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Tag: NYPD

  • Marijuana Arrests in NYC to Decrease in 2011

    As one does, I was just reading the future in my Greek (née Turkish) coffee grounds, and I saw an interesting development.

    [Cue swamy music] I see that the NYPD is going to start making fewer arrests for possession of marijuana this year starting right about now… I predict that in 2011, misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests in NYC are going to be down from 50,300 in 2010… and somewhat substantially… maybe a third fewer?… but now things are getting a little hazy.

    How do I know? I don’t. That’s wall they call it a “prediction.” But I’m not just saying this because of the gypsy blood in me tells me so (even though I am 1/8th gypsy).

    Remember to check back in a year or so. Cause I’d love to be the first to say, “I told you so!”

    [Updatefrom the future: I was wrong.]

  • New York Police Station Architecture

    The other day my wife and I were walking down a street near we live and I stopped across the street from a handsome old brick building.


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    “I bet that used to be the police station,” I said.

    “How do you know?”

    “I don’t know.”

    I didn’t know how I knew. But I knew. It just looked like an old police station–how police stations are supposed to look.

    And then I noticed the police shield in the brickwork between the 2nd and 3rd floor. It wasthe old police station.

    The Timeshas a story about beautiful old monuments to the “Wielders of the Club.” This actually isn’t one of them, but I’m still happy to have it around. Hanac, by the way, is the “Hellenic-American Neighborhood Action Committee.”

  • The cost for weed arrests just went up

    Last week I reported that marijuana arrests in New York City cost the city $75 million per year. In truth, that’s a pretty conservative estimate. One thing left out is the cost of actually testing the drugs people are arrested for. Now if somebody takes a quick plea, the drugs may never be tested. But with 50,000 marijuana arrests, there must be a lot of testing going on.

    But how much does it cost to test drugs? Good question. I’ve always wondered. Well in Nassau County (Eastern Long Island), it’s going to cost them up to $167 per test to clean up their crime lab mess. That’s through a private company. I would hope and assume that the NYPD does it in-house for cheaper.

    Still… 50,000 drug tests could cost most than $8,000,000. Just add that to the bill.

  • NYC Marijuana Arrests Cost City $75 mil

    So reports the Daily Newsabout a new reportby the Drug Policy Alliance.

    In response, Commissioner Kelly says if you don’t like, call your state senator. Of course, that’s a bit disingenuous because the law is already pretty clear: small-scale possession of marijuana in New York State is not an arrestable offense. The problem is how the NYPD enforces a violation they’ve been told to just write a ticket for. The law is pretty clear: it doesn’t want an arrest for small-scale personal weed possession. But the NYPD gets around this law by “asking” people to empty their pockets (that’s the legal way, at least). But… why?

    I can answer that question, by the way: overtime, paperwork, compstat pressure, and the boss. Remember, in the police world, some arrests are better than others, but all arrests are good. Of course in the tax-paying world and even the crime-fighting world, all arrests are not necessarily good.

    Kelly says the NYPD must be doing something right, because crime is still low. He’s right about that…. But that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with $75 million worth of marijuana arrests. One can make a stronger argument that marijuana arrests increased becausecrime went down. It became harder and harder to keep up those numbers for Compstat and meet certain “productivity goals.”

  • RIP Officers Breitkopf and Schaberger

    Nassau County Officer Geoffrey Breitkopf was killed in case of mistaken identity.

    In Brooklyn, NYPD Officer Alain Schaberger was killed trying to arrest a violent man, who pushed him over a stoop railing. “Mr. Villanueva had been arrested at least three times on charges of domestic violence against the same woman he was accused of threatening Sunday.”

  • NYC Settles in Public Housing Trespassing Cases

    From the Times:

    New York City has quietly reached settlements with several plaintiffs in a federal class-action lawsuit alleging that the city’s trespassing-enforcement policies in public housing complexes are discriminatory and unlawful, lawyers and others said this week.
    …
    The city made its offers in October and December and is in the process of paying a total of slightly more than $170,000, with individual payments ranging from $5,000 to $75,000, said a spokesman for the comptroller’s office.
    …
    None of the payments are an admission of wrongdoing.

    The NYPD needs to continue to police public housing without actually arresting people for trespassing in the building in which they live. This isn’t too much to ask. I like to think the NYPD will rise just fine to this challenge.

  • Officers in Alvarez Shooting Not Indicted

    Well I guess since nobody was indicted, we can all shake and go home.

    But seriously… it would have been horrible if the officers were indicted for doing their job. Though the fact that Alvarez also gets to walk bothers me less since he already survived his “trial by ordeal.” I mean the guy was shot 23(!) times, “27 holes,” and four bullets in his body. Let’s just count that as time served.

    From the story in the Times:

    Mr. Alvarez had gotten into a fight with another man, Luis Soto, who Mr. Alvarez said had shot at him.

    The police had accused Mr. Alvarez of shooting at them as they converged on the fight. In a frantic span of about 10 seconds, with about 500 people swarming the block, four officers fired, and Mr. Alvarez received 23 gunshot wounds.

  • 600,000 (official) stops in NYC

    Here’s the story in the Timesand in the Daily News.

    The difficulty is that any benefits and harms of aggressive stop and frisks are not only found in aggregate numbers but also in the individual incidents. Some of these stops are good. Some aren’t. So how do we tell the difference? How do we keep the good and get rid of the bad?

    In theory, I’m not against police stopping people based on reasonable suspicion. What’s the alternative? Waiting for someone to call 911?

    In practice, I worry about young and inexperienced officers stopping people to meet quotas.

    In theory, I think stop and frisks can play an essential role in crime prevention and getting guns off the streets.

    In practice, I worry about the extension of the Terry Frisk to an exploratory search.

    And in theory the police can defend the racial disparity of those being stopped…

    But in practice the NYPD needs to do a better job doing so. There are legitimate, serious, and moral issues involved. Simply pointing to crime stats isn’t enough.

    On one hand, it might be hard to defend this tactic if crime goes up. On the other hand, it’s worth contrasting the situation in New York with the situation in Seattle. We need better policing–not less policing.

  • Photos With (Operation) Impact

    Photos With (Operation) Impact

    Under “portfolio,” check out NYPD Operation Impact (1 & 2), from former police officer and photographer Antonio Bolfo.

    In an interview he says:

    I really liked the story of Operation IMPACT in general: how new, inexperienced cops get sent to the most dangerous places, places where a cop really should know what he is doing.
    . . .
    I was very worried that people [in France, seeing my photography] would view the story as propaganda because of my background in law enforcement. But fortunately that was not the case. People showed a lot of empathy to the officers, which was quite surprising to me because I am used to people hating the police, since New York is a very anti-cop city. Operation IMPACT is not a political statement but a human story of individuals who choose to be police officers in a very dangerous place. And I am pleased that message came across.


    The Haiti pics are pretty intense, too.

    (Thanks to a former student of mine)

  • Weed Menace Grows in New York City–NYPD Responds

    Your Attention Please: Marijuana has now been found in all five boroughs. Luckily, in response to this plague, the NYPD has cracked down and arrested more people than ever for the crime of possessing marijuana. In 2010, 50,383 were arrested (86 percent of these are black or Latino). Noble drug warriors estimate that a continued focus on locking up low-level drug users will eradicate the evil weed by 2014. Currently, thanks to massive police presence, a entire 6-block area in East New York has been declared “marijuana free.”

    The number of marijuana arrests last year was greater than the number of marijuana arrests during entire 19-year period from 1978 to 1996.

    Of course that makes sense, since marijuana didn’t hit The Bronx until 1995. And the first “bud” wasn’t confirmed on Staten Island until 2002.

    But seriously, I know marijuana is illegal. And I know that some low-level drug offenders are more serious criminals. If you’re arresting some violent drug dealer and all you can get him on is smoking a joint, fine. But most of these arrests are for nothing more than small-scale marijuana possession, a non-arrestable offense in New York State! Not only are many of these arrests wrong, they’re expensive, counter-productive, and only happen because officers face crazy pressure to produce numbers for Compstat.

    Meanwhile, back in NYPD recruiting, they’re scratching their heads trying to figure out why it’s so hard to find young New York-raised black and Latino men with a clean record. You reap what you sow.