New Yorker (The Blue Wall by William Finnegan) Flashcards
impunity
exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action: “Very few officers involved face serious, if any, consequences, and much of that impunity is owed to the power of police unions.” “When Mayor David Dinkins sought to install a civilian review board, in 1992, the P.B.A. staged a ferocious protest at City Hall, with ten thousand off-duty officers, virtually all white and many carrying guns and drinking alcohol. Demonstrators waved racist placards—“Dump the Washroom Attendant”—attacked reporters and bystanders, vandalized City Council members’ cars, stormed City Hall, and overflowed onto the Brooklyn Bridge, where they stopped traffic and jumped on occupied cars. It was a wild performance of police impunity, and the on-duty officers did nothing to stop the mayhem.” md - “Certain beetles have learned to detoxify [willow] leaves in their digestive tract so they can eat them with impunity” (Smithsonian, September 1986). (im - prefix, not or no) (pun - poena punishment) no punishment. The beetle eating the willow tree can eat it with impunity, the ability of the dijestive tract to detoxifiy the willow leaves exempts the beetle from the injurious consequences of the action.
interstitial
occurring in or being an interval or intervening space or segment : of, relating to, or forming an interstice “In their interstitial safe zone, police unions can offer their members extraordinary protections.” inter - between, think of a shirt that needs to be stitched. the nipple that appears is occurring in or being an interval or intervening space or segment.
Police Benevolent Association (P.B.A)
A Police Benevolent Association, or Policemen’s Benevolent Association, or Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), is a frequently used name for law enforcement labor unions in the U.S. “The Police Benevolent Association of New York City, which represents rank-and-file officers in the N.Y.P.D., is the largest municipal police union in the country, with twenty-four thousand dues-paying members. When the P.B.A. was founded, in the eighteen-nineties, it was a feeble thing, dedicated to raising money for the widows of fallen officers. The job was brutal then. Officers were badly paid, untrained, overworked—and thrown out of their jobs every time political power changed hands. They could plead for a living wage or an eight-hour day, but the rising labor movement wanted nothing to do with them. Cops were strikebreakers or worse; the first unionists killed in the American labor struggle, in 1850, were tailors clubbed to death by the New York police, at Ninth Avenue and Thirty-eighth Street.” MD - PBA card. comes from law enforcement labor union.
banty (bantam - noun)
a person of diminutive stature and often combative disposition “Lynch, who grew up and still lives in Bayside, Queens, is a cop’s cop, banty and brash, clean-shaven, with hair gelled straight back. He’s wound tight, and has a commanding shout that he can sustain for long periods at no-questions-taken press conferences. Outrage is his default mode. His officers are never wrong. Anybody who criticizes them is wrong. Mayors are the enemy.” MD - Buju Banton has long dreads. Picture short dread coming off of Banton’s head and being combative.
Are N.Y.P.D. officers required to live in the 5 boroughs?
No. In the sixties the N.Y.P.D. dropped the requirement and the P.B.A. has fought off suggestions that the requirement be revived so majority of its white members live on Long Island or other suburbs. “In the sixties, the N.Y.P.D. dropped a longtime requirement that its officers live in the five boroughs, and the P.B.A. has fought off every suggestion that the requirement be revived. And so a majority of its white members live on Long Island or in other suburbs. Dinkins ultimately succeeded in installing a civilian complaint-review board, but its disciplinary recommendations to the department are rarely followed. In public, the union trashes its every step.” md - “poor black americans” are being policed by white long islanders.
gentrification
the process of repairing and rebuilding homes and businesses in a deteriorating area (such as an urban neighborhood) accompanied by an influx of middle-class or affluent people and that often results in the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents “Lynch’s time at the N.Y.P.D. has coincided with a spectacular decline in violent crime. His first assignment when he joined the force, in 1984, included the Ninetieth Precinct, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Ninetieth was a bad neighborhood then, with dozens of rapes and murders and more than a thousand robberies a year. Today, it’s . . . Williamsburg. The causes of what is often called the New York Miracle are complex and hotly debated; violent crime has fallen in nearly every major American city. New York’s police claim credit. Young, white, middle-class protesters, fired up by Black Lives Matter and chanting “I can’t breathe,” tend not to acknowledge that their gentrified neighborhoods owe something to the cops behind their polycarbonate riot shields.” md - (gentry - high birth or rank) (ification - fication - making, production)
beat cop
A beat cop is a police officer who patrols specific neighborhood, known as a “beat.” Because the officer routinely patrols in the same area, he or she becomes well-known in the community, creating a positive relationship between law enforcement and the community. “The gradual departure of beat cops, who knew everybody in the neighborhood and whom everybody knew, at least in sentimental memory, has been a big step toward the alienation between police and civilians that one can feel in nearly every big American city. Cops today, sequestered in their patrol cars, are anonymous, minatory, and much more heavily armed than their predecessors. But the good old days of the beat cop were in many ways not so good. One of New York’s most famous policemen in the nineteenth century was Alexander (Clubber) Williams, who claimed to have bludgeoned hundreds of miscreants into submission, and was celebrated as a hero in Harper’s Monthly in 1887. Violence was—and is—part of the job.”
minatory
having a menacing quality “The gradual departure of beat cops, who knew everybody in the neighborhood and whom everybody knew, at least in sentimental memory, has been a big step toward the alienation between police and civilians that one can feel in nearly every big American city. Cops today, sequestered in their patrol cars, are anonymous, minatory, and much more heavily armed than their predecessors. But the good old days of the beat cop were in many ways not so good. One of New York’s most famous policemen in the nineteenth century was Alexander (Clubber) Williams, who claimed to have bludgeoned hundreds of miscreants into submission, and was celebrated as a hero in Harper’s Monthly in 1887. Violence was—and is—part of the job.” MD - Knowing that minatory means “threatening,” can you take a guess at a related word? If you’re familiar with mythology, perhaps you guessed Minotaur, the name of the bull-headed, people-eating monster of Crete. Minotaur is a good guess, but as terrifying as the monster sounds, its name isn’t related to minatory. The relative we’re searching for is actually menace. Minatory and menace both come from derivatives of the Latin verb minari, which means “to threaten.” Minatory was borrowed directly from Late Latin minatorius. Menace came to English via Anglo-French manace, menace, which came from Latin minac-, minax, meaning “threatening.”
social safety net
The Social Safety Net of the United States is made up of various Welfare Programs to protect low-income Americans from poverty and hardship. The programs are meant to be a safety net to catch Americans if they fall on hard times. The goal is to get Americans of sound body and mind back on their feet. For those individuals without sound body and mind the goal is to protect them with a minimum standard of living. These Social Safety Net programs are non-contributory transfer payment programs. In other words, low-income Americans get the benefits for free - they don’t have to contribute into the programs to receive benefits. “According to Paul Hirschfield, a Rutgers sociologist who has written about international law-enforcement practice, the difference is partly in the basic work environment. “American police encounter conditions that are more like Latin America than northern Europe,” he told me. “These vast inequalities, the history of enslavement and conquest, a weak social safety net. The decentralization. Police are more likely to encounter civilians with firearms here. We don’t have the levels of police corruption they do in Mexico, but we are not like other developed countries.”
grand jury
A grand jury is a jury – a group of citizens – empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings and investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a person to testify. a jury that examines accusations against persons charged with crime and if the evidence warrants makes formal charges on which the accused persons are later tried “Patrick Lynch maintains that it was not a choke hold but a “seatbelt”—a non-strangling takedown, which is permitted by the N.Y.P.D. The arrest report filed by Pantaleo’s partner said, falsely, that no force was used. On Staten Island, a grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo. Witnesses who had been called to testify later described the proceedings as focussed less on police malfeasance than on what Garner had done.”
collective bargaining
negotiation of wages and other conditions of employment by an organized body of employees. “Sachs agrees that there is an urgent need for reform, but he suggests considering more procedural steps: limiting collective bargaining to non-disciplinary matters; opening bargaining sessions to the public; encouraging departments to have multiple unions, representing more diverse views. Many analysts emphasize the need for new use-of-force protocols that are known to save lives but that the unions reject.” MD - you will pay all of us this amount, instead of you will pay me this, you will be pay me this.
George Wallace
George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998)[1] was an American Democrat Party politician who served as the 45th Governor of Alabama for four terms. He is best remembered for his staunch segregationist and populist views.[2][3][4] During his tenure, he promoted “low-grade industrial development, low taxes, and trade schools. “During the 2016 campaign, the Fraternal Order of Police, a national union with three hundred and fifty thousand members, had formally endorsed him. In 1968, it endorsed George Wallace.”
fearmongering
the action of deliberately arousing public fear or alarm about a particular issue “For many years, the P.B.A. and its fellow-unions argued that opening police-misconduct records would endanger not only officers but also their families. This was fearmongering: misconduct records would not include home addresses or phone numbers. After these reform bills passed, the unions held a rally under the highway on Randall’s Island. Lynch and O’Meara raged, backed by rows of glowering police. After all their service, all their sacrifice, they could not believe that they didn’t even get a seat at the table.” The beermonger turned into a fearmonger when he said that beer’s would have to be sold for $2.00 extra NYC’s foam ban.
colloquy
a conversation: “On a warm recent afternoon, I found myself in colloquy with a half-dozen police officers stationed outside the front entrance of the American Museum of Natural History. They were there for the duration, they said, unhappily. Their assignment was looming above us, in the form of the Teddy Roosevelt statue that has stood in that spot for eighty years.” MD - colloquial spanish - conversational
generalize
to derive (a general conception or principle) from particulars. “In New York, the percentage of African-American officers is in decline, as the first big generational cohort retires. But the numbers of Latino and Asian-American officers are still growing. Though it is impossible to generalize, officers of color seem less enthusiastic than their white colleagues about the union leadership. Each one I’ve asked has described a feeling of not being represented. A fraternal organization of Black officers, called the Guardians Association, has long dissented from the union’s hostility to civilian oversight.” MD -
interstice
a space that intervenes between things. MD - the stitch drawing. the exposed skin intervenes between either side of the shirt.
induce
To induce is to derive a general principle from specific observations. Because every mammal we’ve ever seen has hair, we might induce that all mammals have hair. Inductions are often questionable as they are usually very broad, general statements, but they provide useful starting points for experiments. MD - a person seeing inducere “lead into, bring in, introduce, what the person sees leads into their brain. They see and then draw a conclusion.
brash
self-assertive in a rude, noisy, or overbearing way: he could be brash, cocky, and arrogant. “Lynch, who grew up and still lives in Bayside, Queens, is a cop’s cop, banty and brash, clean-shaven, with hair gelled straight back. He’s wound tight, and has a commanding shout that he can sustain for long periods at no-questions-taken press conferences. Outrage is his default mode. His officers are never wrong. Anybody who criticizes them is wrong. Mayors are the enemy.” MD - think of a brass band as opposed to.a string quartet, the quartet is soft whereas the brass band is assertive in a rude, noisy, or overbearing way
overbearing
unpleasantly or arrogantly domineering. MD - imagine having a bear over you that is unpleasantly or arrogantly domineering. Don’t move, or I will scratch stay there and watch me catch this salmon. I’m very good.
domineering
assert one’s will over another in an arrogant way. domineering dominatrix. talk to the person they are serving in a domineering. “kiss the ground that I walk on”
