Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll

Pam Martens
Counter Punch
October 11, 2011

Videos are springing up across the internet showing uniformed members of the New York Police Department in white shirts (as opposed to the typical NYPD blue uniforms) pepper spraying and brutalizing peaceful, nonthreatening protestors attempting to take part in the Occupy Wall Street marches.  Corporate media are reporting that these white shirts are police supervisors as opposed to rank and file.  Recently discovered documents suggest something else may be at work.

If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers.  One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998.  It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.

The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest.  The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.

Read full report here

This article was posted: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 7:27 am

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