Haven't read beyond the first page of the article yet... saving for later. But I'll share an experience of mine.<p>I lived in the 79th precinct, adjacent to the 81st. It's less dangerous, but not much -- still Bed Stuy and very block by block. I was there for about 6 months in late 2007.<p>The area is tense at times -- much of New York's prosperity over the last two decades hasn't trickled down to the people living there aside from landlords selling their buildings to gentrifies or speculators. There was an incident around this time where an unstable young man was shot because he had a comb the police mistook for a weapon in the dark. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had escalated into riots. Gentrification is welcome by some, protested by some, and many are indifferent to it, I think. There are very few nice places to eat or socialize or even get groceries, but there are a ton of bodegas and fried chicken/pizza places and dollar stores. It can be a very rough place, which is too bad as I got to know some very nice people on my block.<p>Certainly there are institutional problems in the NYPD, but also I have the suspicion that many rookie cops eventually get rotated into areas like this -- Bushwick, Bed Stuy, East New York and this contributes to much of the stuff you will learn about in these tapes. The penis jokes, the confusion on what to report and not gracefully handling tension within the communities -- I wonder if it is inexperience.<p>Comparisons to The Wire are natural, but in the time I lived in Bed Stuy, the only similarity I really observed was that the NYPD guys never seemed to interact with the people of the neighborhood as if they too were part of that community. Never said hi while walking their beats, never stopped to talk to the kids or the corner boys, they mostly walked in twos or threes, chatting with each other. I think for the people that live there and the cops that work there, there is us and them and not much in between.