to arrive shortly before midnight.

=

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/07/nypd-arrests-detains-couple-for-23.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Wonder how much this little re education session is going to cost the tax payers. Charges dropped. But that isn't the point is it? Dance like nobody's watching.(But they are)

to do the Charleston, and then get arrested for happily dancing to music? Unbelievable.

I hope they prevail in their lawsuit. Maybe they could get enough to donate thousands of cameras to people who spend a lot of time on the street, because video is about the only chance of raising public awareness that "you" could be next.

(so they can't so easily confiscate/steal the product), like...

uh, http://www.vievu.com/



or, better http://gopro.com//




I guess, you get the idea...

Get those down to commodity prices, put tens of thousands around on undisclosed locations, people carrying them, etc.

I think it would result in a lot more humane policing.

Thanks for that.

they got the ringleader first.

... so whichever one of y'all is on a first name basis with Kevin, tell him his country needs him.

the heart of the problem, I think.

In my view, the central problem of civilization is "who will guard the guardians?"

It is hard to imagine a complex society without some form of police and military sector. But once you have either of these, you run into the problem of limiting their power. Police and military, to their credit, are good at controlling bad elements of the world. But the worst thing that can happen is to have police and/or military begin to set social policy. The attributes that make for good police/soldiers are exactly the opposite of those that make for good creators of social policy.

Good police/soldiers are control oriented, respect authority and follow orders. Good social leaders encourage freedom and individuality, question authority and develop compromises rather than issuing or following orders.

NYC police brutality, US military-industrial complex, Egyptian military trying to thwart the revolution, all of these in my view are aspects of the same problem.

Whatever the reasons may be, low wages, no education, corrupt culture, when a society's police are lacking it's a slippery slope. If they are underpaid someone with enough money will pay them to do what THEY want, social order be damned. If they're apathetic and poorly trained they will make life unbearable for anyone that presents a challenge to them. It is a VERY dangerous state of affairs and we have to do something fast. They'll give any asshole a badge

This was a very successful municipal PR campaign of the 80's. Well-produced spots highlighted Broadway, dance and the excitement of being up all night. Lots of them can be found archived on Youtube. Here's one - Sharks and Jets dancing on the steps of the Public Library.

&feature=relmfu

The campaign was revived and relaunched in late May 2012, thanks to Cuomo. Maybe these dancer-busting cops and the thousands of Stop & Frisk officers will get a role - thanks to Bloomberg.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/i-love-new-york-tourism-campaign-expands/

LOL j/k of course!

Love how Cher pulls off her own wig.

================================

Wow...

IMHO, it's just one more way for cops to harass people, and to charge them with such crimes as loitering, trespass, vagrancy, etc.

It is more than sufficient to give them your name and address, but you do not have to carry your papers with you, no matter how much the little fascists wish it was otherwise.

It's beyond just being required to produce an ID. The moment you go into public, the police own you in Manhattan -- that is, if your income is less than $1 million/year, you're a prole. If it's above Manhattan poverty-line, you own the police and they won't bother you, ever, no matter what you do.

If you own the bank, go ahead and rob the bank. In NYC, that's just part of doing business.

They've never been to the Durham Museum in Omaha. at the old Union Station. where that have bronze statues of people dancing. do'h... dancing at the train station is as old as the trains.. stupid!!!!

More of like an ironic joke - I'm an "old" man with a job publicly thought of as boring not a criminal mastermind.

TlalocW

Or something. Took long enough for the apologetics to arrive.

I hope you don't mind if I start using that (there are so many on the inner tubes).

Otherwise you would be compounding the usage error.

defending a position (often religious). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologetics

An apologist would be a person who engages in apologetics.

a·pol·o·gist    Show IPA
noun
1.
a person who makes a defense in speech or writing of a belief, idea, etc.
2.
Ecclesiastical .
a.
Also, a·pol·o·gete   Show IPA. a person skilled in apologetics.
b.
one of the authors of the early Christian apologies in defense of the faith.

a·pol·o·get·ics
noun (plural) /əˌpäləˈjetiks/ 
apologetics, plural

Reasoned arguments or writings in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.

I think he was poking fun at himself as in "I am boring and I got arrested for dancing." Actually I think it IS funny, not elitist.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

NO, I do NOT like!

===============

Not enough brothers around to roust that night?

We stay wide and weary of some officers these days.

The dancing couple no doubt drew attention to the steel drummer ... and some of those whose attention were caught might have dropped a coin or two into the drummer's hat; thus possibly providing the drummer a meal and encouraging vagrancy.

See we simply cannot have that!

sarcasm ... Just in case.

is standard operating procedure. Been like that for a while. And America is free because of freedom and democracy imposed at gunpoint around the world. The end is nigh.

One of the most liberal enclaves in the country. If things like this start happening there (I just moved from there to Boston - just in time apparently) it makes me wonder if there is no safe place left in the country. WTF???

Really?

Really?

Cops have been out of control for a long time, but now they're even going after elderly, well-to-do people. Maybe that means something might actually be done about it. One can dream.

I thought the NYPD was too busy stopping and frisking young men of color and monitoring how much soda people drink.

Thanks police.

with his girlfriend and a bunch of other students. Anyway, they were waltzing in Red Square and a soldier came up to them, with his gun raised, yelling "Nyet nyet!".


Just sayin'....

what kind of police we have and whose interests they represent. In Los Angeles, they've basically made themselves little more than just another gang, albeit one operating under color of the law. They are a gang for hire, mercenaries paid to protect the interests of the 1%, goons who no longer 'serve and protect' the people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal

without police?

Private security that only the rich can afford? Rampant crime everywhere as no one is around to enforce the laws?

No thank you. If you want no police, go live in Somalia.

But in this case the police clearly overstepped their bounds and over reacted.

Can't even dance anymore? Sad.

A multiple choice question:
You are a NYPD police officer and you encounter a couple dancing at midnight on a deserted subway platform.
You:
A) Join in briefly and jokingly move on.
B) Say "Nice evening, isn't it?" and move on
C) Tell them it's late and that dancing isn't allowed here, but have a safe ride home and move on.
D) Argue with them, refuse their ID, call for backup, wrestle them down and take them handcuffed into custody.

They cannot be arrested just for dancing. Unless there is some ordinance making dancing illegal. Who knows, maybe there is.

What brutality? Were they beaten or something? That part doesn't seem to be there.

"...and the cuffs were then slapped on both. The initial charge, according to Stern, was the disorderly conduct 'to prevent the flow of traffic.' "

It's amazing how people jump to believe a one-sided account. Before labeling the cop as "brutal" he/she ought at least get to give a side.

Claiming they were arrested for "dancing" rather than disrupting orderly flow of traffic is disingenuous, meant to make it sound all mean and unfair when they were only "dancing." Yet the city passed that ordinance for a reason, when people were annoyed by blockages when they were trying to get around in the station. Maybe that's a bit pissy, but that city passed that ordinance.

NYPD made no false arrests during OWS and Stop And Frisk is a perfectly legitimate tactic.

You forgot to comment on this part: "When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly,"

I answered it by quoting a part of the article that you apparently didn't see. I didn't say anything about "jump(ing) to believe a one-sided account."

Charges are dropped. But there is no reason to think that this is harassment. A couple weeks ago, a woman was arrested in Houston for warning drivers that there was a speed trap ahead. The original charge was obstructing justice. Someone at the Police Department figured out that this wouldn't fly, what with that whole first amendment problem. So they changed the charge to walking in traffic (jaywalking) when there was a sidewalk available. She says she was on the sidewalk, not in the road, holding up her sign which said speed trap.

How many stories like this are we going to hear before we wake up and say that the Police are no longer serving the interests of the public? How many of our citizens will be jailed and imprisoned before we start to demand changes to the status quo?

A man lent his AR-15 rifle that was twenty years old to a friend. The friend went to a range to shoot it. The weapon was nearly worn out, and the sear was worn down. The owner, and shooter had no idea that this was happening. When the friend was firing the weapon, it malfunctioned and emptied the magazine. In other words, it malfunctioned and fired full automatic until the magazine was empty.

Like a headlight out, this is a mechanical problem that is easily fixed. If the police got involved, it should have been nothing more than an insistence that the weapon be repaired. Instead the ATF charged the weapons owner, and got him convicted for illegally transferring a machine gun. For having an old rifle that malfunctioned. He is an Army Reservist by the way. Now you could say he should have known better, but unless you take the trigger mechanism apart, something the Army soldiers are specifically told not to do, there is no way to check the condition of the sear. So he's going to prison, because the police are always right, and the juries are instructed to convict if we believe A happened. Yes, the weapon fired fully automatic. So that makes it a machine gun, so he broke the law by lending it to a friend. That it wasn't by design doesn't matter.

This is the police state we live in. These are the people who are protecting us, but from what? In my lifetime, I've seen this change. Now, if the Police start talking to you, they are going to continue looking until they find something. With hundreds of thousands of laws on the books, they'll find something to charge you with. Even if they have to lie to do it.

If you want me to respect the police. Put them on a lie detector every six months. See if they can answer the questions without making the needles jump. Did they lie in the last six months? Did they plant evidence in the last six months? Did they make untrue statements in court or on official documents in the last six months? How many cops would fail this test? I bet we would find that half the cops were unemployed in the first year. Routine lies are no more acceptable than any other lie.

Because they were NOT doing anything illegal!

They should not have been harassed and then arrested in the first place, but when the cop inapporpriately told them they couldn't dance, and then they didn't have the specific ("Papers, please!") ID the cop wanted, the cop became annoyed, especially since the guy began to videotape the entirely inappropriate harassment of harmless citizens by a cop.

That's why he decided to arrest them: he had decided to harass and inconvenience them for no good reason, and when they questioned why and even dared to record the event, he was, like Cartman, furious that they had dared to "question his authoritay!"

It is entirely from Hess and Stern's point of view and gives only their accounts of what happened.

Charges get dropped every day and it doesn't mean the police arrested the people just to harass them - by that standard the police could only arrest the guilty and we wouldn't need trials or legal proceedings or anything. So that does not prove Hess and Sterns are 100% correct and telling the entire truth.

The article does say they are suing, so it will be interesting to see if the jury awards them anything or if they get a settlement.

And some board is looking into the police conduct, so it's not like the cops always get to do whatever and not get questioned or held to account.

and just when everyone is dancing along and as part of the act have it "raided" by a bunch of "riot gear guys" who leave "blood" soaked streets behind them.

But there are also a lot of excellent cops who take their daily mission with a big helping of duty, intelligence, and compassion, not to mention a healthy side of common sense. They rarely make it into the news, unfortunately. Bleeding and leading is where it's at.

If one of those who "take their daily mission with a big helping of duty, intelligence, and compassion, not to mention a healthy side of common sense" would step up and stop the assholes like the ones in this story. Now that would be news. Why don't the good ones turn in the bullies/crooked cops to upper authorities? I'll teell you why: 'Cause they're part of the problem too.

I'm sure it's happened though. But whistle blower laws won't stop deeply entrenched ways of dealing with rogues. And who are the rogues, anyway? I guess it depends on who's asking the question.

If the best a good cop can do is to do his job and mind his business, I understand. He may have a family and other obligations that would be imperiled if he opens his mouth. These matters are never black and white and things rarely turn out like they do in the movies.

Seriously though, however ridiculous it is to dance in a subway and act like teenagers, arrest is absurd.

There won't be any progress made towards a more humane police department until we get rid of Raymond Kelly. Everything that's bad about NYPD is made worse because of the Commissioner.



Kelly's No Good

Bloomberg defends Stop and Frisk. Then you can get rid of Kelly.

turns out they were also playing cards. What a couple of reprobates!

''All public signs of happiness by commoners is forthwith prohibited!!!''

Stop N-B Frisked!!!
No Dancing w/o Permit!!!
Just Say No To Colas!!!



Mayor Extraordinaire For Life!


- K&R

Until the cops haul away a middle-aged couple for doing the Charleston.

seen so many musicians and performers and I used to live in the city! Going down and returning from South Ferry there was a classical guitarist, a Mariachi trio, and a Whitney Houston wannabe singer, in addition to a group of phenomenal breakdancers at Battery Park. My 8 yr old grandson from Los Angeles was amazed. He had never seen so many performers in the LA subways. I thought that was interesting!

I'm scratching my head on this story after what I saw in the subways on my latest trip in.

No dancing allowed here!!

This is Bullcrap

Be even better if I could find some people to join me. Yep... oh I think some time during Christmas break is when I'll be there. I hope they arrest me, because I'll get the whole thing on video. Wonder if I could interest CNN...

Is it some kind of crime to not have the right kind of ID? Wouldn't it have made a hell of a lot more sense to tell the dancers.. "Please stop. Or move away a bit so you don't interrupt traffic."? Leaving it alone even, would have been fine as I somehow doubt they would have stopped people from getting on the train. I mean, the guy is a Dentist in his 50s and probably drive a friggin' Volvo.

Man... it's hard to figure what the hell is wrong with these idiots. A power trip? The idea that people look too happy so they must be stopped? You know, I actually prefer the kind of lunatics who like to sing and dance in public. I wish there was a hell of a lot more of it in this Country and throughout the world - it would be a happier place.

The NYPD needs to be held accountable and cease this kind of stupidity, or be dismantled and reformed with people who have at least a SHRED of common sense.

What kind of country are we living in now if people doing something as harmless as the Charleston while waiting for the subway leads to a 54 year old man getting a beat down and a 55 year old dentist getting arrested for not having the ID the police demanded? That's insane.

Fuck all the petty tyrants of the world.

They are afraid that someone, somewhere might be having a good time and enjoying life. I guess we should look forward to people being arrested for laughing soon, too. Hell, excessive smiling is probably enough to get a beatdown these days.

I'm surprised I'm not doing time.

Want to get me in trouble?

Talk about an out-of-control dirtbag...

The Charleston is the forbidden dance. Huh, always thought it was the Lambada.

Decrying the use of "pigs" to describe law enforcement and calling us wrong for thinking like that.

Sorry. This calls for a real statement. Fuck the pigs. They are owned by the 1%. And they hate the rest of us. We are a meal ticket to fund more jails and private prisons.

Maybe that crazy fuck, Alex Jones, is correct about this being a prison planet.

There's got to be something (hopefully).

most importantly, it shows the poor supervision given to the police " utility " workers.

apparently don't realize that they are being used by the political elites. Sad.

IF it had been legitimate, I could see concern for their safety. Doing the Charleston on cement probably within 10 - 12 feet from a live rail, might concern an honest cop for their safety, city getting sued for injury etc.... but impeding WHAT traffic?




Didn't I hear NY is banning public caffiene consumption? Could the police have suspected unauthorised drinking of caffiene? And what the heck is that about anyway?

One story says it's a specific type of high octane caffiene drink related to some deaths. link

Another says the Mayor is trying to fight obesity by banning all kinds of large sized drinks. link

Tig

laughing, playing music and having fun everywhere you went? What kind of world would that be?

dancing at the Lincoln Memorial (or was it the Jefferson Memorial?-I forget). One guy, who barely even swayed, was brought down with incredible brutality by several of the cops, and it was all caught on video.

The couple has filed a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department in federal court in Manhattan for unspecified damages.

Yeah, I know it comes out of the taxpayers' pockets, but at least it also creates more negative publicity against the jackbooted thuggery.

Mr. "Happy Feet" starts at 1'06"

With our torture and military mentality, I believe our law enforcement and corrections officers are more brutal than ever.

Land of the free, my ass.

that dancing is an inherently subversive revolutionary act.

Not all police officers are bad. There are just enough bad ones to make life interesting for those unfortunate to cross their paths.

You have 3 witnesses to a crime? You're liable to end up with 6 different versions of what happened.

We have become what we despise. Police states.

I was walking my chihuahua without a leash which stays right next to me. The cop said put him on a leash and I mumbled saying this wasnt a real dog like most people joke about Chis and he asked me if I was retarded and I said no are YOU? And suddenly the 4 cops surrounded and grabbed me and put me in cuffs while he was asking them, "What are we going to charge him with?"! One said resissting arrest which I did not. I went to the holding cell with 30 others where they kept me for 7 hours and my chi went to the pound. I was the last one out. I went to the hearing a couple weeks later and the cop never showed up.