THEY aren't out there fishing for infractions and either lucking out on someone with a blunt on them or successfully antagonizing someone just enough that they wind up with a charge for "resisting" or "disorderly conduct" and justifies an encounter that began as a fishing trip.

They're avoiding the petty shit and taking a break from literally manufacturing charges for whatever they can find. That isn't to say that there isn't some true-blue crime being committed in the mix,but there's an awful lot of shit cops just flat out create themselves.

The "middle ground", wherever that is, will eventually find itself if this continues for an extended period of time, regardless of initial reactions.

Also lost in their little tantrum is the fact that they've given themselves a break from being videotaped in their plentiful acts of bullying. You know, like the guy who ran up and started punching an already handfcuffed teenager? Or the dude who slapped that guy for literally doing nothing but exercising his right to deny the cop a warantless search of his vehicle? Yeah, when cops have a tantrum and decide their no longer doing anything "they don't have to", they're really doing two things more than any other:

1. They stop their shakedown schemes. No more fishing, no more stop and frisk, no more throwing shit at people to see what sticks. The result? Less jail time, less fines, less criminal records being created for people. Less lawyer fees for both the citizen and the state, less barriers to gainful employment being created, less people being imprisoned for dumb shit like drug possession, less tax payer dollars being spent on all this injustice, etc. Pretty much a net gain anyway you slice it.

2. They get a reprieve from constantly getting their hands caught in the cookie jar. The streets now have the ability to watch back now. The tide of citizens fed up with being baited, trapped, antagonized, and shaken down is finally swelling to a noticeable point despite the incredibly inept sham of a legal system that continues to coddle these scum fucks by refusing to indict, biased jurors who refuse to convict, and sentences (if they get that far, obviously) that often pail in comparison to their civilian counterparts. This tantrum is a net gain for us (NYC people in this particular case, but you get my drift) AND them, and I think they know it. They stop fucking around and there's exponentially less opportunities for the people to catch them fucking up.

This definitely not a zero-sum game and the people of NYC come out ahead overall.