NYPD Officers May No Longer Wear NYPD Stuff
This is just kind of ... weird: Cops in New York are going to have to give up their NYPD T-shirts, hats, and everything else with "NYPD" on it that's not their actual uniform while worn on duty. "Cops can’t even own a NYPD-emblazoned mug and keep it in their home without express written permission," DNA Info's Murray Weiss reports.
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Why, you ask? According to Weiss, it's because Commissioner Ray Kelly saw one cop wearing a shirt with the NYPD initials and the phrase, "Kill Them All and Let God Sort It Out." That seems like it would do it. Kelly's got a huge image problem on his hands, what with deputy commissioner and spokesman Paul Browne getting called out for lying about Kelly himself appearing in an anti-Muslim video that the department then used for training. Borrowing a slogan usually associated with overly aggressive Marines (who have some image problems of their own) would certainly exacerbate things. So now the cops are on restricted dress. Oddly, we can totally imagine someone at an Occupy Wall Street protest or a police brutality march wearing the exact same shirt. In fact worn by anybody other than a cop it would probably be taken as sharp criticism of the NYPD. Worn by a cop, with the apparent meaning that the NYPD is out to kill you, it's just plain scary.
