Last week, we found out that someone at New York Police Department headquarters was manipulating Wikipedia articles on police violence to make themselves look better. The NYPD has identified two officers behind the police-friendly entries — and is doing shit-all about these on-the-clock edits.
The police-altered Wikipedia entries changed language to gloss over a variety of incidents where the NYPD looked bad. For instance: trying to delete a page about Sean Bell, who was killed by the police, and removing the word “chokehold” from the Wikipedia entry of Eric Garner, who was also killed by the police.
DNAInfo spoke to sources who said the veteran officers will not receive anything more than a slap on the wrist. That sentiment was echoed in public statements:
Two officers, who have been identified, were using department equipment to access Wikipedia and make entries,” Commissioner Bill Bratton said at an unrelated press conference on Monday afternoon. “I don’t anticipate any punishment, quite frankly,” he added.
Now, there were no laws broken here. And even though Wikipedia advises against conflict-of-interest entries, the crowdsourced information service allows people to edit entries with whatever crazy bullshit propaganda they want, with the assumption that the crowd will correct falsehoods. So it’s not like the officers were going to get a fine, or even kicked off Wikipedia.
But make no mistake: Public servants used government computers to attempt to blue-wash history to suit an official narrative that downplays state violence, and the NYPD couldn’t give less of a shit if it was on Imodium. [DNAInfo]
Looks like the long arm of the law is trying to diddle Wikipedia into submission. Members of the NYPD are trying to scrub Wikipedia’s entries about police violence.
Capital New York have tracked the edits Congress makes to Wikipedia. But in that instance, most of the edits were for weirdo entries like “horse head mask” rather than articles that directly referred to Congressional misconduct.
The NYPD, in contrast, has made edits that are clearly in its best interest, attempts to whitewash the bloodiest moments in contemporary NYPD screw-ups by literally re-writing history and recasting critical moments of police violence as irrelevant blips:
On Nov. 25, 2006, undercover NYPD officers fired 50 times at three unarmed men, killing Sean Bell, and sparking citywide protests against police brutality. On April 12, 2007, a user on 1 Police Plaza’s network attempted to delete the Wikipedia entry “Sean Bell shooting incident”.
“He [Bell] was in the news for about two months, and now no one except Al Sharpton cares anymore. The police shoot people every day, and times with a lot more than 50 bullets. This incident is more news than notable,” the user wrote on Wikipedia’s internal “Articles for deletion” page.
The matter is “under internal review,” according to an NYPD spokesperson.
Police IPs were also linked to entry changes on stop-and-frisk, police misconduct, fictional NYPD officer Andy Sipowitz, and the band Chumbawumba. [Capital New York]
Lead image: Stuart Monk/ Shutterstock
Contact the author at kate.knibbs@gizmodo.com.
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