The New York Police Department apparently classifies individuals who choose to exercise their right to videotape police engaging in their public duties “professional agitators” as revealed by a poster inside the NYPD’s 30th Precinct.
While this is hardly surprising coming from a police department so woefully corrupt that an officer who actually attempted to do his job by exposing rampant, systematic corruption ended up being thrown in a psychiatric ward by his superiors, it is troubling nonetheless.
If anything can be said about the New York Police Department with any degree of certainty, it is that they probably have a significant reason to fear being recorded in carrying out their often deplorable activities.
According to Christina Gonzalez Nysid, one of the two “professional agitators” depicted on the poster (which has a couple of egregious and hilariously elementary grammatical and spelling errors), she discovered it after walking in to the monthly 30th Precinct community board meeting.