New: I talked to a bike expert to see if he could explain the NYPD’s bike lock/outside agitator conspiracy at Columbia. I ended up with so much more. My chat w/ @brooklynspoke.bsky.social: www.thehandbasket.co/p/columbia-b... - ThreadSky

marisakabas.bsky.social • 364 days ago

New: I talked to a bike expert to see if he could explain the NYPD’s bike lock/outside agitator conspiracy at Columbia. I ended up with so much more.

My chat w/ @brooklynspoke.bsky.social: https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/columbia-bike-locks-doug-gordon

Comments

playcritically.bsky.social•364 days ago

Um, unless there were *two* "concrete in milkshake" incidents, that wasn't New York, it happened in Portland when right-wing provocateur Andy Ngo had a milkshake thrown at him and he claimed it was filled with quick dry concrete and the cops backed him up on it even though, no, it was a milkshake.

marisakabas.bsky.social•364 days ago

https://nypost.com/2020/06/08/nypd-finds-concrete-covered-as-ice-cream-at-george-floyd-protests/

playcritically.bsky.social•364 days ago

Amazing. The chutzpah.

nyjanelane.bsky.social•364 days ago

Um, you could apologize for sounding so condescending

craigburley.com•364 days ago

So no apology for acting like a dick in the first post huh

craigburley.com•364 days ago

You can EVEN look this up yourself to avoid getting rinsed like this. Next time!

yazikus.bsky.social•364 days ago

Reminds of the 'soup for my family' Tiktok parade of Trump's words. These people are paranoid. And Andy lost his milkshake case.

playcritically.bsky.social•364 days ago

He sure did milk a lot of patreon bucks out of it to fund his brain injury treatment which he recovered from remarkably quickly though.

yazikus.bsky.social•364 days ago

He still does his fake British accent tho 🤷‍♂️

yazikus.bsky.social•364 days ago

*parody

kschleiffer.bsky.social•364 days ago

I heard the big chain! bike lock! these were professionals! claim on MSNBC Wednesday morning. It struck me as a stretch.

crankypacifist.bsky.social•364 days ago

Wha-BAM.

gojira65.bsky.social•364 days ago

Reading your piece made me think of the San Francisco Critical Mass events, which used to be on the news constantly (in a negative way) but now seem to have become an accepted piece of the City's culture. And they appear to have led to actual pro-bike policies!
https://www.kqed.org/news/11941576/the-night-that-changed-san-francisco-cycling-forever

marisakabas.bsky.social•364 days ago

i hadn't heard of this. so cool. thanks for sharing!

gojira65.bsky.social•364 days ago

When I was still working in the Financial District I always liked going down to see the bike riders take over the streets. (Admittedly, I took BART so my commute was never affected!)

rpgirl.bsky.social•364 days ago

It's almost as if public transit is great because it uses the space so much more efficiently, freeing up other space for things like cyclists <3

I do love taking BART into the city because it's convenient and yea the only risk of delay is the dreaded Police Activity but even thats only +10 minutes

asherlangton.bsky.social•364 days ago

In the ‘90s, I drove a bus for the student-run city transit system in Davis. Critical Mass blocked the entrance to the bus terminal. Buses didn’t run, students drove or missed classes or drove. But some of the CMers were cheering towards idled buses: “public transit, fuck yeah!”

asherlangton.bsky.social•364 days ago

Nothing against CM in general, but choosing to block the small road that was primarily used for buses entering and leaving the terminal was kind of a facepalm moment.

rpg-volley.bsky.social•364 days ago

Would a can of soup by any other name so sweetly shatter the window of a cop car?

landmoose.bsky.social•364 days ago

So actually not that complicated at all

wallybuan0.bsky.social•364 days ago

noisybrooklyn1.bsky.social•364 days ago

And, again, thank you for the reporting.

noisybrooklyn1.bsky.social•364 days ago

When I heard the cops & Adams were talking abt bike locks & how they were “nefarious”, I started laughing. ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me, right?’ I don’t understand why no one in the media at the press conf. challenged them on that idiotic point. Students bike! OF COURSE they’d have a lock. 🤦🏻‍♀️

jhaedin.bsky.social•364 days ago

If the evidence doesn't fit a cop's arrest, he'll fabricate it out of whole cloth.

lexys.wtf•364 days ago

Great interview, you got some really good answers and had strong follow ups.

marisakabas.bsky.social•364 days ago

thanks!

strkanerve.bsky.social•364 days ago

Cops and press man. It’s a human centipede situation

thiccofferman.bsky.social•364 days ago

If someone is using their bike lock as a weapon, where's the bike

sundance.bikesky.social•364 days ago

Be on there lookout for professional urban riot gear!

jimlohmar.bsky.social•364 days ago

cyclist here who uses a kryptonite style lock they paraded around. they went and bought one, cut off the fabric casing (which is standard for all krypto locks to protect the bike’s frame paint), and so made the chain itself look “industrial,” nypd basically fabricated “evidence”

goldstein.bsky.social•364 days ago

Isn't what you're looking for a bike lock expert? /s

chellech.bsky.social•364 days ago

I think this is linked back memetically to that time some antifa guy smacked a a neo nazi in the back of a head with a bike lock and they're scared it'll happen to them

marisakabas.bsky.social•364 days ago

def!

bibulb.com•364 days ago

I was gonna say - back in the late teens, a particular Bircher FoaF would LOUDLY squawk about “bUt LeFtIsTs WiTh BiKe LoCkS!” any time the topic of right wing terrorism came up.

japple323.bsky.social•364 days ago

I also think that cops are just super scared all the time. They’re trained to be afraid of everything and everyone, so they see normal, everyday items and immediately jump to their most sinister, nonsensical uses. It must be an exhausting way to live.

catfrat.bsky.social•364 days ago

And also when all you have is a hammer (gun), everything is a nail. It’d be an improvement if they had actual training outside of being able to lethally shoot people within 15 seconds of appearing at a scene

scumbagnobody.bsky.social•363 days ago

In so many states Hair dressers, and Stylists have way more training than cops do.

Secondly, the type of people that job attracts....🤔

Imagine what the prison guards are that tried to be cops but couldnt make it?

mathandstuff.bsky.social•364 days ago

Yes, police academies have all sorts of videos where innocuous situations end up with some rando with dark skin or hippie clothing pulls out a weapon and shoots cops.

It's why they're so paranoid. Why they get so upset if you get out of the car when you're pulled over. They think "Shooter!"

marisakabas.bsky.social•364 days ago

yes! we sort of get at this

weirwoodtreehug.bsky.social•364 days ago

Bicycles always being left coded is literal. When they first became a thing there was a moral panic that women about them turning women all independent and masculinized.

izzos.us•364 days ago

I mean these are the people that have massive panic attacks if they're within 50 yards of anything that looks like Fentanyl.

How many times has a cop had a full on collapse/meltdown over "Fentanyl exposure" and it turned out not to be Fentanyl?

japple323.bsky.social•364 days ago

And we’ve certainly seen how easily they can mistake a cell phone, a wallet, even a sandwich and a Bible, for a gun. (These are all real things cops have mistaken for a gun.)

japple323.bsky.social•364 days ago

In their defense, the Bible has killed a lot of people.

izzos.us•364 days ago

Few things have led to more deaths than white men carrying Bibles.

rds773.bsky.social•364 days ago

Or an acorn falling for an attack

surfingthepast.bsky.social•364 days ago

How many times have they sampled the fentanyl and later claimed “oh it got me though I was standing fifty feet away.” Uh-huh

scumbagnobody.bsky.social•363 days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrZLc9lqQM0

napoleonicento.bsky.social•364 days ago

Fentanyl can't even be absorbed through the skin, so even if they encounter the real stuff it wouldn't do what they think it does

scumbagnobody.bsky.social•363 days ago

when I was still using...we would wish that was all it took.

There are so many instances where this has been directly refuted by chemists.

myleslobdell.bsky.social•364 days ago

You know that percentage of people you hear about dying each year from trying to open cardboard and plastic boxes and containers? All cops. That fear is well-earned, trust me.

scumbagnobody.bsky.social•363 days ago

I dunno if they are afraid all the time.

I met cops here in Orlando that took extreme pleasure in exerting their power over me and a couple friends while we were junkies.

Its almost like they are just a bunch of bullies

midnightmunson.bsky.social•363 days ago

That is not what was happening here. I don't know if you were watching the live coverage of what was happening on Columbia, but a group of protestors had taken over a building and had attempted to lock out the police by using these kinds of locks. Look, I am a former student of Columbia and
also

nosaysno.bsky.social•364 days ago

I have video footage of them kettling Brooklyn BLM back in 2020 while they were saying they weren't doing that. Including the helicopter that trained it's light on me for five minutes for doing that from my window 6 floors up.

mathandstuff.bsky.social•364 days ago

I remember when a pallet of bricks was evidence that the BLM march was intended to involve a lot of brick throwing.

"The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand"

They know these are bullshit arguments. The people who pretend to believe them also know it's all bullshit.

zarleckazpa.bsky.social•364 days ago

I like how he uncomplicated it by talking it through.

erlebnis.bsky.social•364 days ago

what does any of that have to do with their "bike expertise"?

protik.bsky.social•364 days ago

lebanonlink.bsky.social•364 days ago

Clearly a tactical mug.

protik.bsky.social•364 days ago

heavy, industrial sippy cups

sjjphd.bsky.social•364 days ago

😂

rummymusic.bsky.social•364 days ago

#ACAB

chuckgoat.bsky.social•364 days ago

Reminds me of the whole can of soup thing.

lexys.wtf•364 days ago

chains for family

mwookie.bsky.social•364 days ago

to be fair, I think the food at Shake Shack is pretty vile.

irahyman.bsky.social•364 days ago

You might this from @mikecaulfield.bsky.social. His point is that people will take evidence as it is available to fit with an argument. And he focused on the bike lock because it was such an interesting misuse of evidence.

https://bsky.app/profile/mikecaulfield.bsky.social/post/3kri77vc7yc2q

riggsxt.bsky.social•364 days ago

These are the most unserious people but they are doing the most serious of things to citizens.

wellsbe.bsky.social•364 days ago

The Occam’s razor of police statements: they’re lying.

joachim.cidlab.com•364 days ago

I interpret this as a sort of cargo-cult perspective on justification. In order to act, you need something concrete that is "proofy," while the quality of the evidence is an irrelevant abstraction

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