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Wikipedia Edits On Eric Garner, Sean Bell, Chumbawamba Linked To NYPD Computers
By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 13, 2015
Modified Mar 13, 2015
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NYC Mayor's Office
By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 13, 2015
Modified Mar 13, 2015
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According to a report by Capital NY, computers at 1 Police Plaza headquarters have been linked to Wikipedia edits and changes on various police controversies (as well as stuff like... Chumbawamba).
Capital traced the edits and changes to the NYPD through a series of IP addresses working on the NYPD headquarters' network. In theory, this could mean anyone could be hacking into one of their IP addresses (there are more than 15,000 IP addresses registered to the NYPD) and editing away—but the fact that there are significant changes to police-related incidents, including the deaths of Eric Garner, Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo entries, to suggest this 'wikiwashing' isn't just a weird coincidence.
The Garner edits are particularly glaring: they came on Dec. 3rd, hours after the Staten Island grand jury decided not to bring criminal charges against officer Daniel Pantaleo. Here are all the changes they noted:
“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.”
The attempts at major Sean Bell changes were just as serious: on April 12, 2007, about five months after the shooting, a user on 1 Police Plaza’s network attempted to outright delete the entire Wikipedia entry "Sean Bell shooting incident." They argued on Wikipedia’s internal “Articles for deletion” page, "He [Bell] was in the news for about two months, and now no one except Al Sharpton cares anymore. The police shoot people every day, and times with a lot more than 50 bullets. This incident is more news than notable."
There were also changes and revisions made to entries on Diallo, stop-and-frisk, the NYPD wiki page, the Alexien Lien motorcycle beating incident, the CCRB—but looking at the full list of edits traced to them, this is all just the tip of the iceberg. Someone at 1 PP apparently is a Wikipedia maven, because there were edits to everything including "Mars hoax," "Star Trek Generations," "Jean-Claude Van Damme," " Little Lord Fauntleroy," the band "Chumbawamba," "Nineteen Eighty-Four," "Kosovo Police," "Type A and Type B personality theory," and hundreds more random terms.
Tagged
colorful editing
edits
eric garner
nypd
police
sean bell
Wikipedia
wikiwashing
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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