Just browsing the 1921 Annual NYPD Report, as you do.
Category: Police
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“Stop sobbing for the criminal–Sob for his victim!”
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Crime is/isn’t up!
Jarret Murphy over at City Limitspoints out that crime has increased plenty of times in NYC in the past 15 years. And nobody really raised an alarm. This year it’s not even clear that crime is up, despite news accounts saying so. So there’s this a narrative of crime being out of control: Murders are up 5 percent!!! (Maybe a bit more after a bloody weekend.) But 5 percent is pretty statistically minor. And we are coming off a record low year.
Do you remember the bloody year of 1999? I don’t. But the FBI says the number of murders in New York City rose 6 percent that year. How about scary 2006, when the number of killings jumped 10.6 percent? Do you recall the fear with which we all tiptoed through 2008, when the city saw a 5 percent rise in slayings? Don’t get that mixed up with 2010, when the city reported a 14 percent increase in murders.
Somehow, “Bloody Ninety-Nine” didn’t smudge Rudy Giuliani’s reputation as America’s greatest crimefighter. Nor did the four increases in the annual murder count during Michael Bloomberg’s 12 years in office dent his image as a cool and competent manager. In fact, none of these significant spikes in bloodshed triggered the kind of public concern about crime now gripping columnists and some elected officials.
…
Indeed, if de Blasio is guilty of politicizing the actual crime statistics, it’s mainly because his opponents are guilty of politicizing the imaginary crime stats they derive from news headlines, gut instinct and their pre-written narrative that de Blasio is really just John Lindsay standing on his tip-toes.
Maybe it’s good we’ve become less tolerant of crime increases. And maybe the sky will start to fall. But it’s not falling yet.
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NYPD Discipline
Some stats about the NYPD in the New York Times. Bratton is giving more discretion to local commanders for disciplining cops for minor offenses. That’s good. It’s another move away from the micro-managed overly top-down approach of former Commissioner Ray Kelly. The article then tries to say Bratton is not applying Broken Windows within his own department… but that once again mistakes Broken Windows for Zero Tolerance.
Seemingly arbitrary and pernicious discipline is a major cause for low officer moral. The idea that you can get punished for wearing the wrong color socks just as easily as excessive force, for instance. (Though seriously, I hate seeing cops with white socks. They make black cotton sports socks. Go buy some. A pick up a few more white t-shirts while you’re at it.)
Arrests dropped to 388,368 in 2014 from 394,537 in 2013.
Summonses fell to 359,202, from 424,850.
Street stops plunged to 46,235, from 191,558.
Those stats are not hard to find. But these don’t surface as often:
The number of officers suspended without pay each year hovers around 200. A total of 172 were suspended last year and 117 have been suspended so far this year, through Friday. Those put on desk duty, or “modified”, reached 134 last year and number 98 so far this year.
Last year, 96 officers were arrested, mirroring an average of about 100 each year, a majority of them on drunk driving and domestic violence charges, the department said. (An arrest automatically leads to a suspension so all of the arrested officers are among those counted as suspended.)
That means that about 70-75 NYPD officers are suspended without pay at the department’s discretion. For those who believe in some mythic Blue Wall of Silence, how do you account for an NYPD officer being arrested, mostly by other NYPD officers, every 4 days? (About one in every 350 officers is arrested each year, which seems like a lot to me. For non-police, the number is about 1 arrest for every 20 people).
I leave you with this quote:
“Chief got kicked; chief kicked inspector; inspector kicked captain; captain kicked lieutenant; lieutenant kicked sergeant; sergeant kicked cop; cop kicked civilian. This is what Bratton has to undo.”
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“Excuse me ladies and gentleman. I’m sorry to interrupt. Can I have your attention.”
You know when you hear that on the subway, some obnoxious person is going to come through, asking for money.
Well, I sure am.
I don’t ask much of you, gentle reader. But why not give a little money to help feed hungry people? And it will actually go to buying food to put in hungry bellies.
https://www.gofundme.com/dx4293xg.
My wife is one of the people behind this, so I guarantee it ain’t no scam.
But first read this, by our friend Annia Ciezadlo. Yes, this is what I (but mostly they) did on our summer vacation.
But you may ask why I care. I ain’t no bleeding-heart do-gooder. But I do have a soft-spot for Syrians. See I’ve been there. Twice. For vacation. Aleppo was wonderful. A lot of people don’t realize that most refugees from Syria are educated middle-class people. They had lives and jobs and dropped their kids off at school got stuck in traffic and lived in nice apartment buildings. Until the war. And now their neighborhood might look like this:
That was Aleppo back in 2007. At the juice stand by the park. We ordered a tamarind drink and the kid gave us a drink and then wouldn’t take our money. Why? Because we were Americans from far away. And he was very sweet. Today he might be marching across Europe today, cursing the Hungarians.
You can even look at the rest of my vacation pictures if it will help you give.
So how does this relate to the Greek island of Mytilene (AKA Lesbos)? It just so happens I’ve been going there with my family for a long time. And it just so happens that this year a massive humanitarian crisis is literally washing up on the island’s shores. And many of these refugees are the same damn people who were so nice to us back in Syria!
My wife and her friend speak Arabic. So they went off to see how they could help. Mostly I hung out at the beach guarding this octopus to make sure nobody else ate it before they got back for dinner.
I didn’t want to take up room in the little rent-a-car, which they were filling up with people walking across the island in the heat. Plus, it was vacation. Anyway, I did go one time with them across the island to help out with my limited Greek. See, here’s Kara Tepe, the refugee camp, a few weeks ago.
And here’s my wife taking and giving polaroid-like pictures to cute orphan refugees. Oh, did I just play the cute hungry orphan card? Gosh, I guess I did. (This is a different camp, just FYI.)
So give a bit to help feed hungry people who are being forced into a trial by ordeal across Europe. They’re nice people. Really. And if there’s a chance, put “cop in the hood” or something in a message. I’m curious if anybody reading this will be inspired to give money.
Here’s the link again: https://www.gofundme.com/dx4293xg.
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“It’s Showtime NYC”
Interesting conceptreported in the New York Times to get subway dancers out of the subway. An arrest based approach wasn’t working (not the first time you’ve heard that):
Arrests alone — though drastically increasing — were not solving the problem, Mr. Bassin said. He said many of the dancers interviewed in the planning stages of the new effort viewed being arrested as part of the cost of doing business. The statistics appear to bear that out: A quarter of those arrested in 2015 for dancing on the subway had previously been arrested for the dancing
I should mention I know Mr. Bassin, a lawyer in the mayor’s office. This is a very Broken Windows approach:
Ian Bassin, approached the Police Department with an idea for addressing the problem — which results in regular complaints from passengers — by providing an alternative to the criminal justice system.
And I like that even de Blasio is getting better at understanding Broken Windows:
“Broken windows doesn’t mean simply arresting our way out of every minor infraction,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement. “It means focusing on quality of life while providing pathways for all New Yorkers to reach their full potential.”
One reason I like this program is it does not limit police discretion. It’s still up to the officer. But now cops can actually help solve the problem (and most people, myself included, think it is a problem) rather than just choose between basically no enforcement and arresting a kid for dancing on the subway:
Though officers may still pursue arrests or issue summonses for soliciting on trains, they have been urged to consider the alternative approach: handing out the cards with information about the dance initiative.
Every transit officer now carries the small, brightly colored square cards. Roughly 200 have been handed out to dance groups since officers began the effort in May.
“It’s very refreshing for us and our officers to have another alternative when we’re out there,” said Joseph Fox, the chief of the Police Department’s Transit Bureau. “What this program has given us is something in between warning and admonish, and enforcement.”
As a result, Chief Fox said, arrests of dancers are down, 185 through late August, compared with 264 over the same period in 2014. (There were 153 arrests of dancers in all of 2013.)
Also of note:
Chief Fox said he and Mr. Bassin looked into the backgrounds of the men who were arrested or given summonses for dancing on the trains and found that, while a large number had had some contact with the criminal justice system, it was mostly for minor offenses such as fare beating. A smaller fraction, roughly 25 percent, had been previously arrested for a serious crime like robbery, burglary or felony assault.
The jury is still out on whether the program is working. And success can be judged a few way: fewer complaints on the subway, fewer conflicts on the subway (I’ve seen a dancer punch a guy for not moving out of the way on a busy train), more people being able to enjoy the right to get home without illegal distractions, fewer people entering the criminal justice system, and potentially more dance potential. Some of the guys do have serious skillz, but they’re probably not going to be “found” on the subway. They might be in a city-sponsored public performance space.
Now if only they could make a city-sponsored public performance space for all the subway beggars…
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“I do think people underplay the poverty in [Baltimore]. They really don’t understand it.”
There’s an interview with Justin George in The Trace. He was a Baltimore Sun reporter who recently moved on to Milwaukee. I like that he’s willing to consider the possibility there might be some trade-off between aggressive policing, which causes community resentment, and getting illegal guns off the streets, which saves lives:
Which of the citywide initiatives to help cut the homicide rate has been the most successful?
What everyone talks about most is these plainclothes cops, which are very controversial. These are detectives who are working in unmarked cars. They gather intelligence. When Baltimore’s homicides dipped below 200, in 2011, for first time in decades, one of the things pointed to were these units. They were chasing down leads, looking for guns and getting info on who has them. But a lot of black residents were being unfairly harassed. At the John Hopkins gun policy center they say that some units that are specifically trained to spot guns have shown effectiveness in other cities. But these units also run the risk of alienating the neighborhood.
So what can be done to turn things around in Baltimore?
I can only speak to what the residents tell me. And they tell me repeatedly that there aren’t enough things for you to do on the streets. They say that they want more recreation centers; they miss the different athletic leagues and getting youths involved with good influences. And there’s certainly that notion that a lot of these kids need people who are rooting for them. And when I say kids, I’m talking about teens here. I think if there’s a boost in the economy, you’ll see a change. But I want to express, I’m not an expert in any of this — I’m just a humble journalist. But I do think people underplay the poverty in the city. They really don’t understand it.
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CCRB and the NYPD
A new report from the New York’s CCRB (civilian complaint review board) is out.
There are some interesting things here. Much more video evidence means more complaints are being substantiated. But overall complaints are down substantially (22%) from one year ago.
And this:
From January 2014 through June 30, 2015, one percent of identified officers on the force were responsible for 18% of all misconduct claims, five percent were responsible for 52%, and 10% were responsible for 78% of claims during this period. Five percent of officers were responsible for generating 100% of force complaints. Significantly, 86% of officers had no CCRB complaints during this period of time.
That’s on page ix. There are another 62 pages after that I skipped.
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“Safe Steets” office raided in Baltimore
In case you’re wondering how police could possibly be opposed to a “violence prevention program” like a city-funded program that “hires ex-felons to mediate disputes,” consider this from the Baltimore Sun: “One of the guns found in a raid on the Safe Streets violence prevention program’s East Baltimore office has been connected to at least two shootings.”
Also found were a “semiautomatic handgun with a 26-round extended magazine found in a ‘drop-style ceiling’ in the office. Two loaded guns and four extended magazines were found in a cabinet. A plastic bag containing .40-caliber cartridges was found in a plant pot. Police also said they found 450 suspected heroin capsules as well as materials such as cutting agents and sifters used to prepare heroin for distribution.”
Basically this was a tax-payer funded criminal enterprise. And yet, somehow, “City officials remain supportive of Safe Streets, which has been credited with stemming violence in the neighborhoods where it is active.”
I don’t know what neighborhoods they’re talking about. This is a city where the homicide rate doubled in April.
I wonder how close the vetting for the Safe Streets participants gets to the mayor. This sure would be an interesting case of “follow the money.”
[More on the program and the arrests, from NPR. (Thanks to PG)]
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“He shouldn’t be up there with Martin Luther King”
No, Freddie Gray should not be. What a disgrace to MLK, Jr. I hate to paraphrase The Trump, but just because you are killed or die in police custody does not make you a hero. But such is politics in Baltimore.
When these officers look at this larger-than-life mural with Gray in the center, they see a drug dealer next to the greatest civil rights leader of all time and they can’t seem to make sense of that.
“Put that little girl up there. McKenzie. Not him,” the officer says.
He is referring to 3-year-old McKenzie Elliot, who was killed in a drive-by shooting last August. “Why weren’t there riots for her? That, I would understand.”
This comes from a piece in Salon by Danielle Ariano, who went on a ride-along in Baltimore. It’s well worth reading the whole thing.
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Baltimore Equals New York City in Homicides
I often joked about this, but I really never thought this day would happen.
On August 16, both New York and Baltimore had 208 murders. Baltimore has added another 8 since then. I’m not certain about NYC. New York City has 7.5 million more residents than Charm City.