In March and April of last year, drastic emergency measures were imposed by federal, state, and local government authorities for the stated purpose of curbing the spread of COVID-19. By March 16, 2020, all states had declared a State of Emergency, and by April 7 all states except four had imposed a “Stay at Home” order of some kind. Counties and municipalities also decreed their own separate COVID-related orders. As usual in the US, the details greatly varied by jurisdiction — some measures were far more stringent than others. But in general, a new legal regimen had taken hold across the country, in the name of combatting what was described as a once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis.
Come now, Michael, don't you know that these people who were minding their own business are the real threat to society and not the corporate and politically backed BLM terrorists?
It's really amazing that mobs of criminals can burn, loot, and murder without being arrested, but if you're sitting in a park without a mask (there's absolutely no LAW on the books about wearing one), that's an arrestable offense.
One of the many contradictions of corporate leftism is that they are (supposedly) the most concerned about "mass incarceration" and "police abuse", but then they are also in practice the most committed to the nanny state regime that makes those things inevitable.
solid write up, and reporting. You stopped well short of injecting bias into the piece. Thank you.
As another poster asked, am curious how reporting like this will show if Newark policing ends up being replicated elsewhere by jurisdiction and population demographics. Eg did the Wilmington DE - which is kinda similar to Newark - end up deploying the same tactics to invent 'crimes.'
I'd be really curious if this was individual 'police initiative' or was driven down from their bosses.
I'm also curious about this, but unfortunately it's very difficult to get comprehensive data across jurisdictions. I'll try though. (Odd that I haven't seen any reports along these lines anywhere else in the media, you think it'd be a no-brainer for local or regional newspapers)
The very real risk of unreasonable and draconian orders and enforcement is the loss of trust and faith in authorities in times of public health emergencies. Instead of building public buy in to efforts to fight the pandemic, Newark's petty dictatorial citations likely left people resentful and feeling like it was all about bullying power trips. What does sitting by yourself in front of your home listening to music, or walking around the block with your wife without a mask, have to do with disease prevention? Not one damn thing. And from a public health point of view, wouldn't have been better for officers to remain in their car - distanced from the citizens - and tell people they need to put the mask on? In so many places it became about exerting power, rather than disease prevention.
Agree, and I wonder what the overall 'official' demographics were of people who were cited. Predominantly poor? Mostly minority? Or was this the equal opportunity test to probe how much everyone was willing to tolerate an enhanced and more petty police state such as how some communities have been policed for years.
Wonder if these cops writing the arbitrary and sometimes ridiculous COVID related tickets/summons are appreciated by the courts who eventually have to deal with them in addition to the already high caseload for actual crimes?
Good questions all. I'm aware Newark is a majority minority city, but don't know much about income levels, particularly whether income levels vary a little or a lot. But it wouldn't surprise me if the targets tended to be lower income. And I cant imagine the courts would be thrilled to have to deal with thousands of mostly petty citations in the middle of a pandemic.
New Jersey is just where I happened to file public records request. Sometimes not living in a state (Delaware, for example) prevents you from obtaining public records relative to that state. Or at least, that's the excuse they gave me.
Deco, I think it varied greatly. I'm in a rural area in San Diego county. The Sheriff generally avoided citing people, instead view the job as educating people about the rules. But some cities, such as LA were much more heavy handed. How they compare to Newark, I don't know.
Bottom Line: We can't all just make up our own laws.
You can be sure nobody will do six months in prison for inadvertently breaking one of the laws/rules. If people intentionally did it, well, that's called civil disobedience. Go to jail, then write an essay about it. Like Thoreau.
I don't know about Newark and NJ, but in many locales the issues citations based upon executive orders that unlawfully attempted to create crimes without legislative authorization.
I understand. I'm not blind to the problems of such laws and ordinances. For one thing, the chance of selective enforcement is very high. My issue is more the current zeitgeist where so many people want to pick and choose what laws apply to them. The nonsense mindset of, That law doesn't apply to me because of my lived experience, or, My cause is so great, laws don't apply to me.
On this we agree. The enormous hypocrisy of excusing covid rule violations for those protesting following Geo Floyd's killing made me crazy, and still does. Worse, multiple politicians and I believe at least some at the CDC excused this by claiming racism and unjustified police killings are "public health" emergencies. Even if that were true, it doesn't mean those protesting should get a pass on violating measure intended to arrest the covid pandemic. I also note that the media and government slammed right wing protesters for spreading covid. As if the virus has an ideology!
Nice article, Mr. Tracey. I suppose the Newark folks tolerated the lockdown harassment like the rest of us: the jackassery their elected officals being relative to neighboring jackasses. I just learned about mayor Baraka, but my knowledge of other recent NJ/NY state and local leadership are Murphy, Christy, Booker, Melendez, Cuomo, Spitzer, de Blasio, Bloomberg, Schumer, and Gillibrand. Not exactly bastions of truth and liberty. You get what you vote for.
From what I read, Newark implemented police reform about five years ago and have seen crime drop off signifcantly. They didn’t have a police-involved shooting in 2020, experienced historic lows in homicides the two years, and had a decrease in violent crime for several years leading up to 2020. Good for them. But even with that improvement, their crime numbers are still pretty terrible and projections indicate 2021 is trending ~45% worse already.
Interestingly, the drop-off in crime also corresponded to the recent economic boom and record low minority unemployment. I didn’t dig in enough to see how Newark benefited from that. Was it the economy or the police reform that benefited them the most? We’ll probably find out soon. Newark will likely be an interesting bellwether of sorts:
With only ~11% white (not hispanic or latino) and ~28% poverty rate, they will likely be hit hard economically by the double whammy of illegal immigration and globalization that Democrats (and to be fair Republicans before Trump) are all for. I suppose folks getting payed unemployment “bonuses” to stay home might be considered a triple whammy as crime season (aka Summer) picks up.
Come now, Michael, don't you know that these people who were minding their own business are the real threat to society and not the corporate and politically backed BLM terrorists?
It's really amazing that mobs of criminals can burn, loot, and murder without being arrested, but if you're sitting in a park without a mask (there's absolutely no LAW on the books about wearing one), that's an arrestable offense.
This kind of reality has a very short future.
The backlash is coming and it will not be kind.
It makes sense that most violators are POC. Following rules is white culture. (Before I get piled on, this is an attempt at sarcasm.)
Well, Newark’s population looks to be majority minority (50% African American alone), so that wouldn’t really be shocking:
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newarkcitynewjersey/PST045219
The guy with the Steel Reserve probably wasn't one of those YT supremacists I keep hearing about on TV.
One of the many contradictions of corporate leftism is that they are (supposedly) the most concerned about "mass incarceration" and "police abuse", but then they are also in practice the most committed to the nanny state regime that makes those things inevitable.
solid write up, and reporting. You stopped well short of injecting bias into the piece. Thank you.
As another poster asked, am curious how reporting like this will show if Newark policing ends up being replicated elsewhere by jurisdiction and population demographics. Eg did the Wilmington DE - which is kinda similar to Newark - end up deploying the same tactics to invent 'crimes.'
I'd be really curious if this was individual 'police initiative' or was driven down from their bosses.
I'm also curious about this, but unfortunately it's very difficult to get comprehensive data across jurisdictions. I'll try though. (Odd that I haven't seen any reports along these lines anywhere else in the media, you think it'd be a no-brainer for local or regional newspapers)
The very real risk of unreasonable and draconian orders and enforcement is the loss of trust and faith in authorities in times of public health emergencies. Instead of building public buy in to efforts to fight the pandemic, Newark's petty dictatorial citations likely left people resentful and feeling like it was all about bullying power trips. What does sitting by yourself in front of your home listening to music, or walking around the block with your wife without a mask, have to do with disease prevention? Not one damn thing. And from a public health point of view, wouldn't have been better for officers to remain in their car - distanced from the citizens - and tell people they need to put the mask on? In so many places it became about exerting power, rather than disease prevention.
Agree, and I wonder what the overall 'official' demographics were of people who were cited. Predominantly poor? Mostly minority? Or was this the equal opportunity test to probe how much everyone was willing to tolerate an enhanced and more petty police state such as how some communities have been policed for years.
Wonder if these cops writing the arbitrary and sometimes ridiculous COVID related tickets/summons are appreciated by the courts who eventually have to deal with them in addition to the already high caseload for actual crimes?
Good questions all. I'm aware Newark is a majority minority city, but don't know much about income levels, particularly whether income levels vary a little or a lot. But it wouldn't surprise me if the targets tended to be lower income. And I cant imagine the courts would be thrilled to have to deal with thousands of mostly petty citations in the middle of a pandemic.
I'm curious, was this kind of thing happening in other states as well, or did New Jersey stand out from the crowd?
New Jersey is just where I happened to file public records request. Sometimes not living in a state (Delaware, for example) prevents you from obtaining public records relative to that state. Or at least, that's the excuse they gave me.
Deco, I think it varied greatly. I'm in a rural area in San Diego county. The Sheriff generally avoided citing people, instead view the job as educating people about the rules. But some cities, such as LA were much more heavy handed. How they compare to Newark, I don't know.
One can surmise that it did happen in other states to more or lesser degrees. Tracey's report is the only one of its kind that I am aware of.
Bottom Line: We can't all just make up our own laws.
You can be sure nobody will do six months in prison for inadvertently breaking one of the laws/rules. If people intentionally did it, well, that's called civil disobedience. Go to jail, then write an essay about it. Like Thoreau.
I don't know about Newark and NJ, but in many locales the issues citations based upon executive orders that unlawfully attempted to create crimes without legislative authorization.
I understand. I'm not blind to the problems of such laws and ordinances. For one thing, the chance of selective enforcement is very high. My issue is more the current zeitgeist where so many people want to pick and choose what laws apply to them. The nonsense mindset of, That law doesn't apply to me because of my lived experience, or, My cause is so great, laws don't apply to me.
On this we agree. The enormous hypocrisy of excusing covid rule violations for those protesting following Geo Floyd's killing made me crazy, and still does. Worse, multiple politicians and I believe at least some at the CDC excused this by claiming racism and unjustified police killings are "public health" emergencies. Even if that were true, it doesn't mean those protesting should get a pass on violating measure intended to arrest the covid pandemic. I also note that the media and government slammed right wing protesters for spreading covid. As if the virus has an ideology!
Nice article, Mr. Tracey. I suppose the Newark folks tolerated the lockdown harassment like the rest of us: the jackassery their elected officals being relative to neighboring jackasses. I just learned about mayor Baraka, but my knowledge of other recent NJ/NY state and local leadership are Murphy, Christy, Booker, Melendez, Cuomo, Spitzer, de Blasio, Bloomberg, Schumer, and Gillibrand. Not exactly bastions of truth and liberty. You get what you vote for.
From what I read, Newark implemented police reform about five years ago and have seen crime drop off signifcantly. They didn’t have a police-involved shooting in 2020, experienced historic lows in homicides the two years, and had a decrease in violent crime for several years leading up to 2020. Good for them. But even with that improvement, their crime numbers are still pretty terrible and projections indicate 2021 is trending ~45% worse already.
Interestingly, the drop-off in crime also corresponded to the recent economic boom and record low minority unemployment. I didn’t dig in enough to see how Newark benefited from that. Was it the economy or the police reform that benefited them the most? We’ll probably find out soon. Newark will likely be an interesting bellwether of sorts:
With only ~11% white (not hispanic or latino) and ~28% poverty rate, they will likely be hit hard economically by the double whammy of illegal immigration and globalization that Democrats (and to be fair Republicans before Trump) are all for. I suppose folks getting payed unemployment “bonuses” to stay home might be considered a triple whammy as crime season (aka Summer) picks up.
It's hard to remember the rules sometimes, but I learned that it's OK to be in a large group, mask optional if you're protesting the cause BLM.
Stay safe and double mask out there people. Remember, Covid is a real thing. #fourteendaystoflattenthecurve
And not a single one for having an illegal air freshener!