Essam Attia is NYC street artist who posted fake NYPD posters “reassuring” people about the ubiquitous surveillance of the department, especially via drones. The NYPD surveilled him, tracked him down and arrested him. Heck of a way to prove a point.
The NYDN reports that he’s charged with “56 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, grand larceny possession of stolen property and weapons possession,” the last (and possibly worst) charge coming because cops found an unloaded .22 pistol under his bed when they arrested him. On a practical level, Attia was not the most careful art criminal. He signed his work “ESSAM;” and he told Animal that he was a “a 29-year-old art-school grad from Maine, who served in Iraq as a ‘geo-spatial analyst.'” It probably did not take an incredible amount of police work to narrow down the possibilities.
NYPD Proves Street Artist Right by Tracking Him Down and Arresting Him
(via JWZ)