Author Archives: iv119056

The New York police department is always looking for ways to make the city safer by upgrading and reforming different methods, methods such as stop and frisk and surveillance camera. With new found technology the New York police department and Microsoft developed the Domain Awareness System, a new surveillance security. The Domain Awareness System uses the surveillance cameras place in the city, retrieves 911 calls and contain criminal data and complaint reports. The system can also detect radiation and read license plates. According to the article “Surveillance city? Microsoft, NYPD team on crime fight system”, Mayor Bloomberg announced in the conference that New York will be “receiving thirty percent of the revenues” when the Domain Awareness System get marketed to other places. Citizens may ask themselves what will New York City do with 30 percent of the revenues?  New York has been known to have corruption in its police department. Although the system was developed to keep the city safer, the system can be used in favor of the officials. In the NYPD Tapes article we read how the stop and frisk technique is used to help officials meet their quotas. The stop and frisk technique is known to be mostly used on blacks and Latinos which raises the issue of racial profiling. The Domain Awareness System can also map crime statistics and as we learn statistics are not always accurate. Some complaints and crimes aren’t always reported; therefore the system would not be aware of crimes committed. The Domain Awareness System can very well help decrease and prevent crimes in New York City but there are always loopholes to every system.

The conference video can be watch on the web link.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57489636-83/surveillance-city-microsoft-nypd-team-on-crime-fight-system/?tag=contentMain;contentBody

In the  article “Docile Bodies” from Discipline and Punish,  Foucault explained how the state adapted the military technique to create certain characters and habits in other institutions. One of the institutions was the education system; Foucault described how teacher and masters inhibit physical actions in students. Till this day those physical actions are still acted upon in school. The school basically mode the students into what they thought was an adequate character to obtain. Delhi Charter School in Louisiana imposed a policy that stated no pregnant student can attend school and how students will be ask to take a pregnancy test. Students who are perceived to be pregnant are expected to take a pregnancy test without their own choice of doctor. Perceiving a student to be pregnant is discriminatory, in that case we may ask ourselves what type of girls are being perceive to be pregnant?  According to the “School’s require girls to take pregnancy test” article, 70 percent of girls who have children have left the school due to discrimination. The policy explains how the Delhi Charter School has certain expectations for their student and certain character traits. It appears that students who don’t meet the criteria are put aside and forced to leave the school. The students are forced to leave the school because they are not treated like the other students. The American Civil Liberties Union stated that pregnant students shouldn’t be treated as people with disease but with a medical condition and should be involved as much as they can. The social media has an influence of how pregnant teenagers are perceived in society and how they disrupt the high standards of the education system. Students who don’t follow the disciplinary criteria are excluded and therefore consider deviant. The deviant behavior consider from the education system is translated through media communications to the public. As punishment the students are not adequate effort to the society. This effect builds a relationship gap between the educated and uneducated. The educated are the discipline students that form part of the state social structure. According to the article the Delhi Charter School “maintain an environment in which all students will learn and exhibit acceptable character traits that govern language, gestures, physical actions, and written words”, hence the students serve as puppets to the education system and unfortunately it has become part of the norm.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/48554183/ns/today-back_to_school/

In class the movie “Witch Hunt” was shown which demonstrated how a group of parents were falsely accused as child molesters. After years of imprisonment they were found innocent and had to start a new life. Some move to a different state because they couldn’t get a job in Bakersfield after all accusations. The children of the parents and the kids from the neighborhood who were pressured what to say carried a sense of guilt throught out the years. Those children now question the righteousness of the authority.  As citizens we are suppose to trust and depend on the legal system right? Unfortunately many citizens doubt the jurisdiction of America. Some members of the jurisdiction are not lead to the innocence of a person but rather to their own interest. Prosecutors for their own benefit look for convictions as a way to self-promote. When concurrent crimes happen like it did in Bakerfield, innocent people are declared guilty. In the aricle “5 jailed in ’95 killing  of cabby didn’t do it, federal inquiry says”  five people were arrested for the murder of cab driver Baithe Diop. According to the article Baithe Diop was murder in 1995, “a time when cabdrivers were being attacked regularly in the city with nearly 70 drivers killed in 1993 and 1994”.  It just so happened that five people who declare themselves innocent were convicted, now years later after two trials due to evidence are found to be innocent. During the first trial, the police and prosecutors believed the four men ( one was release of charges) plotted Diop murder to distract the authority from the $50,000 worth of cocaine taken from Diop’s passenger. The jurors of the trial believed the conclusion of the police and prosecutors. In the second trial two more people were convicted for Diop’s murder, Eric Glisson who was one of them wrote a letter to a prosecutor but landed on the hands of the investigator, John O’Malley. In the letter Glisson states that he overheard Diop’s murder was done by two gang members from the Bronx. In both the Bakersfield and Diop case, defendents were given a long sentences. This puts in question the power of the prosecutors, which is only being questioned by the citizens and not the authorities.  In both cases ( Bakersfield and Diop), no prosecutors were held accountable for their actions. If the government is watching the citizens who is watching the government (authorities)?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48484764/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/

Every year young adults are found involved in drug trafficking. When people think of criminal youth they will easily associate the crime made by an abandon kid without guidance, but sadly that is no longer the case. According to Gabriel Tarde in”Criminal Youth”, attending school can prevent delinquency but now a kid that is or isn’t in school can be involve in drug trafficking whatever their reasons are. Young adults  starting from their early teens are earning thousands each month, some even self-employed selling drugs.

The article “Ohio police: Teen ran drug ring that grossed $20,000 a month” states a 17 year old student was under investigation since he was 15 years old for selling drugs outside school property. This 17 year old boy had his own employees and even demanded them that selling within school property was not allowed. According to officials, the 17 year old whose name wasn’t given because he is a juvenile, is an intelligent kid who wouldn’t be written down as a criminal. At  the top of the drug chain were four older adults who basically hired teenagers to run their business. Are young adults in the line of illegal employment? It certainly seems like it is due to the fact that  teenagers consume drugs on a daily basis. That brings another social problem that America is facing, consumption of drug use from young adults. Just like the cycle of life, this seems to be the cycle of crime influenced by social factors. Social factors being glorification of crime by the media, peer pressure, money, or lack of a descent environment. It seems to me this cycle of crime involves social factor influence, drug trafficking of elders and the youth, consumption of drugs, increase of crime, police enforcement (jobs for cops, jail time, juvenile programs) and lastly the affect it has on the economy.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/17/justice/ohio-teen-drug-bust/index.html

For years private institutions and governments have developed  different methods to identify people. Methods like fingerprinting and  Register of Distinctive Marks pinpoint Bertillon’s view that every individual are physically different. The article “New lab working on security shoe sole to ID people” as well emphasis the notion that every person is physically different. The company Autonomous ID is working with a lab in creating shoe soles that will monitor and identify people. Similar to fingerprinting, researchers claim that every person has different feet and  different ways of walking. The bio-soles detects whether the shoes belongs to the rightful owner, if not a wireless alarm message will be sent. According to Todd Gray, sample of bio-soles have been tested and return 99 percent results. If approved the bio-soles can be sold in the market and use to spy on people. The bio-soles product can fall in the wrong hands of  a potential criminal.  There are always disadvantages and advantages when it comes to technology. As mentioned in the article, the U.S government as well as the Chinese government have been invested millions  in gait research. It has also been known that The Institute of Intelligent Machines are working on a system where floors can detect a person’s footstep without them knowing.  Government are consently  developing new ideas to identify people with the  easiness and accuracy of new technology. New high-security systems raises the issue of privacy, many people think it can be invasive. Lee Tien, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, thinks the bio-sole is a “potential tracking device” just like an iphone. Products like the bio-soles can increase paranoia among the community and can be use as an device to track down non-criminals. High-tech security can be very helpful and safe when trying to identify or monitor a dangerous person but in the other hand how much is too much when being invasive.

Ivana Vidals

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/07/21/new-lab-working-on-security-shoe-sole-to-id-people-825803910/