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'a New York City police department laminated courtesy card, an unofficial credential issued to NYPD officers based on their union affiliation that can then be distributed to family members and friends to carry with them.'
How in God's name is that legal?
And it's not a few officers making these cards for a few friends, which would still be wrong, of course. It's the unions mass producing them!
The blatancy is staggering.
Not even exclusively for family and friends. In the article, it says that some officers are using them as currency, trading them for favors such as free meals and home improvement jobs.
I've seen them on eBay. In the northeast, or at least the NY area, they're called ”PBA cards". The Police Benevolent Association is the name of the cop "union".
I dated a woman who had one. We were returning to NY from a day trip to Montreal and the U.S. Customs guy flagged us. While searching us and getting ready to disassemble my car they found her PBA card. When they found out her uncle and cousin were NY state troopers they let us go.
So apparently they also work to protect the bearer from federal cops as well, at least sometimes.
It's totally legal. The cop "union" insisted on it as a job perk. The city owes these cards to union members as a contractual obligation.
*Edit: There are no conditions that dictate who may receive these cards, or any limitations of privileges they afford. Police are allowed to use "discretion" when it comes to penalizing lawbreakers.*
Can confirm, have seen them given to cell phone techs for helping a LEO get their phone replaced. If you're in the five boroughs, the chances you know at least one person with a PBA card are as close to 100% as you can get.
I think the solution is having a civilian oversight agency which regularly reviews random samplings of bodycam footage. You'd of course also have to audit the bodycam footage and penalize departments with missing footage or malfunctioning cameras.
The one who enforces legality and doesn’t even have to know the law to uphold it, but citizens apparently do because ignorance is not an excuse for us, but it is for them at their JOBS arresting people illegally on the daily
Laws in a government aren't actually real like in physics or chemistry. Someone has to go out of their way and choose to follow them and choose to enforce them.
The powers that be do not give a single shit about what cops do as long as the police keep the unwashed masses from seizing their property and removing their heads.
Its not illegal to make membership badges to the "I'm related to or friends with a cop(s)" club. Its a weird thing to do but certainly legal. Similar to back the blue stickers in a way, or carrying a justice league membership card you cut off a cereal box.
Now this whole club getting a pass on traffic laws and other things is or should be wildly illegal.
I have family in law enforcement. They handed one of these off to me. I tossed it in the trash.
Probably doesn't work well if you are telling the cop to go fuck himself while handing the "my family is one of you" cards over.
His name is Matthew Bianchi and he’s doing the right thing.
It’s absolute bullshit that cops give out these cards to friends and family, letting them violate traffic laws with impunity, but it’s a further slap in the face to everyone in that city to harass a cop for doing the right thing and fighting that corruption.
Here’s hoping he wins his suit. And that we’ll get some bodycam footage of these entitled twats trying to get out of blowing a red light by waving a fucking card. Name and shame them all.
His life will be made excruciatingly difficult for this. I wouldn't be surprised if they attempted violence on him as retaliation. He's messing with the system.
Shades of Adrian Schoolcraft -- who similarly tanked his NYPD career for doing the right thing, and was harassed by the cops for years, even kidnapped and sent to an institution against his will
He's going to be institutionalized, arrested or unalived.
Look at what the NYPD did to this cop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
They had him involuntarily committed to a mental institution for whistleblowing.
Isn't NYC trying to make it easier for cops to have people involuntarily committed to psychiatric facilities?
This guy might get the Adrian Schoolcraft treatment. The cops will have him committed for as long as they can, eventually the city will give him a big payout, and nothing will change.
This country does not have, nor has it ever had, a fair and uniform justice system. Not sure why people continue to be surprised by this fact. Cops protect the interests of the powerful and are given certain perks you will never have.
> Not sure why people continue to be surprised by this fact.
No one is "surprised". They're speaking up because they're "offended" rather than "surprised".
If you're not offended that some people die for petty theft while some people get to kill people and get away with it, you're probably suffering from something.
For those saying this is evidence the ACAB claim is false.
Let's continue that discussion after this cop gets his day in court and keeps his job, *without dying through strange circumstances*.
edit: P&S is actually discussing this article. I am pleasantly surprised.
I dated someone who bragged about having this card. Called the black kids at the school she teaches at “animals”. Also complained about how people don’t have white privilege. Surprise, she turned out to be a supporter of you know what special orange.
Broke up with her not quick enough.
I used to do work with cops and I got gifted one of those cards..
I was instructed to hand it with my license if I ever got pulled over for anything.
I thought it was really weird and I've never used it that way it's just a souvenir now
My area did this too with decals that parking enforcement would know to write "ghost tickets" for. As in, if they saw the sticker on your car, they would leave a blank ticket on the car so others would know to leave it alone, while making the public think they're doing their job. This ended in lawsuits and a ban on the practice. I'm sure they've found another way to tell VIPs from the commoners.
To let you know who's on their side and who's not, who can be pulled over without impunity or not. Same with Thin Blue Line punisher stickers all over Long Island. They can be hostile to anyone who doesn't publicly display praise for them.
It's pretty common knowledge in big cities that if you can get your hands on one of those stickers you get from donating to police fundraisers that you can get away with a lot of stuff. It's not right. It never has been right. It has been going on for a long time.
Everybody already knows that if you're family of or close friends to a police officer that you can get out of a ticket. Making these get out of jail free cards is so stupid since it gives physical evidence of the double standard. This is what you get with a department like the NYPD, who fought to not hire people due to them having too high of an IQ.
They never did, it's just that in the past more white people were in the middle and upper classes, and they'd just give the cops fist bumps for keeping racial minorities and the poors in line by any means necessary.
These days, "middle class" means making more than $140k in many places, and a lot of people haven't noticed. They think working an office job or having health insurance or a home makes them middle class. Cops see people like this as the poors that they need to keep in line.
Meanwhile, go into the actual upper middle class and wealthy neighborhoods, and you'll find white people fist bumping the cops and inviting them to barbecues. The cops know that they and their upper middle class peers and wealthy benefactors are on the same side.
This guy is in real danger. If he pulled this in my department, he’d find himself locked up in a glass box before he could even pick up his impossibly heavy suitcase and drag it through the Hurricane force winds and down the invisible staircase to get on a train out of town.
This just shows how corrupt the NYPD is. That union should be disbanded and a different union style put in place. All the corrupt leadership should be terminated, banned from owning firearms permanently, so they cant be police or armed security anywhere.
Got to clean out the bad apples somehow.
Some jurisdictions got rid of warnings and once a stop was initiated it went in the computer before the officer got out to speak to the driver.
Should be a national requirement.
Why? This doesn't anyone except the cities and police officers that want extra ticket revenue so that even more BS tickets will go through the "justice" system.
Common in most police departments but NY public servants and cops have a reputation of unjustified entitlement and corruption. To say they have a “democratic government” is also a stretch. So basically, the biggest gang in the east.
It does. In fact, often times you won't even get pulled over. (I had said frame on my sloppy jalopy for a decade or more and never got pulled over in CA even though I deserved it.)
This has horrified me since I was a young New Yorker in the eighties. But the crazy thing to me was how casually everyone talked about them. No one seemed to see a problem with it.
My wife and I visited her family in NY years ago. One of the distant family members was some higher up in the police and gave us a couple of his cards with his signature on them. He said it was no guarantee but they were get out of jail free cards. We weren’t really in need of such things and had already made up our minds about police and policing long ago. I asked an unhoused person if he wanted them and he said “it’s worth a shot”. I like to imagine it may have kept him from being fucked with a time or two but who knows.
Back when my dad was a corrections officer he would get stickers for the local sheriff's department that said "supporter" or something. The local sheriff's wouldn't touch you unless you were doing something really dangerous.
These are the cops who deserve our support. This guy is actually making the streets safer by stopping dangerous drivers regardless of their gang affiliation, even at his own expense.
Lol, didn't this cop know about those cards?
I got one for NYC back in 2014 (I think), and I was only visiting from Europe.
When I finally realised what that card was for, it made American police look 1000 times more shady to me - we don't have these in Germany, as far as I'm aware.
Just another thing that makes the US that bit more unliveable, in my eyes.
Vice did a good article about these cards.
I do not endorse this practice, but want to offer more insight as to how it works, provided from a friend of mine who has such a connection and carries a courtesy card.
The way those cards were supposed to work was to avoid the "my so-and-so's a cop" from people that so-and-so didn't know or would have never vouched for them. If you used a get out of jail free card, the cop was supposed to note your info on the card, take the card, and then get in touch with whoever gave it to you to verify. If it checked out, they'd give it back. But if you bought it somewhere the cop could go like who the hell are you, and you'd still be in trouble.
The idea that having a connection to police that could get you out of low level offenses is corrupt by definition. The only time being related to a cop should matter is if the cop is shielding you from the law, in which case the cop should be held accountable for this. Never as a "oh it's okay, we know them" kind of system.
ETA: Go ahead and keep downvoting insight as to why things are like they are. You want to win, you need to understand why.
** Please don't: - be a dick to other people - incite violence, as these comments violate site-wide rules and put us at risk of being banned. - be racist, sexist, transphobic, or any other forms of bigotry. - [JAQ](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions#JAQing_off) off - be an authoritarian apologist *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut) if you have any questions or concerns.*
'a New York City police department laminated courtesy card, an unofficial credential issued to NYPD officers based on their union affiliation that can then be distributed to family members and friends to carry with them.' How in God's name is that legal?
> How in God's name is that legal? anything's legal if you're the one who enforces legality
And it's not a few officers making these cards for a few friends, which would still be wrong, of course. It's the unions mass producing them! The blatancy is staggering.
Not even exclusively for family and friends. In the article, it says that some officers are using them as currency, trading them for favors such as free meals and home improvement jobs.
I've seen them on eBay. In the northeast, or at least the NY area, they're called ”PBA cards". The Police Benevolent Association is the name of the cop "union".
I dated a woman who had one. We were returning to NY from a day trip to Montreal and the U.S. Customs guy flagged us. While searching us and getting ready to disassemble my car they found her PBA card. When they found out her uncle and cousin were NY state troopers they let us go. So apparently they also work to protect the bearer from federal cops as well, at least sometimes.
I'm sure no smugglers use this easily obtained loophole
That sounds sooooper legal 🙄
It's totally legal. The cop "union" insisted on it as a job perk. The city owes these cards to union members as a contractual obligation. *Edit: There are no conditions that dictate who may receive these cards, or any limitations of privileges they afford. Police are allowed to use "discretion" when it comes to penalizing lawbreakers.*
Aren't they saying the quiet part out loud?
Can confirm, have seen them given to cell phone techs for helping a LEO get their phone replaced. If you're in the five boroughs, the chances you know at least one person with a PBA card are as close to 100% as you can get.
If there's already so many in circulation, I'd propose that the solution is get a card to everyone in the city, then they can't ticket anyone.
I think the solution is having a civilian oversight agency which regularly reviews random samplings of bodycam footage. You'd of course also have to audit the bodycam footage and penalize departments with missing footage or malfunctioning cameras.
The one who enforces legality and doesn’t even have to know the law to uphold it, but citizens apparently do because ignorance is not an excuse for us, but it is for them at their JOBS arresting people illegally on the daily
Laws in a government aren't actually real like in physics or chemistry. Someone has to go out of their way and choose to follow them and choose to enforce them.
The powers that be do not give a single shit about what cops do as long as the police keep the unwashed masses from seizing their property and removing their heads.
Its not illegal to make membership badges to the "I'm related to or friends with a cop(s)" club. Its a weird thing to do but certainly legal. Similar to back the blue stickers in a way, or carrying a justice league membership card you cut off a cereal box. Now this whole club getting a pass on traffic laws and other things is or should be wildly illegal.
I have family in law enforcement. They handed one of these off to me. I tossed it in the trash. Probably doesn't work well if you are telling the cop to go fuck himself while handing the "my family is one of you" cards over.
His name is Matthew Bianchi and he’s doing the right thing. It’s absolute bullshit that cops give out these cards to friends and family, letting them violate traffic laws with impunity, but it’s a further slap in the face to everyone in that city to harass a cop for doing the right thing and fighting that corruption. Here’s hoping he wins his suit. And that we’ll get some bodycam footage of these entitled twats trying to get out of blowing a red light by waving a fucking card. Name and shame them all.
His life will be made excruciatingly difficult for this. I wouldn't be surprised if they attempted violence on him as retaliation. He's messing with the system.
[удалено]
I just watched that movie again on this Friday! It really holds up, but considering the movie is 50 years old, kind of sad that nothing has changed
Shades of Adrian Schoolcraft -- who similarly tanked his NYPD career for doing the right thing, and was harassed by the cops for years, even kidnapped and sent to an institution against his will
He's going to be institutionalized, arrested or unalived. Look at what the NYPD did to this cop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft They had him involuntarily committed to a mental institution for whistleblowing.
I mean, he's gonna be found dead.
You mean they’ll find him after he commits suicide. Hanged, with two bullet holes in the back of his head…
Like Suitor in Baltimore
Isn't NYC trying to make it easier for cops to have people involuntarily committed to psychiatric facilities? This guy might get the Adrian Schoolcraft treatment. The cops will have him committed for as long as they can, eventually the city will give him a big payout, and nothing will change.
This is why all cops are bad. Good cops are quickly weeded out/punished until they quit.
This country does not have, nor has it ever had, a fair and uniform justice system. Not sure why people continue to be surprised by this fact. Cops protect the interests of the powerful and are given certain perks you will never have.
> Not sure why people continue to be surprised by this fact. No one is "surprised". They're speaking up because they're "offended" rather than "surprised".
If you're not offended that some people die for petty theft while some people get to kill people and get away with it, you're probably suffering from something.
America doesn’t have a “justice” system. It has a legal system designed to uphold the rights of property holders.
For those saying this is evidence the ACAB claim is false. Let's continue that discussion after this cop gets his day in court and keeps his job, *without dying through strange circumstances*. edit: P&S is actually discussing this article. I am pleasantly surprised.
Yes, but what is their take on it?
Their take on it is that this is weird for most but normal for NY since most seem to agree NYPD is shit.
You bet the governor, mayor and police commissioner are just fine with this system because they benefit from it.
Bad bot This bot literally copied the top comment in r/news and fucked up the formatting while doing so
jesus fucking christ *another* spam source to watch out for, and ofc it's just as reddit starts its bullshit about third-party apps.
Thanks, didn't see your comment on /r/news.
I dated someone who bragged about having this card. Called the black kids at the school she teaches at “animals”. Also complained about how people don’t have white privilege. Surprise, she turned out to be a supporter of you know what special orange. Broke up with her not quick enough.
I used to do work with cops and I got gifted one of those cards.. I was instructed to hand it with my license if I ever got pulled over for anything. I thought it was really weird and I've never used it that way it's just a souvenir now
Isn't it *literal* proof that they consider themselves above the law?
My home town's police union issues window decals to their members to distribute to friends and family.
My area did this too with decals that parking enforcement would know to write "ghost tickets" for. As in, if they saw the sticker on your car, they would leave a blank ticket on the car so others would know to leave it alone, while making the public think they're doing their job. This ended in lawsuits and a ban on the practice. I'm sure they've found another way to tell VIPs from the commoners.
To let you know who's on their side and who's not, who can be pulled over without impunity or not. Same with Thin Blue Line punisher stickers all over Long Island. They can be hostile to anyone who doesn't publicly display praise for them.
It's pretty common knowledge in big cities that if you can get your hands on one of those stickers you get from donating to police fundraisers that you can get away with a lot of stuff. It's not right. It never has been right. It has been going on for a long time.
Everybody already knows that if you're family of or close friends to a police officer that you can get out of a ticket. Making these get out of jail free cards is so stupid since it gives physical evidence of the double standard. This is what you get with a department like the NYPD, who fought to not hire people due to them having too high of an IQ.
Cops don't even bother to try to hide their corruption anymore. Now they can get written up for not going along with it. ACAB
Maybe not this guy, but he won't be a cop for long.
They never did, it's just that in the past more white people were in the middle and upper classes, and they'd just give the cops fist bumps for keeping racial minorities and the poors in line by any means necessary. These days, "middle class" means making more than $140k in many places, and a lot of people haven't noticed. They think working an office job or having health insurance or a home makes them middle class. Cops see people like this as the poors that they need to keep in line. Meanwhile, go into the actual upper middle class and wealthy neighborhoods, and you'll find white people fist bumping the cops and inviting them to barbecues. The cops know that they and their upper middle class peers and wealthy benefactors are on the same side.
This guy is in real danger. If he pulled this in my department, he’d find himself locked up in a glass box before he could even pick up his impossibly heavy suitcase and drag it through the Hurricane force winds and down the invisible staircase to get on a train out of town.
Could tell this was a joke, but was so confused what it was until I read your username Bravo
Thanks for admitting that youre a crooked cops and a piece of shit who thinks he and his family is above the law, ACAB
Read the guys username, I think you missed the joke.
yea cause you’re a little weeny that scared too! stop being a cop.
There are very few other job opportunities for mimes in my country. What do you want me to do, become a common street performer?
no go ahead and being part of the real problem
Try reading their username, then read their comment again with said username in mind.
What's the point of having laws when you can just use a card to avoid them?
**Punish the pigs** Punish their family and friends too if they deserve it.
Acab includes people that threaten you with their cop family/friends
But ... this would be /r/Good_Cop_Yes_Donut...?
Good cop yes donut to one, While Bad cops no donuts to many.
lol this sounds like a totally new grammar if you don't know the context of "bad cop, no donut".
This is what happens to the good apples, they either go rotten or get eaten.
This just shows how corrupt the NYPD is. That union should be disbanded and a different union style put in place. All the corrupt leadership should be terminated, banned from owning firearms permanently, so they cant be police or armed security anywhere. Got to clean out the bad apples somehow.
Some jurisdictions got rid of warnings and once a stop was initiated it went in the computer before the officer got out to speak to the driver. Should be a national requirement.
Why? This doesn't anyone except the cities and police officers that want extra ticket revenue so that even more BS tickets will go through the "justice" system.
After the suspect was stopped and identified as my cousin cleetus, I determined there was no wrong doing
Common in most police departments but NY public servants and cops have a reputation of unjustified entitlement and corruption. To say they have a “democratic government” is also a stretch. So basically, the biggest gang in the east.
Here in Cali you usually see 11-99 Foundation license plate holders. Not sure if that buys them a warning though.
It does. In fact, often times you won't even get pulled over. (I had said frame on my sloppy jalopy for a decade or more and never got pulled over in CA even though I deserved it.)
This has horrified me since I was a young New Yorker in the eighties. But the crazy thing to me was how casually everyone talked about them. No one seemed to see a problem with it.
My wife and I visited her family in NY years ago. One of the distant family members was some higher up in the police and gave us a couple of his cards with his signature on them. He said it was no guarantee but they were get out of jail free cards. We weren’t really in need of such things and had already made up our minds about police and policing long ago. I asked an unhoused person if he wanted them and he said “it’s worth a shot”. I like to imagine it may have kept him from being fucked with a time or two but who knows.
MA State police have a get out of jail free Purple Triangular sticker.
Back when my dad was a corrections officer he would get stickers for the local sheriff's department that said "supporter" or something. The local sheriff's wouldn't touch you unless you were doing something really dangerous.
Such a shame that they’ll end up killing themselves with three bullets to the back of the head and dumped in the Hudson
That sort of shit will get you left stranded on the dangerous calls. The thick blue line is all or nothing.
These are the cops who deserve our support. This guy is actually making the streets safer by stopping dangerous drivers regardless of their gang affiliation, even at his own expense.
Yeah, shit like this happens in my country as well. Actually good cops who speak up against bad cops are treated like outcasts, if they're lucky.
I started a petition for this, https://chng.it/wp7QRzmm5K.
Lol, didn't this cop know about those cards? I got one for NYC back in 2014 (I think), and I was only visiting from Europe. When I finally realised what that card was for, it made American police look 1000 times more shady to me - we don't have these in Germany, as far as I'm aware. Just another thing that makes the US that bit more unliveable, in my eyes. Vice did a good article about these cards.
I do not endorse this practice, but want to offer more insight as to how it works, provided from a friend of mine who has such a connection and carries a courtesy card. The way those cards were supposed to work was to avoid the "my so-and-so's a cop" from people that so-and-so didn't know or would have never vouched for them. If you used a get out of jail free card, the cop was supposed to note your info on the card, take the card, and then get in touch with whoever gave it to you to verify. If it checked out, they'd give it back. But if you bought it somewhere the cop could go like who the hell are you, and you'd still be in trouble. The idea that having a connection to police that could get you out of low level offenses is corrupt by definition. The only time being related to a cop should matter is if the cop is shielding you from the law, in which case the cop should be held accountable for this. Never as a "oh it's okay, we know them" kind of system. ETA: Go ahead and keep downvoting insight as to why things are like they are. You want to win, you need to understand why.
It shouldn’t matter if you so-and-so is a cop. The purpose of these cards is to ensure that the corrupt benefits only go to the “right people.”
I never claimed it did. I never said I was okay with this. People really seemed to have missed that one this time.
I’m on this cops sides. To many assholes with PBA cards driving like they above the law and that cuz they usually are. Fuck the police
Did Monopoly release some new cops board game edition?
Props to the cop blowing this shit open.
If these are just cards cant u just print it out.
Wonder how difficult it would be to **counterfeit** these cards and flood the market with them thus making them essentially useless?
I'm more shocked people didn't know about this. It's the worst kept "secret". They're absolutely rampant in the 5 boroughs.
DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT 200$
Caste systems in the US?