NYPD’s New Game Truck Gets Critics’ Attention

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The New York Police Department deployed a play truck this month in an effort to connect with young people, especially in low-income neighborhoods, where community relations with law enforcement have been strained. thanks to generations of mistrust.

It will be a game-changer this summer, said Jeffrey Maddrey, the department’s community affairs chief, in a video showcasing the vehicle. Came out of your block [and] were going out in your neighborhood. Make sure our young people have a safe summer, a safe space and just know the NYPD is here to support them.

The game truck is outfitted with an assortment of video game consoles, including Nintendo Switches, PS5s, and Xbox Series S, with the goal of connecting young New Yorkers with officers on video games. The exterior walls of the truck are painted with various Marvel characters and the words NYPD Game Truck in large print. The contents of the truck are due to a generous donation from the NYC Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides resources to the NYPD, according to Maddrey.

Police departments have a long history of trying to engage with young people with extracurricular activities, not so much educational activities, but simply bonding, Kirk Burkhalter, a 20-year-old former NYPD detective, told Yahoo News. So, it certainly follows a tradition.

New York City Police Department (Getty Images)

The department began the program this month, and the first truck in service was spotted on the weekend of July 4 at the north end of Manhattan’s East River Park, near several New York City Housing Authority buildings. (NYCHA), by Vice Journalist Jason Koebler. Another truck was recently seen in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

But despite the NYPD’s stated intention, the game truck program has its critics.

Some people might like to believe it is well intentioned, but I think it really reflects the extent to which they intertwine in our communities, Olayemi Olurin, a

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Public Defender of the Legal Aid Society told Yahoo News, adding: “This is really just another way to indoctrinate people into believing that the police are necessary and must be present. And that’s another way the same communities are forced to have a constant police presence.

Controversial past practices by the NYPD have also raised suspicions about the use of chase trucks. In 2018, when police questioned a 12-year-old boy suspected of committing a crime, they gave him a soda purchased from McDonalds. When the interview was over and the boy was cleared to leave, the police recovered the drinking straw and, without his knowledge or consent, used it to enter his DNA into a database, a reported the New York Times. The boy’s DNA did not link him to evidence recovered from a crime scene, and his family had to go to court to have it removed from the police database.

Due to incidents like this, public defenders, in particular, have been among the fiercest critics of the gaming truck program.

My first reaction was a reflex Don’t go! and I stand by it, MaryAnne Kaishian, senior policy adviser at Brooklyn Defender Services, a human rights organization, told Yahoo News. For decades, the NYPD has aggressively sought to target and monitor New Yorkers, especially black and brown youth, and to collect and catalog their data in secret internal archives such as the gang database and the base. rogue DNA data.

With so many areas of modern life requiring identity verification, online security remains a constant concern, especially in the wake of the recent wave of global hacks. (Photo by Leon Neal / Getty Images)

Kaishian believes game trucks are an optimal framework for collecting biometric information such as fingerprints and DNA, as well as seemingly harmless information from social media and neighborhoods that will ultimately be used to tag and harass in ways. permanent young people.

It is a matter of security and protection of their private information, which the police have continually sought to obtain by all means, Kaishian said. Even inadvertently, providing personal data to the police is not in anyone’s best interest.

Other public defenders agree with this assessment.

He’s a predator, New York public defender Eliza Orlins wrote on her Instagram account. Over-surveillance is already a huge problem, and the police will use whatever method they can. As a public defender, Ive represented children as young as 15 whose DNA was surreptitiously collected by the NYPD, such as from a can of soda, a used straw, or a bag of often potato chips. offered by the cops to the children. The last thing they have to do is get into cop vans on purpose.

The NYPD did not respond to multiple requests from Yahoo News to comment on this article. The New York City Police Benevolent Association also did not respond to a request for comment.

NYPD officers respond after reports of several people being struck by a truck on October 31, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Kena Betancur / Getty Images)

Disputes over the NYPD’s collection of private information are not new. In 2018, then Chief Detective Dermot F. Shea, who is now the New York Police Commissioner, announced that the NYPD Crime Group Database, or Gang Database, was made up of to 99% of non-white people, especially young black and Latino men. . Children as young as 13 have been added to the database and remain there indefinitely.

The department says the database helps police learn about gang affiliations, according to Shea, but the department has not been clear on how it protects individuals from being misidentified as members. Database entries can include a person’s name, address, social media accounts, and other personal information. Critics of the database say it replaced the city’s controversial stop-and-search policy, which ended in 2014 after a judge ruled it unconstitutional, in order to trap at-risk youth .

Prosecutors rely on this police information all the time and use it to seek higher bail in their cases, Anthony Posada, supervising lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, told Gothamist. People are being deported as a result of these allegations because a simple allegation of gang membership can result in someone being detained by ICE.

Burkhalter, the longtime former NYPD officer, says he understands the fear many parents may have of seeing their children get into the truck, but he says the intention of the program is to protect them.

There’s no question in my mind that he’s absolutely well-intentioned by the police department, said Burkhalter, who is currently a law professor at New York Law School. He also noted that there are easier ways for the police to obtain DNA for their database.

An NYPD officer (Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

As an investigator it would be a lot easier for me to go to your house and sift your trash outside and take a straw or a mug or a hairbrush and collect your DNA that way , than to wait until you get into a hunting truck, he mentioned. So I don’t think the purpose of the game truck is to just store data on individuals at all.

Olurin of the Legal Aid Society believes that the mindset of seeing an entire community as potential crime suspects is exactly why distrust of the police is so prevalent.

If you don’t want the community to feel [at odds with police], you have to listen to the needs and demands of the community, she said. It will not be a game truck. It is complying with the law and respecting the rights of people and their autonomy to walk freely in their own communities instead of crowding into communities and controlling people’s behavior.

Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Gwynne Hogan, NYPD Office of Community Affairs

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