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The Legal Aid Society is decrying the latest move by Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to deploy surveillance technology on unsuspecting and innocent New Yorkers.
Today the NYPD reintroduced their controversial robot canine project along with a GPS device that can be fired at a moving vehicle and a robot with video recording capability that will patrol subway stations in Time Square.
“Mayor Adams continues to pour money into the NYPD’s bloated budget, enabling police to impose new, dystopian surveillance technologies throughout the city without meaningfully engaging New Yorkers in a conversation about whether this is how we want to live,” reads a statement from Legal Aid.
“This announcement is also another example of the NYPD’s violation of basic norms of transparency and accountability by rolling out these technologies without providing the public a meaningful opportunity to raise concerns,” the statement continues. “The City Council passed the POST Act two years ago to address this very issue, yet the NYPD has once again failed to engage its requirements of public comment before further expanding surveillance technology.”
The Legal Aid Society is calling on the City Council to hold an immediate oversight hearing to further investigate the use of these technologies and to afford all New Yorkers the chance to have their voices heard.