Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll
Videos are springing up across the internet showing uniformed members of the New York Police Department in white shirts (as opposed to the typical NYPD blue uniforms) pepper spraying and brutalizing peaceful, nonthreatening protestors attempting to take part in the Occupy Wall Street marches. Corporate media are reporting that these white shirts are police supervisors as opposed to rank and file. Recently discovered documents suggest something else may be at work.
If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.
The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.
New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.
The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.
When the program was first rolled out, one insightful member of the NYPD posted the following on a forum: “… regarding the officer working for, and being paid by, some of the richest people and organizations in the City, if not the world, enforcing the mandates of the private employer, and in effect, allowing the officer to become the Praetorian Guard of the elite of the City. And now corruption is no longer a problem. Who are they kidding?
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street’s private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms. She has been writing on public interest issues for CounterPunch since retiring in 2006. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com
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Machiavellian politics. The masses only THINK they have control. The real answer is that we are told only what is essential in a need-to-know climate. Now, having said that, I think some of the insiders with boots on the ground need to infiltrate the white-shirted ‘policemen’ to gain inside ‘intelligence.’ It is one thing to vent our opinions here but we really need solid information to prove a point as Readdocs so aptly suggests.
Like Julian Assange founder of Wikileaks discovered, you become a target when you front run information the establishment does not want disseminated. Example: It would be inflammatory to discover that the NYPD is similar to the paid contractors in our war efforts. Of course, that usually translates to ‘taxpayer’ funded contractors. If used against U.S. citizens that could be cause for a deeper revolt. Don’t say it isn’t coming. This movement is ‘ripe’ to explode. The only deterrent that will slow OCCUPY/OWS is apathy and bad weather. This is the fall of our discontent! It is to the advantage of the protesters to escalate action. What would stir the cauldron more than to be mugged, beaten and arrested by NYPD taxpayer-paid corporate contractor henchmen? Intelligence, inside, on-site observers and a little Wikileak expertise?
If OCCUPY is listening, a word to the wise?
…….a Pandora’s box…….now opening on NYPD operatives….who are spending 37$ per hour of taxpayers money……..to pepper spray and beat up on innocent FEMALE protesters…..I do not love this country anymore…….I am flat out disgusted!
Of course you know the police report to J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America. There is a red phone between the Chief and the CEO of these banks. Who are they kidding? We know who controls our police and it AIN’T the mayor.
Who at this website is verifying and vetting the sources of the protests and of the
“news” being spread? Is anyone fact checking. Like one advocate of SEIU is
now spreading the word of terrorizing corporate employees at their homes, including
their families. Did you know this person lives in a half million dollar home in
Washington DC? He’s also associated with ACORN? How come the editors are
not digging on BOTH sides of this situation? Before you associate in any manner
you should be knowing exactly who, what, why, where, and when before signing on.
I’ve been reading here for several months, and usually the editors back up their
sources when publishing any information. Why are they not doing this now?
Why are the commenters not asking why the sources are not being vetted?
Don’t get too excited about what’s being pushed if it causes the whole system
to collapse leaving everyone impoverished, and finally discovering we’re being
put under martial law permanently by a very corrupt government. What needs to
happen here is what’s been published originally the discovery of the fraud in our
unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness ( owning private property). Because
there are those who are involved in this protest that would willingly take away
your individual right to any size piece of land or a home. They would willingly see
you forced into a so called high rise of block buildings that are ugly inside and out
and tell you how you are going to live and die.
And one of the PROGRESSIVE steps next year when the EPA begins turning
out the lights all over this nation because of their choking regulations that have
no basis in science, in politics only. 28 GW will be no longer in existence beginning
Jan.1,2012. I hope none of you are dependent on medical equipment.
What is wrong with the EPA? What was wrong with ACORN? There are no “choking” regulations. The EPA has had it’s budget attacked relentlessly. There was nothing wrong with ACORN, unless you were a predatory lender. Ergo, ACORN was destroyed.
There is something wrong with your TV, radio , go ahead and listen to ‘patriotic’ liars, believe everything they tell you. We’ve tried it their way for the past 40 years. and it has f#$king failed! The Government now is the most massive it has ever been, and the security state, which no rightwad ever questions when they go on their tirades about spending – takes most of our discretionary spending. Get ready to feel the night sticks, bought and paid for with your tax dollars, that you insisted be spent on security.
Occupy Wall Street is on the move today!
They are marching on the east side of manhattan by the homes of the billionaires including the evil jamie dimon.
let’s see what the white shirts will do now.
excerpt from the article:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Occupy Wall Street is on the move … uptown.
Why uptown? Because that’s where the rich folks live!
Community groups and progressive organizations that have been working with the broader Occupy Wall Street movement are planning a march on Tuesday that will visit the homes of JP Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) CEO Jamie Dimon, billionaire David Koch, hedge fund honcho John Paulson, Howard Milstein, and News Corp (NWSA, Fortune 500) CEO Rupert Murdoch.
The millionaires and billionaires are being targeted for what event organizers called a “willingness to hoard wealth at the expense of the 99%.”
full article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/10/news/economy/occupy_wall_street_protest/index.htm
This is scary as hell. Remember the infamous Pinkerton’s from history? Goons are always hired by private robber barons. I suspect that they will try to incite violence, thugs are famous for this.
Maybe it’s time to hire our own military from the underground, and form our own forces against the elite mobsters……………… there is plenty of men and women all ready trained for combat. They are as pissed as we are and would jump at the invitation, soldiers of war unite with “WE THE PEOPLE” we are one, we are proud, we don’t forget.
You did make great contributions to people who were losing their houses to unfair and illegal actions by the banks and mortgage companies.
Now you seem to be backing the communist party and labor unions (almost synonymous) that are sponsoring the Occupy actions–actions that magically spring up just like the Arab spring. Could the same people be backing both groups so that they can take over and place their dictator in charge? I believe so.
You are obviously well meaning, but this is a blatant attempt to promote anarchy so that the socialists and communists can take charge. Then you will not have to worry about who owns your home–it will be the government–100%!! nationwide. This is so obvious you must be able to see the truth.
Hamilton McMenamy,
Just because some organizations have endorsed the protests doesn’t mean that the protest is in their pocket. I am a fiscal conservative. I am a registered Republican with strong Libertarian leanings. I support the protests too.
Socialists and communists are not going to take over the United States. True, these protests are filled with a lot of fringe ideas… but so what? Those fringe ideas won’t succeed. Stupid ideas will wither but the ones we can all get behind will succeed.
We need to stop BigMoney’s undue influence on our government. Right now, there are Supreme Court rulings that 1. allow the government to take private property from citizens using Eminent Domain and then hand it directly over to private corporations. 2. Corporations and special interests can donate unlimited money to political campaigns. 3. Corporations have been entitled to the same rights & privileges as citizens.
We have voting machines that do not generate paper trails and have been shown to be easily tampered with.
We have numerous other examples of corruption.
Why care about a fringe group in this larger protest movement. We need EVERYONE, of all ideologies, to get on board and help us fight the corruption that has taken our government away from us.
Hamilton, we need you. This isn’t about socialism or communism. This is about fixing the system for everyone, be they communist, socialist, Libertarian, Republican, or whatever.
Wonderfully stated, The 1% have been eminently succesful in using division politics to prevent the exact type of coming together that you are talking about, that is happening today in cities all over the country. We have more in common in this fight than we have to divide us. Anyone in the bottom 99% is simply prey for the financial apex predators. THAT is the true threat, THEY are the true enemy. All other labels, names, categories are meaningless in light of the decimation of the American middle class and the conversion of our democracy to a kleptocratic oligarchy.
We need to keep our eyes on the prize – restoration of a corruption-free country based on rule of law that works to the benefit of the lower 99%. Without this, nothing else matters.
Leave the wall street bunch alone, and focus on the big picture, GOVERNMENT THAT IS THE MAIN CONTROL OF THE PEOPLE, we are being handed another smoke screen to allude us from the real threat, our own government. Take back our country in the name of humanity, throw out all the banks, take down the FED, and remove all the traitors who put this country in ruins, and convict them all as traitors and take every last possession they own to pay back the people. Then it’s off to off shore banks and mobsters who are storing our money overseas for corporate America.
http://www.getmoneyout.com/
Just go and…http://www.getmoneyout.com/
@ Hamilton McMenamy – who is the “you” in your posting? Are you referring to the author of this posting, Pam Martens, or the site? Just who are you directing your posting to????
People like you have no clue how you are being robbed from. So you attack unions, then out comes the old favorite stupidity of “communism”. The communists are the Banksters! “unions” are not the enemy – they have tried for decades to make sure workers can afford housing, they are not perfect, they are in no way as corrupt as Banksters . There is no other group, entity, organization that has taken welfare they way Wall Street has, yet you persist with the propoganda that blames victims. Well, the banksters have been blaming victims for years now, perhaps you should join them?
A union gives an individual worker who would have no voice against unfair labor practices a collective voice by election. Union members vote on their contracts, decisions, etc. Workers are free to choose union membership to speak or act for them. In recent years, large corporate entities have trashed union membership. Walmart is an example and in Memphis Federal Express is another who has fought to keep unions away from their rank and file workers. Why? lower wages, less benefits, healthcare options, firing practice control, etc. . It is about corporate power but what big business did to ensure people support their decision to trash unions is to blame unions for corruption (and as in all organizations there are a few bad apples one can point to) and to claim unions, particularly teacher’s unions are protecting people who are bad teachers. This is just an example. Police unions and other unions operate the same way. Unions protect jobs. Corporations use this to persuade the public in a propaganda public relations tactic to persuade people that unions are bad across the board. Not so. Unions protect people, individuals but they do not coexist well profit-wise with Corporate Capitalism. We have descended into more Corporate control than most of us even realized, while we were dilly dallying around in our housing bubble with all our toys, etc.
Now it is time to wake up, not blame the unions, and get down to the real culprits, Wall Street, big banking, who ripped us off, etc. Nothing to do with communism. It is about freedom and our bottom line.