Meat Popsicles

What? Don't like being fingerprinted? Well, then you should have thought of that before you decided to live in New York City's swanky public housing.

The en suite yellow circles make random police inspections more convenient than ever!

Help McGruff take a bite out of
crime...also human dignity.

Yeah, fingerprint everyone living in buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority. That's what NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested on his radio show last Friday. According to Bloomberg,

"...5% of (NYC's) population lives in NYCHA housing, 20% of the crime is in NYCHA housing, numbers like that, and we've just got to find ways of bringing crime down there."

-Mayor Bloomberg,
just throwing out some ideas,
some terrible, dystopian ideas

On a related Orwellian note, the city filed an appeal of a Federal Judge's ruling that the NYPD's policy of frisking anyone they deem suspicious (that is, suspiciously not white) was unconstitutional and had to stop. But why was 'stop and frisk' ok in the first place? I mean, did city officials miss that 1984 was a cautionary tale and not, like, a suggestion?

The Mayor also misinterpreted Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451,
with tragic consequences for the New York Public Library.

Did we learn nothing
from Snake Plissken?

Look, I get that people prefer not to get robbed and stabbed, but there's got to be a better, less carpet bomb-y way to deal with it. I think Bloomberg's point is that a disproportionate percentage of crime is being committed in NYCHA housing (although not necessarily by the residents) and that fingerprinting everybody who lives there would help police ensure that they're keeping people who shouldn't be in the buildings out. Ok, so issue key cards or hire a doorman. Why is plan A to turn public housing into a John Carpenter movie?

"Nuke'em from orbit.
It's the only way to be sure."

And if all this crime is being committed in these complexes, then isn't it being committed against NYCHA residents? So this plan would fingerprint not only innocent people, but innocent victims. In fact, if they managed to fingerprint anyone who actually goes on to commit a crime, it wouldn't be because the program was a good idea, it'd be an accident. It's like waiting tables and spitting in all the food on the off chance that one customer turns out to be a shitty tipper.

"Benjamin Franklin once said: 'they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little 
temporary safety, have made a really good deal.' Oh, sorry, my producer is telling 
me that's not the correct quote at all, but...but you get the point...right?"

-Michael Bloomberg,
doing it wrong