America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Monday, September 4, 2023
NYPD marks Labor Day by sending drones to monitor backyard parties - BUT NOT ILLEGALS' ENCAMPMENTS
Sanctuary City NYC: Migrant Arrested 6 Times for Violent Crimes in 2 Months
A Venezuelan national, who arrived in the sanctuary city of New York City just two months prior, has since been arrested six times for 14 different crimes — nearly all of which were violent.
NYPD marks Labor Day by sending drones to monitor backyard parties
The New York Police Department is deploying drones to monitor a wide range of activities in New York City over the Labor Day holiday weekend, from large public festivals to private parties, officials said at a press conference in Brooklyn on Thursday.
Framed as a public safety measure related to the West Indian Day parade and Labor Day celebrations, the prospects of police drones hovering over backyard barbeques marks a shocking step in the expansion of the mass surveillance state.
Highlighting the security measures in place this weekend, Kaz Daughtry, an assistant commissioner of the NYPD, outlined the immediate plans. “The drones are going to be responding to non-priority calls and priority calls,” he said. “For example, if we have any 311 calls on our non-emergency line, where if a caller states there is a large crowd, a large party in the back yard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up, go check on the party to make sure if the call is founded or not.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York during a news conference, December 30, 2022. [AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey]
This unilateral expansion of drone use is blatantly illegal. In 2020, the City Council passed the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act, requiring the police department to provide 90-day notice for public comment on any new uses of surveillance technology, including drones. No such notice has been issued for the planned surveillance.
The new drone deployment comes in the wake of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ visit to Israel, in which he toured the National Police Academy and met with security officials to discuss technology. Accompanied on the trip by NYPD officials, Adams praised the Israeli police for how they “strategically and successfully deal with a large crowd.”
He reported potentially new applications of drones picked up from the Israeli police forces, including coupling drones with motorcycles. “I’ve been leaning into how we could appropriately use drones, and they had great technology on using drones for early detection,” he commented.
Such statements, given Israel’s illegal occupation and brutal suppression of the Palestinian population, have an ominous character. The criminal methods of oppression and the latest technological weapons used by Israel are seen as a model for controlling the population in the most populous city in the United States.
There is deep symbolic significance in the fact that the Adams administration announced the drone surveillance on Labor Day weekend. Ultimately, the buildup of technological and other forces of repression is aimed at preparing for confrontations with the working class.
The city’s ruling elite, represented in New York by the former cop Adams, is acutely aware of the explosive character of social relations in the city, where the wealth of Wall Street collides with a working class being pushed into confrontation by conditions of life that are becoming impossible. There is immense anger, amplified by the experience of the pandemic, over the cost of housing, transportation, childcare and other necessities, on the one hand, and an economic and political setup that functions to protect the fortunes of a tiny elite, on the other.
An NYPD or FDNY drone flies over the site of a partially collapsed parking garage as One World Trade Center is visible in the background in New York City, April 19, 2023. The New York City police department plans to pilot the unmanned police surveillance drones over Labor Day weekend, officials announced Thursday, August 31. [AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey]
At the city as well as the national level, the buildup of the security apparatus has accelerated even as funding for social programs has been slashed and modest social measures to provide a safety net have been abandoned following the declared end to the pandemic. The Biden administration has mobilized billions for the war against Russia in Ukraine, while some of the same technologies used on the battlefield are deployed against the working class at home.
The NYPD itself rivals armies of many large countries in terms of budget and headcount. The $5.6 billion annual budget is larger than military spending in Vietnam, South Africa and Greece. Covering just over 300 square miles of land, New York City has 35,000 uniformed police officers and 15,000 additional civilian police employees.
The NYPD recently increased its stockpile of advanced drones equipped with thermal imaging and night vision, which can break through windows and push open door. These same Lemur 2 quad-copters are used in the Ukraine War. The new purchases are on top of at least 19 NYPD drones reported publicly last year, and hundreds of thousands of dollars more in other unspecified drone-related purchases.
Beyond drones, the NYPD operates a vast spying apparatus, including a well-funded system for monitoring social media activity. Since Adams took office more than a year-and-a-half ago, the city has spent $4.3 million on Dataminr, a social media monitoring program that has been used by the agency to track activists involved in protests against police violence. This represents a major increase compared to the cumulative $7 million allocated over the previous five-year period. The NYPD also inked a smaller deal for $165,000 with a company that scans websites to compile information on investigative targets.
This digital spying builds on a long history of surveillance on communities in New York City and beyond, most notably an anti-Muslim spying operation that extended well beyond the city and even national borders.
The situation in New York City, led by the law-and-order Democrat Adams, is indicative of a broader process around the country. While the NYPD’s drone program represents one of the largest and most aggressive, over 1,400 police departments across the country are already using drones, many of them initially in a “first responder” capacity.
It is implausible that drone use by the police department in New York or elsewhere will stop at eavesdropping on noisy parties. A report by the ACLU on police use of drones nationally, published less than a week before the NYPD’s announcement, noted grave concerns over the growth of drone use by police, including the “very real prospect that… drones become so common and routine that without strong privacy protections we end up with the functional equivalent of a mass surveillance regime in the skies.”
In New York, the increased deployment of spying technology comes amid a long history of the police department’s flagrant disregard for legal constraints on its power. In July, New York City reached a $13.7 million settlement in connection with violent police rampages during the 2020 protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd. Significantly, the NYPD refused to admit wrongdoing and instead paid out a modest sum to the victims of police beatings and false arrests.
The NYPD’s actions also unfold in a national context where the mass spying apparatus is expanding. The Intercept recently revealed the FBI has amassed a DNA database of 21.7 million people, roughly seven percent of the population of the US. The Biden administration has led a rapid expansion of the program and is requesting a doubling of the funds for the program next year.
This scurry by law enforcement agencies to add drones and other tools of repression reveals not the stability of the capitalist state, but its extreme fragility. The ruling class feels itself besieged, hence the need to expand its arsenal with the latest technology. But there aren’t enough drones in the world to counter the working class when it begins to move, armed with a socialist program and leadership.
Sanctuary City NYC: Migrant Arrested 6 Times for Violent Crimes in 2 Months
A Venezuelan national, who arrived in the sanctuary city of New York City just two months prior, has since been arrested six times for 14 different crimes — nearly all of which were violent.
According to a report from the New York Post, 29-year-old Daniel Hernandez Martinez of Venezuela first arrived in New York City on June 27 from the United States-Mexico border. The very next day, he allegedly robbed a Costco in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Martinez was subsequently charged with petty larceny and, thanks to New York’s bail reform law, was released from police custody without having to pay bail.
The following week, Martinez allegedly robbed a Duane Reade in Columbus Circle in Manhattan and also allegedly sought to stab a security guard with a large knife while attempting to shoplift at a different Duane Reade location.
Martinez was charged with menacing and released again without bail.
On July 31, Martinez allegedly attacked independent journalist Jeffrey Bradac, 52 years old, who had just wrapped up interviewing him for his social media accounts. Bradac has been covering illegal immigration in the city and said Martinez assaulted him with a bike tire.
While Martinez initially got away before police officers could arrest him, Bradac saw him outside of the Row Hotel, where Mayor Eric Adams (D) has put thousands of migrants, and subsequently called the police who quickly arrested him.
Less than a month later, Martinez was arrested after allegedly violently attacking a woman whom he did not know — grabbing her by the hair, dragging her across the ground, kicking her, and smashing her cell phone in Midtown West in Manhattan.
Martinez was charged with assault, criminal mischief, possession of a weapon, and menacing. He was subsequently given supervised release from jail.
Just three days after the violent attack, Martinez was arrested after allegedly threatening a stranger with a chain, and four days after that, he was arrested for allegedly stealing bikes in Times Square.
For the last arrest, Martinez asked police officers for medical services and was taken to a nearby hospital. While there, Martinez allegedly attacked a police officer who was trying to change his handcuffs, kicking him and stomping on his feet.
Martinez was charged with assaulting a police officer. Though prosecutors asked for a higher bail, a judge gave Martinez a $5,000 bail. He has since been sent to Rikers Island.
The case is only the latest out of New York City since the arrival of more than 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens since the spring of last year.
In January, four migrant men were charged with stealing thousands in merchandise from a Macy’s department store in Long Island, New York. All had recently arrived in the state and some had been living for free in migrant hotels.
Likewise, in May, a migrant woman was charged after allegedly throwing her newborn baby in a trashcan at a Staten Island hospital. The woman had arrived in New York City just 10 months prior after crossing the border from Mexico.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Border Patrol Agent Assaulted by Three Mexican Migrants Crossing from Canada into New York
Border Patrol officials stated that three Mexican nationals assaulted a Swanton Sector agent after the group illegally crossed the border from Canada on August 20. All three face charges of assault on a federal agent.
On Wednesday, Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia posted on X, formerly Twitter, a report that three Mexican migrants assaulted one of his agents on August 20. The migrants illegally crossed the Canadan border near Churubusco, New York.
Agents arrested two of the subjects on the scene. New York State Police troopers arrested the third suspect a short time later, Garcia reported.
The three Mexican migrants now face federal charges related to the alleged assault of a federal agent.
Breitbart Texas reached out to CBP officials for additional information on the assault, but an immediate response was unavailable.
The Swanton Sector experienced an explosion in the rate of increase of illegal migrant border crossings in FY2023, Breitbart Texas reported. So far this fiscal year, agents apprehended more migrants crossing the Canadian border into northeastern New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire than in the prior nine years combined.
By the first week of August, Chief Garcia reported his agents apprehended more than 5,400 migrants since October 1, 2022.
A CBP report shows nearly half of the migrants apprehended crossing from Canada into the Swanton Sector which covers Vermont, New Hampshire, and the eastern New York border are reported to be Mexican nationals.
A large percentage of migrants in this sector also attempt to avoid apprehension.
Bob Price is the Breitbart Texas-Border team’s associate editor and senior news contributor. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point?Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.
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