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He blows their cover, because lawbreakers could never figure out what was going on

Undacova

Rob Bellinger was outside the Garden the other night when he photographed this ISD vehicle - driven by some guy in a uniform who got all in his grill about how he was blowing the cover of a plainclothes inspector nearby:

"Who do you work faw? I noticed you snappin' my krooza." I think they were looking for unlicensed vendors.

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Comments

That the officer was less worried about the random bystander observing an undercover officer getting out of this car and more worried about this bystander thinking it's really funny to post a picture of an undercover officer on his blog?

Rob Bellinger might think this is mighty funny, but I don't. The guy's got a job to do, he's doing it on our behalf, and we pay him. So if Rob is impeding this, he's wasting our money.

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Didn't the "undercover" officer blow his/her own cover by sitting in a marked car?

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Its a picture of marked vehicle. That's the point. The cover is already pretty thin if they have an undercover officer sitting in a marked vehicle with a uniformed officer in clear view of some guy with a camera.

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The picture posted is a picture of a marked vehicle, not showing the occupants.

Rob reports that the occupants objected to having their pictures taken, because one of the occupants was reported to be undercover.

Is it so hard to understand why that might be a reasonable objection?

I am glad that Rob did not post a picture of the undercover officer.

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Is it so hard to understand why that might be a reasonable objection?

It isn't a reasonable objection when the only reason anybody nearby could possibly know there was an undercover officer nearby would be 1) the marked cruiser parked with a grand amount of conspicuous swagger and 2) they guy pitching a fit about about the undercover officer nearby.

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I'd hate to see you face a real intellectual challenge.

Just because his buddy does a crap parking job doesn't mean the undercover code officer shouldn't still try to prevent people from taking pictures of him so he can maintain his cover. That's still his job, and he's still doing it on our behalf, and you'll be among the first to complain if he fails to do his job.

I know you get a knee-jerk reaction whenever anybody says cop, and immediatly assume that the cop was yelling, or swaggering, or pitching a fit, when in fact none of these actions were mentioned by the person who observed the officers. The only verb he used was "suggested."

But I know you're intelligent, so I keep hoping you'll learn how your prejudices interfere with your perspicacity.

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Can you explain how taking the picture blew the cover, as opposed to the officer blowing his top blowing the cover?

Can you explain how I, walking near North Sation, would now know that a marked cruiser is involved in an undercover operation aimed at scalpers or vendors or whatever if this guy hadn't confronted the photographer and it wasn't subsequently reported here?

If you can't get why everyone is challenging your "reasoning", maybe you need to think like a passerby, rather than a knee-jerk defender of everything police.

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If one person walks by and sees a person not in uniform sitting in a marked car, and walks on, it's not a big deal unless that person happens to be a target of investigation or have a peculiarly good memory and later becomes a target of investigation. Very few people would really notice or accurately remember the face of a person sitting in a car.

If one person walks by and takes a picture of an undercover officer sitting in a marked car and then shares that picture with the world, e.g. by positing it on flickr, in such a way that the undercover officer can be identified by all and sundry, then that is a big deal.

Clear yet?

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Your basic reasoning makes sense EXCEPT I don't see anybody in that car in that picture, actually, and it is the only pic in the photostream. I realize that if somebody were in the car, there would be no way to know that they were not in the picture. However, this picture makes it look like nobody is in the car.

Maybe the BPD should tell these ISD guys that conspicuous parking jobs get attention they may not want when working undercover ops? Are ISD code enforcers even deputized?

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Gareth makes a fairly good point here.

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There is nobody in the picture. That's because Rob chose not to take a picture showing the face of the undercover officer, thus complying with the uniformed officer's request. Instead, he posted a picture taken so that the reflections off the windows make the occupants unidentifiable. The driver's head is blocked by the B-pillar, and the passenger's head is blocked by the C-pillar And I think it's nice that he complied with the officer's request and did not take and post a picture showing the face of an undercover officer.

As for what these officers do, here's where you can learn.

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Gareth, grab your badge, it's time to roll!
That's a big 10-4.

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Don't you have a park bench to vandalize or something, Bob? Or are you Sticking it to the Man by wearing dumpy drawers today?

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you're blowing his cover!

(couldn't resist. please, both of you, carry on.)

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Oh god, defending the cody's, get over yourself nerd.

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It is known as a great way to blow your cover.

Who would have otherwise known?

Sounds like a couple of really bored people if they have nothing better to do than alert passerby to an otherwise unknowable entity nearby.

Maybe they need to be trained in this "cover" business a little better ... like, macho powertip tantrums over nothing aren't a good idea?

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is a detail you made up. Can you introspect sufficiently to figure out why you might make up something like that?

Also, the "unknowable entity," you might have learned by reading Rob's comment, was sitting in the car, not nearby.

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fair enough

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im guessing the guy was out of the car when the photographer started snapping the pics.he probably tried to take some pictures of the city officials and was told they were undercover and not to blow that cover by publishing the photo. these guys check for dirty restaurants, unlicensed carts, illegal dumping etc.. im sure they don’t want their faces on blogs.

im also guessing most city employees are a wee bit nervous these days.everyday the herald does a story about some other city department's workers slacking off.if i worked for the city i would not want the great mayor seeing my mug on the front page, good or bad.

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While Officer A puts on his NYFD hat backwards and heads off in search of an illegal Italian Sausage or bootleg BEAT LA shirt, Officers B and C sleep in an idling cruiser while illegally parked outside a Dunkin Donuts.

Now that's cover!

And when the Herald photographer caught the whole thing with a mega zoom lens, they could simply brush it off as part of being inconspicuous while Officer A did his rounds.

Now that's a different type of cover.

Keep in mind that these are the same guys who mailed my coworker a $1000 ticket for "illegal dumping" because they "found her address on something" in the South End, but wouldn't tell her what it was. Never mind that she was in the middle of a three-week business trip in Asia when the "dumping" supposedly happened. After causing her much distress with this random and expensive scam ticketing act, they didn't even show up for court or have any evidence and it was thrown out. Efficient police work, that.

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I think Rob's more concerned that this asshat is parked on a public sidewalk, blocking a crosswalk, and illegally parked blocking a public road (take a look at how war out into the crosswalk he is).

If he's not in an emergency, or blocking off the sidewalk/road, there's no reason for this stupid behavior.

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not funny at all indeed. but i do notice that it is parked like crap... on the sidewalk, hanging out into the road.

i think that he took the picture to show that uniformed officers often park their marked vehicles wherever the hell they feel like it, because they think they can.

inspectional services or not, undercover officer scoping out vendors or not, i think the photographer's point (which he doesn't explain in his posting in flickr) may be that the guy parked like a dingus.

speaking of which, i heard about this guy the other day in NYC called jimmy justice. http://www.youtube.com/user/JimmyJustice4753
he videotapes traffic cops breaking traffic laws.

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A pretty colossally bad parking job. I don't think that's a legitimate place to park a car by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not sure how many parking violations that is at once, but it looks like he's obstructing both the marked crosswalk in front and the wheelchair ramp at back, while the front end is blocking traffic and the wheels are on the sidewalk. I think it'd be hard to beat that.

If the reason Rob took the picture was to show that, maybe he should have put that in his description instead of the hoo-haw about the "krooza."

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In fairness to the inspector, he probably does not have the option of an undercover car, as most city vehicles are marked like this. Also, the car being there itself might very well be a deterrent to unlicensed vendors, if that is what he was looking for, although I'm not sure that's was why he was there of course.

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I suggest we forward this to Fark for some photoshop fun... where's the donut?

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