<nettime> So maybe the white shirts are rent-a-cops for Wall Street?

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

[Generally speaking, US fascism is closer than you think. That is, it's 
already here, celebrating its tenth anniversary with pepper spray, 
swinging nightsticks, entrapment, arbitrary arrest and strict obedience 
to the paymasters. Not BP or Exxon in this case, but Wall Street itself, 
the 1% in suits, ties and blazers. The mystery on the street was, who 
are these dudes in the white shirts and why do they cut loose so 
savagely on the protesters? The answer may well be that they are paid 
even more directly than by the recent $4.6 million "gift" of JP Morgan 
Chase to the New York Police Foundation. If Pam Martens is right, the 
answer is that they're paid $37 an hour -- and like Smedley Butler in 
the good old days, they're gangsters for capitalism.]

www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll

Who Do the White Shirt Police Report to at Occupy Wall Street Protests?
Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll
by PAM MARTENS

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.

New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per 
hour paid to the police.  The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 
in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying  wages of 
$11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit.  The 
program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.

The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform 
and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the 
police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate 
master.  Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.

When the program was first rolled out, one insightful member of the NYPD 
posted the following on a forum: “… regarding the officer working for, 
and being paid by, some of the richest people and organizations in the 
City, if not the world, enforcing the mandates of the private employer, 
and in effect, allowing the officer to become the Praetorian Guard of 
the elite of the City. And now corruption is no longer a problem. Who 
are they kidding?”

Just this year, the Department of Justice revealed serious problems with 
the Paid Detail unit of the New Orleans Police Department.  Now 
corruption probes are snowballing at NOPD, revealing cash payments to 
police in the Paid Detail and members of the department setting up 
limited liability corporations to run upwards of $250,000 in Paid Detail 
work billed to the city.

When the infamously mismanaged Wall Street firm, Lehman Brothers, 
collapsed on September 15, 2008, its bankruptcy filings in 2009 showed 
it owed money to 21 members of the NYPD’s Paid Detail Unit.  (A phone 
call and email request to the NYPD for information on which Wall Street 
firms participate in the program were not responded to.  The police 
unions appear to have only scant information about the program.)

Other Wall Street firms that are known to have used the Paid Detail 
include Goldman Sachs, the World Financial Center complex which houses 
financial firms, and the New York Stock Exchange.

The New York Stock Exchange is the building in front of which the Occupy 
Wall Street protesters have unsuccessfully tried to protest, being 
herded behind metal barricades, clubbed with night sticks, kicked in the 
face and carted off to jail rather than permit the last plantation in 
America to be defiled with citizen chants and posters.  (A sample of 
those politically inconvenient posters and chants: “The corrupt are 
afraid of us; the honest support us; the heroic join us”; “Tell me what 
democracy looks like, this is what democracy looks like”; “I’ll believe 
a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.” The last sign refers 
to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal 
Election Commission, giving corporations First Amendment personhood, 
which allows them to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections.)

On September 8, 2004, Robert Britz, then President and Co-Chief 
Operating Officer of the New York Stock Exchange, testified as follows 
to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services:

     “…we have implemented new hiring standards requiring former law 
enforcement or military backgrounds for the security staff…We have 
established a 24-hour NYPD Paid Detail monitoring the perimeter of the 
data centers…We have implemented traffic control and vehicle screening 
at the checkpoints. We have installed fixed protective planters and 
movable vehicle barriers.”

Military backgrounds; paid NYPD 24-7; checkpoints; vehicle barriers?  It 
might be insightful to recall that the New York Stock Exchange 
originally traded stocks with a handshake under a Buttonwood tree in the 
open air on Wall Street.

In his testimony, the NYSE executive Britz states that “we” did this or 
that while describing functions that clearly belong to the City of New 
York.  The New York Stock Exchange at that time had not yet gone public 
and was owned by those who had purchased seats on the exchange – 
primarily, the largest firms on Wall Street.   Did the NYSE simply give 
itself police powers to barricade streets and set up checkpoints with 
rented cops?  How about clubbing protesters on the sidewalk?

Just six months before NYSE executive Britz’ testimony to a 
congressional committee, his organization was being sued in the Supreme 
Court of New York County for illegally taking over public streets with 
no authority to do so. This action had crippled the business of a 
parking garage, Wall Street Garage Parking Corp., the plaintiff in the 
case.  Judge Walter  Tolub said in his opinion that

    “…a private entity, the New York Stock Exchange, has assumed 
responsibility for the patrol and maintenance of truck blockades located 
at seven intersections surrounding the NYSE…no formal authority appears 
to have been given to the NYSE to maintain these blockades and/or 
conduct security searches at these checkpoints…the closure of these 
intersections by the NYSE is tantamount to a public nuisance…The NYSE 
has yet to provide this court with any evidence of an agreement giving 
them the authority to maintain the security perimeter and/or conduct the 
searches that their private security force conducts daily.  As such, the 
NYSE’s actions are unlawful and may be enjoined as they violate 
plaintiff’s civil rights as a private citizen.”

The case was appealed, the ruling overturned, and sent back to the same 
Judge who had no choice but to dismiss the case on the appellate ruling 
that the plaintiff had suffered no greater harm than the community at 
large.  Does everyone in lower Manhattan own a parking garage that is 
losing its customer base because the roads are blocked to the garage?

Some believe that Wall Street is given special privileges and protection 
because New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg owes his $18.1 billion 
in wealth (yes, he’s that 1 percent the 99 percent are protesting) to 
Wall Street.  The Mayor was previously a trader for Salomon Brothers, 
the investment bank made famous for attempting to rig the U.S. Treasury 
market in two-year notes.

The Mayor’s business empire which bears his name, includes the awesome 
Bloomberg terminal, a computer that houses enormous pricing data for 
stocks and bonds, research, news, charting functions and much more. 
There are currently an estimated 290,000 of these terminals on Wall 
Street trading floors around the globe, generating approximately $1500 
in rental fees per terminal per month.  That’s a cool $435 million a 
month or $5.2 billion a year, the cash cow of the Bloomberg businesses.

The Bloomberg businesses are run independently from the Mayor but he 
certainly knows that his terminal is a core component of his wealth. 
Nonetheless, the Mayor is not Wall Street’s patsy.  Bloomberg Publishing 
is frequently in the forefront of exposing fraud on Wall Street such as 
the 2001 tome “The Pied Pipers of Wall Street” by Benjamin Mark Cole, 
which exposed the practice of releasing fraudulent stock research to the 
public.  Bloomberg News was responsible for court action that forced the 
Federal Reserve to release the details of what it did with trillions of 
dollars in taxpayer bailouts to Wall Street firms, hedge funds and 
foreign banks.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly may also have a soft spot for Wall Street. 
 He was formerly Senior Managing Director of Global Corporate Security 
at Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., the Wall Street firm that collapsed into 
the arms of JPMorgan in March of 2008.

There has also been a bizarre revolving door between the Wall Street 
millionaires and the NYPD at times.  One of the most puzzling career 
moves was made by Stephen L. Hammerman.  He left a hefty compensation 
package as Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2002 to work as 
Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters for the NYPD from 2002 to 2004. 
That move had everyone on Wall Street scratching their head at the time. 
 Merrill collapsed into the arms of Bank of America on September 15, 
2008, the same date that Lehman went under.

Wall Street is not the only sector renting cops in Manhattan. 
Department stores, parks, commercial banks and landmarks like 
Rockefeller Center, Jacob Javits Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral have 
also participated in the Paid Detail Unit, according to insiders.  But 
Wall Street is the only sector that runs a private justice system where 
its crimes are herded off to secret arbitration tribunals, has sucked on 
the public teat to the tune of trillions of dollars, escaped prosecution 
for the financial collapse, and can put an armed municipal force on the 
sidewalk to intimidate public protestors seeking a realignment of their 
democracy.

We may be learning a lot more in the future about the tactics Wall 
Street and the NYPD have deployed against the Occupy Wall Street 
protestors.  The highly regarded Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has 
filed a class action lawsuit over the approximately 700 arrests made on 
the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1.  The formal complaint and related 
information is  available at the organization’s web site, 
www.JusticeOnLine.org.

The organization was founded by Carl Messineo and Mara 
Verheyden-Hilliard.  The Washington Post has called them “the 
constitutional sheriffs for a new protest generation.”

The suit names Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kelly, the City of 
New York, 30 unnamed members of the NYPD, and, provocatively, 10 unnamed 
law enforcement officers not employed by the NYPD.

The lawsuit lays out  dwhat has been curtailing the constitutional 
rights of protestors for a very long time in New York City.

    “As seen in the movements for social change in the Middle East and 
Europe, all movements for social justice, jobs, and democracy need room 
to breathe and grow and it is imperative that there be a halt to law 
enforcement actions used to shut down mass assembly and free expression 
of the people seeking to redress grievances…

    “After escorting and leading a group of demonstrators and others 
well out onto the Brooklyn Bridge roadway, the NYPD suddenly and without 
warning curtailed further forward movement, blocked the ability of 
persons to leave the Bridge from the rear, and arrested hundreds of 
protestors in the absence of probable cause.  This was a form of 
entrapment, both illegal and physical.

    “That the trap and detain mass arrest was a command-level-driven 
intentional and calculated police operation is evidenced by the fact 
that the law enforcement officials who led the demonstration across the 
bridge were command officials, known as ‘white shirts.’ ”

In April 2001, I was arrested and incarcerated by the NYPD while 
peacefully handing out flyers on a public sidewalk outside of the 
Citigroup shareholders meeting – flyers that warned of growing 
corruption inside the company. (The unlawful merger of Travelers Group 
and Citibank created Citigroup and resulted in the repeal of the 
Glass-Steagall Act, the depression era investor protection legislation 
that barred depositor banks from merging with high-risk Wall Street 
firms.  Many of us from social justice groups in New York City had 
protested against the repeal but were out maneuvered by Wall Street’s 
political pawns in Washington.)

Out of a group of about two dozen protestors from the National 
Organization for Women in New York City, Rain Forest Action Network, and 
Inner City Press, I was the only person arrested.  There was no civil 
disobedience occurring.  Rain Forest Action Network was handing out 
fortune cookies with prescient warnings about Citigroup and urging 
pedestrians to cut up their Citibank credit cards.  The rest of us were 
peacefully handing out flyers.

Chained to a metal bar inside the police precinct, I was grilled on any 
crimes I might know about.  I responded that the only crimes I knew 
about were listed on the flyer and apparently, in New York City, one 
gets arrested for disclosing crimes by Wall Street firms.

A mysterious, mature, white shirted inspector who ordered my arrest on 
the sidewalk, and refused to give his first name, disappeared from the 
police report when it was filed, blaming the arrest instead on a young 
police officer.  Citigroup is only alive today because the Federal 
government inserted a feeding tube into Citigroup and infused over $2 
trillion in loans, direct investment and guarantees as the company 
veered toward collapse.

The NYPD at the time of my arrest was run by Bernard Kerik – the man 
President George W. Bush later sent to Iraq to be the interim Interior 
Minister and train Iraqi police.  The President subsequently nominated 
Kerik to head the Department of Homeland Security for the entire nation. 
 The nation was spared of that eventuality only because of an illegal 
nanny popping up.  Today, Kerik is serving a four year sentence in 
Federal prison for a variety of criminal acts.

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a Federal lawsuit on my behalf 
 (Martens v. Giuliani) and we learned that the NYPD had arbitrarily 
established a policy to arrest and hold for 72 hours any person 
protesting in a group of 20 or more.   The case was settled for a modest 
monetary award and the repeal by the NYPD of this unconstitutional and 
despicable practice.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last 
decade of her career advocating against Wall Street’s private justice 
system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms.  She has 
been writing on public interest issues for CounterPunch since retiring 
in 2006.   She has no security position, long or short, in any company 
mentioned in this article.  She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com






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