Research Libraries Tell Publishers To Drop Their Awful Lawsuit Against The Internet Archive

from the speak-up dept

I've seen a lot of people -- including those who are supporting the publishers' legal attack on the Internet Archive -- insist that they "support libraries," but that the Internet Archive's Open Library and National Emergency Library are "not libraries." First off, they're wrong. But, more importantly, it's good to see actual librarians now coming out in support of the Internet Archive as well. The Association of Research Libraries has put out a statement asking publishers to drop this counter productive lawsuit, especially since the Internet Archive has shut down the National Emergency Library.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) urges an end to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive filed early this month by four major publishers in the United States District Court Southern District of New York, especially now that the National Emergency Library (NEL) has closed two weeks earlier than originally planned.

As the ARL points out, the Internet Archive has been an astounding "force for good" for the dissemination of knowledge and culture -- and that includes introducing people to more books.

For nearly 25 years, the Internet Archive (IA) has been a force for good by capturing the world’s knowledge and providing barrier-free access for everyone, contributing services to higher education and the public, including the Wayback Machine that archives the World Wide Web, as well as a host of other services preserving software, audio files, special collections, and more. Over the past four weeks, IA’s Open Library has circulated more than 400,000 digital books without any user cost—including out-of-copyright works, university press titles, and recent works of academic interest—using controlled digital lending (CDL). CDL is a practice whereby libraries lend temporary digital copies of print books they own in a one-to-one ratio of “loaned to owned,” and where the print copy is removed from circulation while the digital copy is in use. CDL is a practice rooted in the fair use right of the US Copyright Act and recent judicial interpretations of that right. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many academic and research libraries have relied on CDL (including IA’s Open Library) to ensure academic and research continuity at a time when many physical collections have been inaccessible.

As ARL and our partner library associations acknowledge, many publishers (including some involved in the lawsuit) are contributing to academic continuity by opening more content during this crisis. As universities and libraries work to ensure scholars and students have the information they need, ARL looks forward to working with publishers to ensure open and equitable access to information. Continuing the litigation against IA for the purpose of recovering statutory damages and shuttering the Open Library would interfere with this shared mutual objective.

It would be nice if the publishers recognized this, but as we've said over and over again, these publishers would sue any library if libraries didn't already exist. The fact that the Open Library looks just marginally different from a traditional library, means they're unlikely to let go of this stupid, counterproductive lawsuit.

Filed Under: cdl, controlled digital lending, copyright, fair use, libraries, nel, pandemic
Companies: association of research libraries, internet archive

Boston The Latest City To Ban Facial Recognition Use By Government Agencies

from the returning-the-public's-faces-to-them dept

San Francisco led the way. Then the entire state of California followed suit. And on the other side of the country, a few smaller cities in Massachusetts did the same thing: banned facial recognition.

It just makes sense. The tech that's out there is as dangerous as it is unproven. Mostly known for its false positive rates, facial recognition software has shown it's capable of amplifying existing biases into actionable "intel" with the power to severely disrupt people's lives.

It's not just hypothetical. Just recently, a Michigan man became the first false positive arrested. He was detained for 30 hours based on a mismatch delivered by facial recognition software. Even companies that have been pitching facial recognition tech to law enforcement agencies have pulled back in recent weeks, refusing to become part of the problem… at least for the time being. One company that has done nothing but sell tech to cops has decided it won't be adding facial recognition to its near-ubiquitous body cameras.

With all of this going on, news of another facial recognition ban in a major city is no longer surprising. But it's still welcome news.

Boston has banned the use of facial surveillance technology in the city, becoming the second-largest community in the world to do so.

The city council unanimously voted on Wednesday to ban the use of the technology and prohibit any city official from obtaining facial surveillance by asking for it through third parties. The measure will now go to Mayor Marty Walsh with a veto-proof majority.

Veto-proof… and yet:

Walsh's office said he would review the ban.

The mayor's office has spelled "sign" incorrectly.

The discussion leading to the vote included the case of Robert Williams, who was arrested by Michigan police officers after their software said a screen-grab from a lo-res CCTV camera matched Williams' drivers license photo. Even local law enforcement reps -- who say they aren't currently using the tech -- expressed their reservations.

During a hearing earlier this month, Boston Police Commissioner William Gross said the current technology isn't reliable, and that it isn't used by the department.

"Until this technology is 100%, I'm not interested in it," he said.

“I didn’t forget that I'm African American and I can be misidentified as well," he added.

The ban [PDF] says it's illegal for any city agency or official to obtain facial recognition tech, either directly or through a third party. It also forbids agencies from employing contractors who plan to utilize the tech.

There aren't many loopholes or carve outs. Law enforcement will be able to use evidence derived from facial recognition tech in investigations so long as this evidence wasn't generated by any entity covered by the ban. Hopefully, this won't result in a bunch of requests being sent of out-of-state/federal agencies for secondhand searches.

The bill also includes a loophole for phones, tablets, computers, and social media services that use facial recognition software to verify identity, saving the city the trouble of having to rewrite the law to ensure employees can still use their personal and city-issued electronics -- something San Francisco failed to consider when it became the first city in the country to ban the tech.

The new law also gives people the right to sue if they think they were the target of unlawful facial recognition tech. And it makes anything derived from the banned tech illegal, making it impossible to further investigations, use in court, or otherwise exploit for the city government's gain.

It's a good bill and it's on the way to joining the handful of pioneering anti-surveillance creep laws on the books around the nation. Given the current state of citizen/law enforcement relations, there are certainly more bans on the way.

Filed Under: bans, boston, facial recognition, privacy

Charter Spectrum Lobbies FCC To Kill Time Warner Cable Merger Conditions

from the regulatory-capture dept

When Charter proposed its $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, former FCC boss Tom Wheeler brought in net neutrality advocate Marvin Ammori to help hammer out conditions that wound up actually being semi-meaningful, a rarity in the telecom space. Under the deal, Charter was banned from imposing usage caps, engaging in interconnection shenanigans with content providers like Netflix, or violating net neutrality (even if the rules themselves were killed) for a period of seven years. Charter was also required to expand broadband to 2 million additional locations.

Granted a lot has happened since those conditions were passed in 2016. That includes the FCC basically folding like wet cardboard under pressure from telecom lobbyists, and not only killing all meaningful net neutrality rules, but gutting its authority over telecom creating massive gaps in basic consumer protections. Obviously feeling unfairly excluded from all the corruption, Charter is now lobbying the FCC to eliminate most of the deal's conditions, claiming that because the streaming video market is just so damn competitive, the conditions have proven themselves unnecessary:

"[I]n the years since the Conditions were imposed, [online video distributors] are even more numerous, more popular, and more formidable today than they were in 2016," states the petition. " Seemingly insatiable consumer demand for content only bolsters their already strong interconnection negotiating positions."

But that misrepresents why those conditions were imposed in the first place: Charter's monopoly over broadband, not video. The restrictions on usage caps, which were to expire in 2023, were imposed because with no competitors for users to flee too, it's very easy to start abusing usage caps to hamper streaming competitors, which is what AT&T is already doing. If you use AT&T's broadband service, AT&T's streaming video service doesn't count against your cap, but using Netflix or a competing streaming platform does. Caps aren't technically necessary to manage congestion. They're glorified price hikes.

The other major restriction involved prohibiting Charter from using its power to drive up rates for streaming competitors in interconnection agreements. If you remember back to 2014, Netflix service began mysteriously slowing down for Verizon users. Consumer groups and companies like Netflix and Layer3 said Verizon was intentionally letting its peering points with partners get congested to force Netflix to pay higher rates simply to connect to the incumbent ISP network. This kind of anti-competitive gamesmanship was also prohibited for a reason, and has nothing to do with how competitive the streaming sector was.

With net neutrality dead, Charter now finds itself in a position where it has to adhere to standards its competitors don't, so it's understandable (from their end of the equation) why it's asking they be lifted. The problem is that none of the underlying justifications for those conditions have changed. In fact they've gotten worse as Charter secures a bigger monopoly over broadband as its telco competitors flee the fixed-line residential broadband market in many areas. Ideally you'd fix this problem with pro-competition policies instead of merger conditions or net neutrality rules, but the US has never had the political courage for such an effort.

The original rules included a provision requested by the FCC that lets them lobby to end the rules two years early, so that's what they're doing. The problem here is that Charter has been so terrible at adhering to many of the conditions, it almost resulted in the company getting kicked out of New York State for lying to regulators, something I'd never seen happen in 20 years of watching the sector. So it's not exactly like Charter should be given a break for good behavior, because its behavior has largely been terrible. The FCC probably will anyway, inevitably leading to higher bills for Charter Spectrum users.

It's another reason why instead of imposing conditions that are either ineffective, watered down, or simply ignored, it makes sense to block these kinds of industry-consolidating deals from the start. Something the Obama administration was urged to do, but ignored. Mindless consolidation has never served the telecom sector well, and you'd be hard pressed to find a single major telecom merger in the last 20 years that delivered even a fraction of its promised "synergies." Or for that matter, regulators from either party who've done a good job holding these companies to their promises years after the fact.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, conditions, fcc, mergers
Companies: charter spectrum, time warner cable

Facebook Follows Twitter In Recognizing A 'More Speech' Approach Is Best For Newsworthy Liars

from the it's-one-way-to-deal-with-it dept

As you may recall, a few weeks back, Twitter made a decision to add a fact check to some tweets by President Trump, and a few days later, to put a label on some of his tweets, saying that they violated Twitter's policies, and would normally be deleted, but Twitter decided that given the newsworthiness of the speaker, they would be left up (though without the ability to comment or retweet them). The president reacted about as well as expected, meaning he whined vociferously, and eventually issued a silly executive order.

Of course, the other end of this story was that Trump posted some of the same content to Facebook, and Facebook chose to do nothing. Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg pulled out this ridiculous self-serving, sanctimonious nonsense about how Facebook would allow that content because he didn't want to be "the arbiter of truth." Except, of course, Facebook does fact checks and content moderation all the time. This seemed to be a lot more about currying favor with the president, than any principled stand.

It created a big fuss within (and outside) the company, and as with any situation in which a social media website says it's taking a hands-off approach, it eventually proves to be totally unworkable. It seems to have taken all of a month for Facebook to recognize this as well.

On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg announced a bunch of changes to Facebook's policies that appear to be pretty damn similar to what Twitter did a month earlier, which Zuckerberg originally pretended was a bad idea. Amidst a larger rollout of changes to fight voter suppression and misinformation, there was this:

A handful of times a year, we leave up content that would otherwise violate our policies if the public interest value outweighs the risk of harm. Often, seeing speech from politicians is in the public interest, and in the same way that news outlets will report what a politician says, we think people should generally be able to see it for themselves on our platforms.

We will soon start labeling some of the content we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case. We'll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what's acceptable in our society -- but we'll add a prompt to tell people that the content they're sharing may violate our policies.

To clarify one point: there is no newsworthiness exemption to content that incites violence or suppresses voting. Even if a politician or government official says it, if we determine that content may lead to violence or deprive people of their right to vote, we will take that content down. Similarly, there are no exceptions for politicians in any of the policies I'm announcing here today.

Frankly, I think this is the best of a bunch of bad solutions. There really isn't a great answer here, even though people always assume there's "the right way" to do this. Among your options:

• Do nothing: What Zuckerberg initially claimed Facebook would do. But this then allows people -- including politicians -- to spread ridiculous lies, sometimes hateful, or violence inducing, without any way to stop it. It pisses off users of your platform, as well as advertisers.
• Take the content down: This pisses off the lying politicians, who are in a position to make your life even more miserable. See the response in Congress to Twitter doing just a little bit of moderation, in which victim-playing Republicans suddenly pretended that Twitter was "censoring them" and demanding revenge.
• Calling out newsworthy exemptions: More or less where both companies have ended up. This still leads to complaints from both sides, but is a form of a compromise -- and one that involves adding "more speech" to questionable speech, rather than completely erasing some speech or pretending that the original speech was perfectly acceptable.

Is this the "best" possible resolution? Almost certainly not. But it does show how the companies continue to struggle through this and adapt to try to come up with solutions that make the most sense in a world where every option has significant trade-offs.

Filed Under: content moderation, donald trump, fact checking, free speech, labeling, more speech, newsworthy
Companies: facebook

Daily Deal: The CompTIA Secure Cloud Professional Bundle

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The CompTIA Secure Cloud Professional Bundle has 2 courses to help you prepare for the CompTIA Cloud+ (CV0-002) and CompTIA Security+ SY0-501 exams. The CompTIA Cloud+ covers the increased diversity of knowledge, skills and abilities required of system administrators to validate what is necessary to perform effectively in data center jobs. CompTIA Security+ covers the essential principles for network security and risk management. It's on sale for $30.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Rather Than Attacking Section 230, Why Aren't Trump Supporters Angry About The DMCA That's Actually Causing Issues?

from the you-guys-got-it-all-wrong dept

A few weeks back, we wrote about how one of Donald Trump's tirades over Twitter "moderating" him, in which he blamed Section 230, was totally misplaced. The actual issue was about copyright and Section 512 of the DMCA. That was a case where a copyright claim took down a Trump campaign video after a copyright holder claimed it infringed.

Last week, we saw copyright again cause trouble in Trump world -- and again, Trump's fans blamed Twitter and Section 230 rather than the problems of the DMCA instead. This time, it involved a well-known Trump mememaker going by the name Carpe Donktum, who makes generally lame "MAGA memes." Early last week, Twitter permanently shut down his account, and all the Trumpalos went nuts. A writer for the Federalist, Mollie Hemingway, laughably called it "election interference" by Twitter:

Except, as you can even see in that very screenshot that Mollie (who apparently can't even read the screenshots she's posting), Twitter shut down his account for repeated infringement under the DMCA. Twitter later confirmed exactly that.

“per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives. The account was permanently suspended for repeated violations of this policy.”

Donnie Jr. got similarly angry, and had an odd interpretation of what "public domain" means:

Now, we can argue whether or not the copyright claim was valid. I think for most memes, even Donktum's incredibly stupid ones, he would have strong fair use claims. But as we've seen in cases like the BMG v. Cox case, courts are now saying that the repeat infringer policy is not for proven infringement, but merely alleged infringement.

Even worse? In the Copyright Office's recent report on Section 512 of the DMCA, it supported that viewpoint, that the DMCA not only requires a repeat infringer policy, but that it should be based on repeated accusations of infringement, even if those accusations are not accurate.

Given that, Twitter has little choice but to shut down Donktum's feed, and people blaming Twitter or Section 230 for this (or idiotically calling it "election interference") have misplaced their blame. They should, instead, be concerned about Section 512(i) of the DMCA and the series of recent cases that say it is based on accusation, and not on any adjudication of infringement. And, similarly, they should also be asking why the Copyright Office recently supported this censorial definition in the years-long study it did on Section 512 and just released a little over a month ago. From that report:

... any definition must be consistent with the statutory criteria that repeat infringer means repeat alleged infringer, not repeat adjudicated infringer.

And then this week, we had yet another example, in which Twitter removed an image from a Trump tweet after the NY Times filed a DMCA takedown notice:

The original tweet by Trump issued on June 30, showed a meme that read “In reality they’re not after me they’re after you I’m just in the way” with Trump’s picture in the background.

The background picture was taken by a New York Times photographer, to accompany a feature article on then presidential candidate Trump in September 2015.

Twitter now displays the message “This image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder,” in place of the tweet.

You can see what it looks like now:

As I write this, the usual crew hasn't freaked out yet, but I fully expect that when they do, they're likely to blame Twitter or Section 230, neither of which are even remotely responsible here.

But while Trump's fans in Congress are running around trying to change Section 230 with a new bill every other day, why aren't any of them looking at fixing this part of the DMCA that is actually leading to censorship (unlike what's happening with 230)?

Filed Under: carpe donktum, censorship, copyright, dmca, dmca 512, donald trump, notice and takedown, repeat infringer, section 230
Companies: twitter

YouTube Jacks Live TV Streaming Prices 30%, As Streaming Sector Starts To Resemble Good Old Cable

from the meet-the-new-boss... dept

There's absolutely no doubt that the streaming TV revolution has, by and large, been a positive thing. Thanks to a ridiculous surge in streaming TV competitors, consumers now have far more options than they've ever had before, resulting not only in lower prices and more flexibility in TV options, but customer service that far surpasses the clumsy trash fire that is Comcast customer service.

But all is not well in paradise. Those laboring under the illusion that this competition would magically rid the sector of its worst impulses will likely soon be broken of this notion, as YouTube this week announced it would be raising prices for its streaming TV service some thirty percent ($15 to $65 a month). Much like traditional cable TV vendors have done for years, YouTube blames the hikes on the high cost of programming, and innovative improvements to the platform:

"We don’t take these decisions lightly, and realize how hard this is for our members. That said, this new price reflects the rising cost of content and we also believe it reflects the complete value of YouTube TV, from our breadth of content to the features that are changing how we watch live TV. YouTube TV is the only streaming service that includes a DVR with unlimited storage space, plus 6 accounts per household each with its own unique recommendations, and 3 concurrent streams. It's all included in the base cost of YouTube TV, with no contract and no hidden fees."

This of course wasn't surprising. The same broadcasters that kept jacking up prices on traditional cable TV providers (one and the same when talking about AT&T/TimeWarner/HBO or Comcast/NBC/Universal), are now doing the same thing to streaming TV providers. In short, it's a never ending quest to extract higher and higher rates for the same programming at a moment when consumers have made it abundantly clear they're sick of paying an arm and a leg to watch ad-laden, traditional TV (not to mention the whole pandemic and resulting financial toll thing).

It's a greedy downward spiral that even Wall Street analysts have been warning for years isn't sustainable. Said greed recently resulted in record losses in the traditional cable TV sector, as users, angered by relentless price hikes, headed for the exits. Granted with the same price hikes now hitting streaming TV providers (especially those offering live broadcasts), these users (especially younger ones) are more likely than ever to avoid the concept of traditional TV entirely and just go watch free YouTube, TikTok, or (gasp) read a book.

The sector has already inadvertently been driving some users to piracy thanks to its obsession with exclusives. With users now forced to hunt and peck through a rotating crop of paywalled services to find their favorite content (Star Trek on CBS All Access, Star Wars on Disney+, Friends only on Comcast!, etc.) many users had already been reverting to piracy (or OTA broadcasts) for simplicity and cost's sake. Raising prices hand over fist isn't likely to help that, and there's the potential here to undermine all of the work put into convincing content owners to make content easier to access over the last two decades.

Other ugly habits of traditional television have also been slowly meandering over to the streaming TV space. The Roku, Amazon, and AT&T standoff, for example, has resulted in Roku and Amazon hardware users being unable to access AT&T's streaming platforms as they bicker over rates, ensuring that the annoying and ugly content blackouts and retransmission feuds make their way to streaming. A lot of these standoffs will inevitably get worse (especially given the feckless FCC authority and death of net neutrality).

Again, streaming TV right now is a huge step up from traditional cable, the old cable box, bloated cable channel bundles, and sky high prices. But there's still plenty of warning signs that as the sector grows, it's going to forget many of the important lessons of its past.

Filed Under: cable tv, piracy, pricing, streaming, youtube tv
Companies: google, youtube

Detroit Police Chief Says Facial Recognition Software Involved In Bogus Arrest Is Wrong '96 Percent Of The Time'

from the good-to-have-that-all-out-in-the-open dept

The law enforcement agency involved with the first reported false arrest linked to facial recognition software is talking about its software. The Detroit Police Department -- acting on a facial recognition "match" handed to it by State Police investigators -- arrested resident Robert Williams for allegedly shoplifting watches from an upscale boutique.

Williams did not commit this robbery. He even had an alibi. But the investigators weren't interested in his answers or his questions. They had a lo-res screen grab from the store's CCTV camera -- one that software provided by DataWorks Plus said matched Williams' drivers license photo. Thirty hours later, Williams was cut loose by investigators, one of which said "I guess the computer screwed up" after rewatching the camera footage with Williams present.

The officers ignored the bold letters on top of the "match" delivered by the software. The writing said "This document is not a positive identification." It also said the non-match was not "probable cause for arrest." Unfortunately for the misidentified Michigan resident, the cops who arrested him treated the printout as both: positive identification and probable cause.

The policies governing law enforcement's use of this tech have changed since Williams' arrest in January. Under the current policy, lo-res images like the one that led to this arrest are no longer allowed to be submitted to the facial recognition system. That fixes a very small part of the problem. The larger problem is that the tech is mostly good at being bad. This isn't a complaint from critics. This comes directly from the top of the DPD.

In a public meeting Monday, Detroit Police Chief James Craig admitted that the technology, developed by a company called DataWorks Plus, almost never brings back a direct match and almost always misidentifies people.

“If we would use the software only [to identify subjects], we would not solve the case 95-97 percent of the time,” Craig said. “That’s if we relied totally on the software, which would be against our current policy … If we were just to use the technology by itself, to identify someone, I would say 96 percent of the time it would misidentify."

So, it's a bad idea to rely on the software and nothing else when attempting to identify criminal suspects. What happened to Robert Williams supposedly should never happen again… according to policy. But there's the question of why the PD still uses the software if it's not adding much value to the investigative process. It seems officers don't care much for the tech and yet it's still in use. The police chief thinks it's still worth keeping around, even if it has yet to show any positive results.

Craig and his colleague, Captain Ariq Tosqui, said that they want to continue using facial recognition because they say it can be a tool to assist investigators even if it doesn’t often lead to arrest. But even when someone isn’t falsely arrested, their misidentification through facial recognition can often lead to an investigator questioning them, which is an inconvenience at best and a potentially deadly situation at worst. According to Tosqui, the technology has been used on a total of 185 cases throughout the years. “The majority of the cases the detective reported back that [the software] was not useful.”

What it can do, apparently, is add another layer of surveillance on top of what's already in place. And it will do what most law enforcement surveillance creep does: put more eyes on Black residents. Part of the mild reforms Detroit enacted -- rather than implement a facial recognition ban -- mandate the publication [PDF] of facial recognition data by the department. Since the beginning of this year, the PD has used the tech 70 times. All but two of those instances involved a Black resident's photos being submitted.

One of the main sources for uploaded photos is the Project Green Light (PGL) network of cameras [PDF]. These are installed in or around businesses that participate in the project. Participation comes at a cost: $1-6,000 for the initial investment and $1,600 a year in video storage fees. The 550 participants' cameras are supposedly monitored 24/7 at the PD's "real time crime center." Incoming footage can be subjected to other surveillance tech, like facial recognition software and automatic license plate readers.

Here's the panopticon the city wanted:

The City of Detroit put forth a Request for Proposals for a contractor to work closely with the city, DPD, and Motorola (Company that help set up the RTCC) to set up a “turn-key” facial recognition system that would work with the already existing infrastructure of the RTCC. They specifically asked that the facial recognition work on at least 100 concurrent real-time video feeds, be integrated into the PGL system, and can be used by officers with a mobile app.

It got the software it needed from DataWorks: a blend of two algorithms known as "Face Plus." It's scary stuff.

Face Plus is capable of automatically searching all faces that enter camera frames against photos in the entity’s database, alerting authorities to any algorithmic matches. Additionally, there is a “watchlist” option where persons of interest can be monitored and alerted for…

According to DataWorks Plus, in 2017, this repository contained 8 million criminal pictures and 32 million “DMV” pictures. As the Free Press reported in March 2019, almost every Michigan resident has a photo of them in this system.

This is the system the police chief calls 96% inaccurate and DPD investigators call useless. Perhaps this false arrest, which has made national news, will put the brakes on the planned expansion of PGL and Face Plus to all public transit stops and vehicles. Or maybe it will convince the city it's paying too much for something that barely works and take facial recognition away from the PD until something better -- and less biased -- comes along.

Filed Under: detroit, detroit pd, facial recognition, police, robert williams
Companies: dataworks plus

How An NYPD Officer Can Hit A Teen With His Car In Front Of Several Witnesses And Get Away With It

from the accountability-makes-officers-fear-for-their-job-safety dept

The NYPD has made internal discipline procedures a loop so closed that even its "independent" oversight -- the Civilian Complaint Review Board -- can't get in the door. The NYPD is effectively its own oversight. Decisions made by the CCRB can be overridden by the Police Commissioner. Even if the Commissioner agrees with the findings, recommended punishments can be departed from or ignored completely.

This story of police misconduct springs from this accountability void. ProPublica journalist Eric Umansky lives in New York City. Last year, while trick-or-treating with their daughter, his wife witnessed an unmarked police car hit a black teen. This happened in full view of several witnesses, including a person who worked at a business near the scene of the accident.

“Yeah, I saw a cop car hit a kid,” a waiter told me. He said he had a clear view of it: A handful of kids were running. One of them jumped out into the street and got hit by the police car, “probably going faster than he should have been.” He saw the boy roll over the hood and fall to the ground: “It sounded like when people hit concrete. It made a horrible sound.”

This eyewitness account agreed with what Umansky's wife had seen. But the end result wasn't a plainclothes officer being cited or disciplined for hitting a kid with his car. Instead, it was just a small part of a full-blown police rollout, where officers swarmed the street to run black teens and pre-teens up against the nearest wall.

Apparently, this is how an investigation unfolds. Officers were responding to a report that a group of teen boys had attacked another teen and stolen his cell phone. One of the officers responding was in plainclothes, driving an unmarked car against traffic. This was the officer that hit one of the running teens. A bunch of other teens who just happened to be on the street were picked up by cops and hauled to the station.

Umansky tried to follow up on this incident. The kids arrested by the officers were all released around one a.m. the next morning. They were given no paperwork on their arrests or the names of their arresting officers. Umansky was at the station the night it happened and couldn't get answers from any NYPD personnel.

He called the next day and talked to the NYPD's spokesman, who happens to be a former journalist. This was a dead end as well. The spokesman, Al Baker, simply said the arrested teens were being charged with resisting arrest. But this was the real kicker: the official word from the NYPD was that this was teen-on-car action, not the other way around.

I spoke to four witnesses, including my wife. All of them said they saw the same thing. When I called Baker back, he told me that my wife and the three others were mistaken. The car hadn’t hit the kid. The kid had hit the car.

As his statement put it: “One unknown male fled the scene and ran across the hood of a stationary police car.”

And that was it. The NYPD declared its own officer free of guilt or responsibility. There's still an investigation open, but there's little chance this will result in discipline of the plainclothes officer. In fact, there's little chance it will ever be resolved at all. At this point, the CCRB has 2,848 open investigations. And, as Umansky's article points out, moving these forward is almost impossible at this point.

Since the pandemic started, officers haven’t allowed CCRB to interview them remotely, meaning investigations have effectively stalled. The police unions had objected to doing it over video.

“We won’t do Zoom,” one union spokesman told The City. The CCRB is re-starting in-person interviews soon. It noted 1,109 investigations are awaiting police officer interviews.

Most CCRB investigations aren’t completed, and not just because of police intransigence. The roughly 100 investigators can only handle so many cases at once.

Thanks to the pandemic, the CCRB's budget has been cut, meaning there's even fewer investigators digging into thousands of cases containing allegations against officers who refuse to speak to them.

Even if the CCRB decides it would rather watch a recording of the alleged incident, rather than deal with a more uncooperative witnesses, it's not going to find anything there either. First off, the NYPD stonewalls CCRB request for camera footage. Then it finds some reason to deny the request. If it can't deny the request, the CCRB will receive the footage -- with any redactions the NYPD feels are necessary -- months after it has asked for it.

More immediate access to footage is possible, but it involves having to travel to the precinct to watch the footage while bound, gagged, and heavily-supervised.

CCRB investigators can now go to a room and watch footage. The agreement stipulates that CCRB staff can only take notes. They cannot record anything or use footage they see of abuse that happens to be different from the specific incident they’re investigating. They must sign a nondisclosure agreement.

With all of these unaccountaiblity practices in place, it comes as no surprise the NYPD would claim a person hit by a car driven by one of their officers was actually just an assault on an innocent police car by a person fleeing the forces of justice.

Filed Under: accountability, ccrb, nypd, police misconduct