This is stunningly stupid ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

NYPD Caught Editing Wikipedia Entries About Police Brutality Victims
by Aviva Shen Posted on March 13, 2015 at 2:03 pm



The New York Police Department has anonymously edited and tried to delete Wikipedia pages about police brutality victims, Capital New York has discovered. Edits coming from 1 Police Plaza headquarters targeted pages for Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo.

NYPD IP addresses were used to edit the Wikipedia page on the “Death of Eric Garner,” who was killed by police chokehold and inspired massive nationwide protests in the fall. Capital New York found that the department changed “Garner raised both his arms in the air” to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke,” and added the sentence “Garner, who was considerably larger than any of the officers, continued to struggle with them,” among other changes.

Someone at the NYPD also tried to delete the article on Sean Bell, an unarmed man who was gunned down by officers firing 50 bullets in 2006, arguing that “no one except Al Sharpton cares anymore.” The user wrote, “The police shoot people every day, and times with a lot more than 50 bullets. This incident is more news than notable.”

The NYPD also edited entries about the police force’s stop-and-frisk policy deemed unconstitutional in 2013, as well as a number of unrelated articles, including “Four Loko,” “Sailor Moon,” and “Croissant.”

The edits and deletion attempts reflect the NYPD’s sometimes clumsy response to the increased scrutiny in the wake of controversies over stop-and-frisk, their treatment of Occupy Wall Street activists, and most recently, the crackdown on #BlackLivesMatter protesters.

The NYPD has long had a testy relationship with the press, punctuated by threats and arrests of journalists who document police misconduct. Lately, the nation’s largest police force has tried to circumvent the media to control its public image — with mixed results.

The department started writing and posting its own “good arrest” stories directly to its Facebook page last summer extolling heroic officers. In one instance highlighted by Gothamist, the NYPD reported on Facebook, “A rookie Bronx cop on a footpost this morning chased down and arrested a gun-toting 17-year-old who, moments earlier, fired four shots into another man and left him for dead on a Mount Eden street.”

The NYPD even cracked down on an artistic mural calling the police force “murderers,” even though the property owner had approved it. When the artist declined police requests to remove the mural, NYPD officers painted over it themselves.

Other efforts to improve the NYPD’s image online have backfired repeatedly. The ill-conceived hashtag #MyNYPD, on which Twitter users were invited to share positive interactions with police, was quickly dominated by stories of abuse and harassment. Yet the NYPD broached Twitter again after its officers ducked charges over Eric Garner’s death, using the hashtag #WeHearYou to promise to rebuild trust. That hashtag was soon swamped with criticism.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/03/13/3633381/nypd-wikipedia-edits/

Disappointed but not surprised ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Tuesday, Mar 17, 2015 2:45 PM UTC
NYPD officers who edited “Eric Garner” Wikipedia page won’t face punishment
"We are quite clear that when you are using city computers it is supposed to be for city business."
Joanna Rothkopf

The pair of New York police officers responsible for editing Wikipedia entries on controversial cases of police brutality will not be seriously punished, according to reports from DNA Info. The entries edited include the “Death of Eric Garner,” “Sean Bell shooting incident,” “Shooting of Amadou Diallo” and “Stop-and-Frisk in New York City.”

“Two officers, who have been identified, were using department equipment to access Wikipedia and make entries,” said Commissioner Bill Bratton at a press conference on Monday. “I don’t anticipate any punishment, quite frankly.”

A police source noted that the officers are not in trouble mostly because it is their “First Amendment right” to contribute to the open source website. The only reprimand the cops will receive is for using NYPD computers for personal activities.

DNA Info’s Murray Weiss reports:


“We are quite clear that when you are using city computers it is supposed to be for city business,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday. “This was not authorized business.”

Salon

Nonsense! For such stuff there is Conservapedia.com!

“Two officers, who have been identified, were using department equipment to access Wikipedia and make entries,” said Commissioner Bill Bratton at a press conference on Monday. “I don’t anticipate any punishment, quite frankly.”

Definitely not with guys like you around.

......and just who are acceptable contributors to Wikipedia? Why would the police revisions be anymore unbelievable than those of the original contributors?

This isn't about "acceptable contributors to Wikipedia" but about cops who are liars/propagandists.
I don't want my cops to be thieves and murderers, either.

Very well said, oskar ~

Sooz

oskar576 wrote:

This isn't about "acceptable contributors to Wikipedia" but about cops who are liars/propagandists.
I don't want my cops to be thieves and murderers, either.

So you've decided the original posters are more truthful than the police. Based on what?

Your strawmen are becoming somewhat tedious, jim.

Explanation of the neutral point of view
Policy shortcut:

WP:YESPOV

See also: WP:ASSERT

Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of certain points of view, but including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight. Observe the following principles to achieve the level of neutrality that is appropriate for an encyclopedia.

Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that "genocide is an evil action", but it may state that "genocide has been described by John X as the epitome of human evil."
Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. If different reliable sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as direct statements.
Avoid stating facts as opinions. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice. Unless a topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, there is no need for specific attribution for the assertion, although it is helpful to add a reference link to the source in support of verifiability. Further, the passage should not be worded in any way that makes it appear to be contested.
Prefer nonjudgmental language. A neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject (or what reliable sources say about the subject), although this must sometimes be balanced against clarity. Present opinions and conflicting findings in a disinterested tone. Do not editorialize.
Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view. For example, to state that "According to Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust was a program of extermination of the Jewish people in Germany, but David Irving disputes this analysis" would be to give apparent parity between the supermajority view and a tiny minority view by assigning each to a single activist in the field.

oskar576 wrote:

Your strawmen are becoming somewhat tedious, jim.

What "strawmen"? Wikipedia's editorial practices and policies are such that anything that is put in an article that does not achieve a broad consensus as being true is quickly removed. If the descriptions added by the police remained in the article for a long period, it is very likely because a broad consensus of Wiki editors agreed that they were accurate. Yet you say they are lies. I think asking why you think they are lies is a fair question.