Police and Secret Service Shut Down Assassination Art Exhibit

USLaw

The New York City Police Department and Secret Service forced the closure of a political art show by artist Yazmany Arboleda titled “The Assassination of Barack Obama / Hillary Clinton”. While Police Commissioner Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly denied the artist was arrested or that the gallery show was forced to close, by detaining Mr. Arboleda for questioning on the basis he posed a threat that required investigation, the Secret Service effectively forced closure of the exhibition and thus political expression.

Were the police concerns valid you ask? Isn’t there a high probability that someone who titles a public show the “Assassination of ___________ (insert public figure)” is a dangerous individual with intent to commit a violent act? Wouldn’t the police be remiss if they didn’t furtherinvestigate such an individual?

Here’s the problem.

Individuals that pose actual risks to public figures are highly unlikely to advertise their intent so publicly. It is far more difficult for police and protective agencies to identify such individuals as what few telltale signs they present are far more ambiguous and require far more analysis to detect. Given the high volume of potential threats, federal agencies must be very efficient in their investigations and surveillance. They must be able to quickly determine which threats to invest resources in further investigating and which to dismiss as incredible.

How efficient and effective were the Secret Service and NYC Police Department in this instance? Let’s see… It would take the average casual observer less than 30 seconds to identify the images on display in the gallery as innocuous political art (judge for yourself below). The word ‘Assassination’ is clearly used artfully in the show’s title, of course, to connote the assassination of each presidential candidate’s character by the indecencies of the long political nominating process. The show is clearly about ‘character assassination’ not an incitement to murder (which, even if it were, is arguably within one’s rights to promote).

It took hundreds of combined man hours of investment by the New York City Police Department and Secret Service to make this determination, requiring the efforts of dozens of law enforcement professionals to respond to the gallery location, surround the artist, summon the building’s management, transport Mr. Yazmany to a police station, and interrogate him while all the while keeping management informed of each step in the process.

He’s the scary thing. If it took the NY Police that long to surmise that Mr. Arboleda’s open and notorious art show was not a physical threat to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, how quickly effectively will they be able to decipher the more subtle and dangerous intentions of the hidden and secretive forces that are no doubt planning actual attacks on public safety?

Let’s call what happened here what it is. It’s either a) censorship pure and simple or b) incompetent threat management. Either the rationale used by the government to close Mr. Arboleda’s art exhibit– that he presented a potential threat that required investigation– was a ruse to violate his First Amendment rights to free expression because his choice of artistic expression struck NYC Police Commissioner Kelly as “inappropriate” or it is an indication of an inefficient beuracracy that we pray will be able to identify hidden, unannounced threats like the one that befell our city on a peaceful September morning seven years ago.

Judicious use of New York City police resources (photo credit New York Times).

After police closure and censorship.

Assassination of Barack Obama art gallery, Assassination of Hillary Clinton art exhbiit, Namoi Gallery, , New York Time.

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Comments

1 Comment so far

Art from Colombia on June 6, 2008 3:12 pm
Thanks for the photos. I think your reading on this situation is still pretty “light-hearted”, or perhaps I am being pessimistic, but from abroad the perception of the US as a free country is slowly being eroded by such acts as the censorship we see here at this exhibition. It is up to Americans to wake up and see what is really happening to their country.

I have written a few more words on this issue at the site below:

http://colombianart.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/the-assassination-of-barack-obama-by-yazmany-arboleda/