The strip of Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn lit up by taquerias and Mexican bakeries was just beginning to shutter for the night, as a shopkeeper dragged the last of the display mannequins from the sidewalk into a clothing store. David Galluzo, 17, shivered in his thin varsity jacket as he made his way to 46th Street to meet the other members of El Grito de Sunset Park, a neighborhood group that monitors police aggression in their community.

Some of the members walked with hoodies tied tightly around their faces and GoPro cameras strapped to their chests. Dennis Flores, who started the group a decade ago, listened to a police scanner. “Aw man, sounds like all of the cops are in Prospect Park,” he said.

Galluzo, a senior and varsity running back at New Utrecht High School, once wanted to be a cop. The Puerto Rican and Italian teen is now wary of police and teaches his seven younger siblings to just ignore them. “We just decided we wanted nothing to do with the 72nd Precinct anymore,” he said.

A predominantly immigrant community that has seen an influx of Hispanic and Chinese residents over the last three decades, Sunset Park is rife with tension between the police and the community. The annual Puerto Rican Day Parade habitually ends in clashes between residents and police, and it is where Galluzo and his family had a run-in with the cops in June.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/15/neighborhood-copwatchesnypdbrooklyn0.html

The NYPD made major changes to how it disseminates information on crimes last week by cutting off a long-standing source of information for residents and introducing a new, high-tech source.

On December 5, news broke that the NYPD had ordered all 77 police precincts to stop giving information to the media on neighborhood crimes and to direct requests to the office of the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information (DCPI). The move has prompted some local publications to discontinue their weekly crime blotters.

A few days later on December 8, the NYPD unveiled a new interactive crime map that enables the public to search and view data on major felonies that occur in the city.

Taken together, what do the two moves mean for local residents and journalists?

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/the-stream/the-stream-officialblog/2013/12/9/nypd-alters-accesstolocalcrimedata.html