It is really cold outside

Hey all,

So a group of five of us went out on patrol this past Saturday.  There were going to be more, but it was freezing out, so only the diehards turned out.  Even with only 5 of us though, we seem to have prevented any arrests from taking place during our time on the street!  I guess the pigs don’t like to get out of their cars too much when it’s chilly, and that’s totally okay with us.  We saw a bunch of vans packed full with cops just cruising around, so hopefully for the rest of the night they stayed the fuck inside.

In exciting news, though, our police scanner just arrived, so the next copwatch will be technologically advanced.  Get ready!

Don’t forget-if you want to volunteer, call 206-333-1355

Fighting the good fight

Hey all,

So we went out again last night, Sunday November 16.  It was chilly but the 5 of us braved the weather and rode our bikes around North Bed Stuy anyway.  Since there were only 5 of us, and we have a rule of going out in groups of 3 or larger, we stayed together as one big crew.

The pigs were in fine form.  We came across two of them(squad car #1672), handcuffing a middle aged man, who was pushing what appeared to be an empty home depot cart on marcy, north of Myrtle Ave at 10:17pm.  When we rolled up, one cop asked “Can i help you” and we merely responded “no, we’re just observing”.  He very quickly made a call for reinforcements, and within minutes an unmarked Chevy Impala(license plate DTS 8490)with 3 pigs pulled up.  They were harassing the man for a while, and then a discussion ensued on how to bring the large orange cart into evidence.  One pig suggested taking a picture of it, but this was quickly dismissed by his superiors.  In the end, the man was released and told to just leave the cart on the sidewalk, because they couldn’t figure out how to bring the cart back to the precinct.  Unfortunately, police idiocy will not keep everyone from getting locked up…

Copwatch still needs volunteers-Join up!  Call 206-333-1355 or email 123tompkins@riseup.net

Copwatch going strong!

Hey all,

So our second outing was this past Friday November 7th. There were 6 of us, all on bike, so we split up into two teams of 3. We patrolled an area from Flushing in the North, to fulton in the south, and from Bedford in the West to Lewis in the East.

There were a few brief encounters with the po-po on this particular night. The only arrest that we observed was on Halsey and Tompkins a little before 11pm. The 5-0 were from the 79th Precinct, and two of their names were Woodbury and Jimenez. They were interrogating two older men by the park, and arrested one of the them, apparently for warrants that he had out. It was almost funny to see how the attitude of the cops changed the second that we rolled up. The sergeant all of a sudden got twitchy and started saying “sir” and “please” every other word. Oddly, the only acknowledgment of our presence was right as they were leaving, one of the pigs nodded to us. We did not nod back.

There were a few other incidents that copwatchers monitored, including some cops watching an intoxicated man, and cops responding to a break-in. At one point, we arrived on a scene where 5 cop cars were just about to leave. We went to talk to the folks who were left standing on the sidewalk about what we were doing and very quickly everyone wanted to know more, and wanted a copwatch business card.

All in all a solid night, and we’re still looking for more volunteers-Lets keep these motherfuckers on their toes!

call 206-333-1355 or email 123tompkins@riseup.net

First Night

This Saturday Nov. 1st we had our first patrol of the North Bed-Stuy Copwatch. There were five of us, and although we were almost seduced into a dance party at 123 community space by a’s fancy digital-noise maker, we hit the streets on our bikes around 8:45 and rode around North Bedstuy till 10 on the lookout for cops.

We were happy not to encounter any parked cop cars or find any cops harassing people, but since we know it happens so often around here and we’ve all seen it many times, we’re thinking about looking in to what hours of the day have the highest rate of arrest and ticketing in our neighborhood.

paz!@