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markpkessinger

(8,401 posts) Sun Apr 1, 2018, 12:17 AM Apr 2018

NYPD Ad -- How to Make a "Charm Offensive" Offensive

So, while watching a movie today on the streaming site, Tubi TV, i saw this ad. It is part of the NYPD's "charm offensive" ad campaign known as Build the Block." Starts out inoffensively enough, with various, mostly non-white ofticers talking about how "cops are people, too." But near the end of the ad, speaking of those who distrust the NYPD, a white officer asks, "How can they help us if they don't trust us? How can we help them?" Nowhere in the ad is there any recognition of the roots of that distrust.

Also, notice how the officer who asks the question about trust frames it first as citizens' obligation to help police, and only secondarily, almost as an afterthought, mentions the obligation of police to help the people they serve.. I was left me speechless.

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NYPD Ad -- How to Make a "Charm Offensive" Offensive (Original Post) markpkessinger Apr 2018 OP

It was essentially a Blue Lives Matter spot. DetlefK Apr 2018 #1

Responses so far suggest the difficulty of rebuilding bridges. Hortensis Apr 2018 #2

DetlefK

(16,423 posts)

1. It was essentially a Blue Lives Matter spot.

Reply to markpkessinger (Original post)

Sun Apr 1, 2018, 03:18 AM

Apr 2018

The spot was basically: "Why won't you just trust us? We are people like you!"

At no point does the spot recognize that there USED TO BE trust and that it was the cops who squandered it.

And the spot squarely contradicts their usual line of reasoning:
Are bad cops far and few bad apples, people not like you? Or are all cops the same, people like you?

Hortensis

(58,785 posts)

2. Responses so far suggest the difficulty of rebuilding bridges.

Reply to markpkessinger (Original post)

Sun Apr 1, 2018, 03:24 AM

Apr 2018

I think they're too harsh for honesty, though. This ad is going the right direction.

Hopefully the people in under-policed neighborhoods will be more open to good intentions. They WANT good, adequate policing far more than outsiders want it for them. It's not a frivolity or something to be used for political purposes for them. Criminals without badges are by far more harmful to them and the lives they want to live than criminals with.

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