The Murdoch Post reports:
The Brooklyn DA and NYPD Internal Affairs are investigating cops caught on tape beating a man wrongly suspected of trespassing in a Crown Heights synagogue, authorities said yesterday.
The Oct. 8 beatdown took place at the Alternative Learning Institute for Young Adults, a synagogue and outreach center for troubled youths.
Cops believed that Ehud Halevy, 21, was homeless and trespassing.
A volunteer security guard mistakenly called police, not knowing Halevy had been staying there for about a month, with permission.
When cops first approached, Halevy, not wearing a shirt or pants, refused to leave.
“You’re not kicking me out — I have a right to stay here,” he insisted according to law-enforcement sources.
Halevy put on his pants before the confrontation escalated to the incident caught on tape.
He was booked for assault, obstructing governmental administration, criminal trespassing, resisting arrest, harassment and pot possession.
“He [Halevy] was in a needy position. He needed a place to sleep,” said Rabbi Moshe Feiglin, who runs the center.
Several politicians said cops went overboard in using force.
“When we watched the video and saw some of New York’s Finest behaving in a not very fine way, brutalizing an individual for absolutely no reason, it was just something horrible,” said Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind.
The only reason Dov Hikind cares about this incident is because the cops beat a white guy who was Jewish.
If this had been another one of those "NYPD Beat Black Guy For No Reason" or "NYPD Shoot, Kill Unarmed Brown Person," Hikind wouldn't have blinked twice.
Therein lies the reason why the NYPD are getting away with all of this brutality.
For the most part, it's happening to people of color and most white people don't seem to really give a shit about that.
But when it happens to one of their own, suddenly the Dov Hikinds are giving interviews to the Murdoch Post criticizing the NYPD for excessive force.
How about criticizing the NYPD for the excessive force and brutality they show every day of the year to people of color in this city?
How about starting a Knapp Commission to investigate Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg and all of the police violence these men have allowed to be perpetrated across this city?
The Bronx D.A. has put the NYPD and its Stop and Frisk policies on trial in the Bronx.
How about we start putting these crooked, violent cops who are beating and shooting and murdering people all over this city on trial too?
How about we put Kelly and Bloomberg on trial for running this kind of police department?
Kelly's response to two recent fatal shootings of unarmed civilians by the NYPD was to issue a “tactical awareness bulletin."
NYPD cops have been warned to brush up on their firearms tactics after two unarmed civilians were recently shot dead by police, The Post has learned.
A memo went up in precinct houses last week reminding officers to “slow down . . . request backup . . . exercise firearms control [and] formulate a tactical plan” before shooting.
The “tactical awareness bulletin” — which outlines various scenarios in which cops could “inadvertently” or erratically discharge their weapons — was also read during roll call, sources said.
The reminder comes in the wake of the recent fatal police shootings of Queens National Guardsman Noel Polanco, 22, during a traffic stop on the Grand Central Parkway and Bronx bodega worker Raynaldo Cuevas, 20, who collided with a cop while fleeing a robbery.
That's not good enough.
Make no mistake, the police are under a lot of pressure from the top to constantly increase arrests, push the crime stats in the precincts down, and make Kelly and Bloomberg look like crime fighting geniuses.
One of the consequences of all of this pressure is that a lot of cops are taking their frustrations out on the public.
And some, like our old friend Tony Bologna of OWS fame, are just sociopaths who like to goon it up.
But the people in charge of the system - Bloomberg and Kelly - are the ones responsible for these problems and they are the ones who could put a stop to it if they wanted to.
Instead we see week after week more incidents of police brutality, of innocent people being shot and killed by the NYPD, of unarmed alleged "perps" getting shot and killed while "resisting arrest."
The NYPD is out of control and yet, nothing is done to stop this and nothing seems to happen to the people most responsible for this.
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