I normally hate people who just throw quotes up to answer a question, but this one seemed appropriate.
I will never live in NYC (though I do travel upstate quite a bit). There are plenty of large cities in the world that are safe or safer without also being police states.
"There are plenty of large cities in the world that are safe or safer without also being police states."
Gun rights are not the be all and end all of freedom.
> mass CCTV survellience
I see absolutely nothing wrong with the use of CCTVs to monitor public places (or the use of them to monitor private places by the owners of those places). If civilians are allowed to record the police in public, then the police should be allowed to record civilians in public too.
I guess it's a matter of perspective or opinion. Where do you/we draw the line?
The point of cobrausn is that NYC takes this too far while other large cities do not. I'd argue the safest cities in the same class as NYC are probably as much police states. At least in regards to violent crime. Petty crime rates are difficult to compare uniformly across cultures.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/26/safest-cities-ten-lifestyle...
and
http://www.mercer.com/press-releases/quality-of-living-repor...
New York doesn't even enter the top 50 when it comes to safety in the second table there.
And in Canada Toronto, Vancouver.
First, crime has come down by huge amounts in NYC. Some crimes, like murder are 1/4th or 1/5th of the peaks in the 1980's. For decades now, we've seen a huge increase in safety in NYC.
Second, I question whether most of the police actions are giving up essential liberties. I can see how some might think so, but I can see how many would not.
And I'd say that public transportation is a pretty essential liberty in NYC.
As many other commenters have mentioned, the decrease in crime is not related to the removal of civil liberties. The crime decreases occurred prior to the implementation of many of these policies.
> Second, I question whether most of the police actions are giving up essential liberties. I can see how some might think so, but I can see how many would not.
They are infringing on constitutional rights. I don't see how those rights could be seen as anything but essential.
How do you know crime rate hasn't been lowered everywhere because of say, global warming?
But alas a new type of crime moved in (white collar - bankers etc..) So who is watching them now? NOBODY.
Now the police cannot stop somebody from flying a plane into a building, that is the responsibility of our Federal Government agencies. Today, the police are more of a danger to society than they ever have been. This I compare to the NY Police in the 70s,60s, 50s...(corruption - Watch/Read about Frank Serpico for example). The bad cops were afraid of getting caught. Now today they can get away with murder.
Nothing is worth the price of losing your ability to assemble, speak and to travel. You cannot do this anymore without being considered a potential terrorist or similar. We are not innocent and are all potential threats the all seeing eye of the Police State.
The current stop and frisk and TSA searches are perhaps not doing all that much to increase safety over what was before. It's not a choice between police state and crime sprees.
Source: lived in NYC, visited DPRK
The massive improvement of NYC quality of life and crime rates is most commonly attributed towards the massive explosion of police presence (the NYPD is larger than some standing armies), as well as the broken-windows policy (i.e., busting highly visible small-time crimes on the theory that it will lead to a drop in large crimes, such as vandalism, shoplifting, etc).
You really cannot walk two blocks in Manhattan and not run into a police officer. Presence helps, and IMO these egregious, unconstitutional additions to the NYPD repertoire are just trying to claim rightful credit for crime reductions they didn't cause.