His reporting can be found in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Village Voice, among other outlets. John Surico is a Queens-based freelance journalist.
#OMNIPRESENCE NYPD UPDATE#
In other words, it’s stop-and-frisk 2.0.Īfter I reached out several times to the NYPD for comment, a spokesperson told me the department was still trying to craft a response to my basic question: What is Omnipresence? We'll update this story if they get back to us, but the hesitation further shrouds the tactic in mystery, as if even the police are unsure about what, exactly, this all means. But Omnipresence just adds surveillance while cutting back on actual interactions, so as to avoid bad PR. He was supposed to offer a reset after his predecessor, Ray Kelly, was plagued by controversies over the surveillance of Muslim communities, brutality, and, of course, stop-and-frisk.
#OMNIPRESENCE NYPD WINDOWS#
She believes Omnipresence is an outgrowth of broken windows policing, or the idea that if you focus on lower-level infractions, serious crime will diminish, which is essentially the basis of NYPD Commissioner William J. “Omnipresence is just another one of those tactics.” “We’ve acknowledged it, and we recognize that stop-and-frisk isn’t over,” she told me. She just figured it was standard procedure in Brownsville, this type of behavior by the cops is pretty much expected. Until recently, Pimentel didn’t know what she sees just outside her home every day even had a name. “However, I am still unclear about the impact of Omnipresence, or even what is included and if it is going to stick as a thing.” Certainly there is a sense that something might be different (lots of cops standing around) on the one hand, and then there is the sense that nothing has changed (still lots of stop-and-frisks and low-level misdemeanor arrests, albeit fewer than previously).” Stoudt added. “If you'd look at the to-do list in my office, you would see number six says, ‘Find out more about Omnipresence,’” he told me via email. The article is supplemented by a video that asks, “Omnipresence: New Stop-and-Frisk?” but doesn’t provide an answer.īrett Stoudt, an assistant professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says that this digital footprint, or lack thereof, is confounding. “As part of a new strategy called Omnipresence, the officers now stand on street corners like sentries, only rarely confronting young men and patting them down for weapons,” Goldstein writes. So far, the only mention in a major media outlet of this new approach to law enforcement came in an article by Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times, who reported on the after-effects of stop-and-frisk in areas like Brownsville. “I just put my curtains up,” he said.Įven though some people are evidently fine with this new initiative, the NYPD doesn’t want to talk about it. If you search for Omnipresence online, you’ll mostly find Old Testament descriptions of God and His ability to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “You hear young kids now say all the time, ‘Damn, the cops are everywhere.’”Īs a result, he agrees that the area is safer, even if it feels strange at night sometimes with all that brightness. “Omnipresence is the perfect word for it,” Terence Francis, another resident of the Houses, said outside an illuminated basketball court. There are at least five in every development.” “The buzz from the generators never stops. “They never turn off,” he told me, as we stood in the light’s reach. Roberto Hines, a Flatbush resident who comes to Brownsville every night, says he first saw the lights go on three or four months ago, after a nearby shooting drew the cops’ attention.
The lights shine into people’s rooms, making it hard for them to sleep,” Pimentel, a volunteer with the immigrant justice group Make the Road NY, told me. Eyes, ears, and lights are now on every corner, in the hopes of stopping crime before it starts. It also bathes those neighborhoods in floodlights. In a city where stop-and-frisk is no longer politically acceptable, but not necessarily over, this bizarro version of community policing deploys a platoon of patrolmen at corners and in the centers of buildings in more dangerous neighborhoods. To her, the bright beams mean one thing: The cops are here until dawn. That’s the comically Orwellian (and completely fucking terrifying) name for the freshest tactic in the NYPD playbook. For resident Adilka Pimentel, what she witnesses on a daily basis is Omnipresence in action.
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