NYPD found guilty in editing wikipedia pages

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According to a review conducted and published Friday morning by Capital, computers operating on the New York Police Department’s computer network at its 1 Police Plaza headquarters have been used to rewrite and edit Wikipedia pages.

Changes were done specifically to the pages about victims of police violence and the stop-and-frisk program.

NYPD Guilty of Editing Wikipedia Pages

The edits and changes were linked to the NYPD through different IP addresses, some of which can be easily trucked down by public.

Headquarters’ network ( about 85 different addresses) allegedly have edited and attempted to delete Wikipedia entries for  Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo.

Samples of The Edits

Here are some examples of edits that Capital provided:

● “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”

● “[P]ush Garner’s face into the sidewalk” was changed to “push Garner’s head down into the sidewalk.”

● “Use of the chokehold has been prohibited” was changed to “Use of the chokehold is legal, but has been prohibited.”

● The sentence, “Garner, who was considerably larger than any of the officers, continued to struggle with them,” was added to the description of the incident.

● Instances of the word “chokehold” were replaced twice, once to “chokehold or headlock,” and once to “respiratory distress.”

The fact that anyone can make changes to Wikipedia pages is often overlooked by users. Information provided by web-site is most of the times considered to be the easiest, fastest and “good enough” source. In our fast-moving society as long as you can get the information on the go, you don’t really feel the need to pay attention to the players on the background.

But the fact that some authorities will go as low as manipulating the information through any channel possible should open eyes and raise some serious questioning. According to NYPD spokeswoman, Det. Cheryl Crispin: “The matter is under internal review.”

The list of all anonymous Wikipedia edits made by NYPD IP addresses is available here.