From a larger series by Jen Carlson at the Gothamist.
Here’s how it looks today:
Though I’m not certain if The Two-Five is still at the same location. Anybody know if they’ve moved? It would be a shame if they tore down those two solid old buildings.
[thanks to Alan I.]
Sort of. And only in response to a lawsuit.
Here’s the Times story.
Why not just give out the raw data so academics like me can actually use it? It might actually help the NYPD and the city. Just sayin’…
Ray Rivera in the Times:
Five New York City police officers who wounded two bystanders in a shootout with a suspect in Harlem in 2005 cannot be held negligent, the state’s highest court ruled on Tuesday, ending a five-year legal battle before it went to trial.
In a 4-to-3 decision, the State Court of Appeals found that the five officers were within department guidelines when they returned fire on a robbery suspect who had opened fire on several officers. The suspect was killed, but police bullets also struck a 78-year-old man and a 39-year-old woman who was playing with her 18-month-old daughter.
I’m not certain where I stand on the legal issues, but I do want to point out the vote was only 4 to 3. And I hate to think of a world where police are legally prohibited from shooting back!
The Wall Street Journal reports:
New York City police fired fewer bullets at suspects last year than any time since the department first began keeping in-depth shooting statistics 39 years ago
…
In 2008, the department was also involved in 105 shooting incidents, with the 125 officers firing a total of 364 bullets. No city police officer last year was shot by a suspect for the first time since the police department started keeping detailed shooting statistics in 1971
I was just talking about this in class last week.
In 1972, the NYPD was involved in 211 shootings. In 2006 (the last I have data for), the number was 31. That’s a big drop. And it’s been a pretty consistent drop with the notable exception of the late 1980s during the rise in crack. It’s something the NYPD should get more credit for. And it’s often overlooked when there is a high-profile controversial shooting.
To put these numbers in some (somewhat random) context, in 2006: 35,000 NYPD had killed 13. 2,100 Las Vegas PD had killed 12. 6,600 Philadelphia PD had killed 19.
In Baltimore, about 3,000 Baltimore City Police Officers shot 31 in 2007, 21 in 2006 and 11 in 2004.
Higher levels of violence in places like Baltimore explain some of this difference, but not all of it.
[Update: Here’s Al Baker’s take in the Times.]
I would love it if we could distinguish between quotas and what happened to Adrian Schoolcraft. Just because the NYPD has (as Schoolcraft says) quotas (or at least something that line officers feel are quotas) does not grant legitimacy to Schoolcraft’s media-hungry self-serving whining about how he was treated by the NYPD.
There is a quota issue in the NYPD. High-ranking officers say there aren’t quotas, just “productivity goals.” Patrol officers say compstat creates stat pressure and they have quotas to meet. Regardless of the semantics, quota pressure makes officers write stupid tickets. And this is bad for policing and bad for New York City. For instance, a student just showed me a $50 ticket he got for… taking a nap on the subway. Technically it was for taking up two seats of a not crowded train at 10pm. That’s not right. But the officer had to write tickets. And my student was a sitting (or sleeping) duck.
So can anybody tell me the legal difference between a quota and a productivity goal? The state lawsays,
quota shall mean a specific number of (A) tickets or summonses … or (B) arrests or C) stops of individual suspected of criminal activity within a specified period of time.
But then the law goes on to say:
Nothing provided in this section shall prohibit an employer … from taking … job action against … a police officer for failure to satisfactorily perform his job assignment of issuing tickets or summonses for traffic … except that the employment productivity of such police officer shall not be measured by such officer’s failure to satisfactorily comply with the requirement of any quota.
Huh? So you can judge an officers on how many tickets they write as long as you don’t require them to write any? I don’t get it. What’s the law say?
(Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.)
Frank Zimring has always been one of the better criminologists out there.
This nine minute video from the Vera Institute of Justice hows some of the reasons why.
“No one can get a straight answer on how many cops are patrolling the streets,” Vallone said.
In other cases, he added: “They just don’t want to provide the statistics. I don’t understand why, because when they do, it always shows the N.Y.P.D. is doing what they are supposed to do.”
Just FYI, I don’t like Vallone. He’s my councilman and I didn’t vote for him. But he’s got a good point.
The article by Ray Rivera and Al Baker in the Times is “Data Elusive on Low-Level Crime in New York City.”
Cop Blocks Bike Lane To Ticket Cyclists For Not Using Lane. I’d like to think there’s more to this story.
Here’s a non-story: NYPD Commissioner Kelly didn’t disclose that the Police Foundation paid his dues at the Harvard Club. My God, who cares? Good God, Lenny, I know you hate Kelly with a passion bordering on obsessive (and that’s putting it mildly), but is this the best you got on the guy? If so, you should have skipped it and talked more about Jennifer Hunt’s great book.
I wish the Police Foundation would pay mydues at the Harvard Club. I wouldn’t mind being a member. And I did go to Harvard. I’m just too cheap to join.
Well, should Kelly have disclosed it? I guess if them’s the rules, he should have. But they shouldn’t be the rules. The rules are too strict. Nothing wrong with a free cup of coffee. And nothing wrong with the commissioner taking people out on the Police Foundation’s dime. Assuming the police commission isn’t a crook (what do Bernard Kerik and Ed Norris have in common?) can’t we let him do his job? And no, I don’t want to know who he was with.
The stupid mobile gets more press, this time in the Times, which has a few more details. The NYPD has ordered 30 and they cost 8,900 though that’s retail and I’m sure the NYPD pays much much less, if anything.
For patrolling a big event or traversing big distances, T3 scooters seem like ideal tools, an energy-efficient mix of speed and agility. For navigating a semicrowded subway station, they can seem a little ridiculous.
Most people who need to get from the Seventh Avenue side of the 42nd Street station over to the shuttle platform just hop down the quarter-flight of stairs. Some take it in a single step.
But two officers on scooters last week had to detour to the wheelchair ramp, then daintily zigzag their way down like a fashion victim in too-high heels. Then, as they threaded their way through the commuters, going barely faster than they would on foot (but wearing tough plastic helmets just in case).