Wikipedia NYPD Edits 1 Police Plaza
(Photo: Scott Heins)
Computers located inside of NYPD headquarters have been used to anonymously edit Wikipedia pages on incidents of police brutality. In a report published by Capital New York, computers using IP addresses that trace back to New York City's 1 Police Plaza building made dozens of edits to sensitive articles, including entries on the deaths of Eric Garner, Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo.
The anonymous edits uncovered were of a generally pro-police nature, frequently making changes which minimize the alarming circumstances which lead to Garner, Bell and Diallo's deaths. In one instance, a user inside NYPD headquarters attempted to delete the entire "Sean Bell shooting incident" page. Bell, an unarmed 23 year-old black man, was shot at over 50 times, and ultimately killed while fleeing police on November 25th, 2006.
What's more, Capital amassed examples of edits made to the "Death of Eric Garner" page by police computers. Some of those edits are listed below:
● “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”● “[P]ush Garner's face into the sidewalk” was changed to “push Garner's head down into the sidewalk.”
● “Use of the chokehold has been prohibited” was changed to “Use of the chokehold is legal, but has been prohibited.”
● The sentence, “Garner, who was considerably larger than any of the officers, continued to struggle with them,” was added to the description of the incident.
● Instances of the word “chokehold” were replaced twice, once to “chokehold or headlock,” and once to “respiratory distress.”
(via Capital)
In another instance, the wikipedia entry for Amadou Diallo, who was killed while reaching for his wallet in 1999, was edited by a police computer. Notes about Kenneth Boss, one NYPD officer involved in the shooting, were changed: "Kenneth Boss had been previously involved in an incident where an unarmed man was shot, but remained working as a police officer” was changed to “Officer Kenneth Boss had been previously involved in an incident where an armed man was shot.”
The edits generally depict a pattern of obfuscation, and repeatedly delete or change entries' language and factual citations that reveal NYPD officers as engaged in unnecessary force against fleeing or non-threatening black victims.
A new Twitter account, @NYPDEDITS, has now been created to track and report future edits to Wikipedia made through NYPD machines.
The report listed 85 IP addresses (Internet Protocol addresses, which must be used to log into the internet and can be traced back to physical locations) from which the entries were edited. It was unclear how many actual users were involved with the editing, which Capital tracked over the last decade. In that time span, hundreds of edits to Wikipedia have been made by the NYPD.
