There have been a lot of suspicious events associated with the current series of riots and events. I have discussed some of these, but many more continue to emerge. One of these is a report from Zero Hedge which alleges, with some evidence directly from the NYPD, that the NYPD is using taxi cabs filled with undercover police that are arresting protesters.
As social unrest rages in New York City, a video surfaced on social media Tuesday, showing what appears to be an “undercover” police car that resembles a Yellow Cab NYC Taxi.
The video, first posted via Twitter handle @dertyduchess, is narrated by a passerby, who spots an “NYC cab cop car.” The person went onto say, “this is the craziest shit I’ve seen.” As the person walks by the vehicle, they pointed out how “someone” was being detained inside the cab.
One Twitter user responded to the video by saying: “Cops in NYC pretending to be taxi drivers so they can trap protesters… I have never in my life seen or heard anything as SICK and TWISTED as this….,” tweeted @hisnameiselie.
While there are no official reports that NYPD uses undercover cabs, Motherboard filed several requests to the NYPD through the Freedom of Information Act to examine the issue more in-depth back in 2015. What they found is that NYPD operated a small fleet of these cars back then. However, the fleet has grown to new taxi cab models, as shown in the video above, with what appears to be a new Toyota corolla. (source)
Now there are a lot of bad things that many protesters are doing. There are also a lot of decent people protesting. Regardless of one’s views on the protesters, there is a lot of evidence suggesting police provocation of demonstrators .
It should be pointed out that the use of “fake cars” by police such as this is found in many dictatorships around the world. It is one thing to use unmarked cars- a common tool employed by police in all states -is different from presenting oneself as one thing when one is the opposite. This is outright dishonesty, and a sign of dictatorial behavior.
Many have observed that under Trump, his COVID-19 bill officially brought about the union of corporate and state power by way of financial bailouts and government ownership, which is the definition of fascism. Since fascism is known to be brutal in how governments under such a philosophy are brutal to their people, while one cannot definitively say it to be as such, what one may be observing here is the physical manifestation of the chosen philosophy in public life, at which time it is too late to stop.
The question of how “legal” or not this is, while important, is not as relevant as the principle, which is that we are seeing right now potentially major changes to how police and protest relations are handled, with possibly major consequences for the future.