One of the great things about Wikipedia is that it is open to anyone to edit, thus making it a great resource for all kinds of information and for the information to be updated when things change (it also makes it unviable to be cited in college essays, unfortunately). However sometimes the edits might not necessarily be for the better as it could obscure the truth.This is what happened when it was found that the New York Police Department (NYPD) has been sanitizing Wikipedia entries related to police brutality incidents, such as those involving Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo. This comes from a report by Capital New York where it was discovered that multiple IP addresses linked to the NYPD’s computer network had been found editing Wikipedia entries.
As noted by Capital New York, some of the changes made to Eric Garner’s page include changing “Garner raised both his arms in the air” to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.” They also added the sentence, “Garner, who was considerably larger than any of the officers, continued to struggle with them.”
When asked by Capital New York about the changes made to the Wikipedia entries and when presented with examples of the changes made to said entries, an NYPD spokeswoman, Det. Cheryl Crispin was quoted as saying, “The matter is under internal review.”