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Tag: NYPD

  • Trial of Officer London

    I don’t really have a problem with the first two minutes. The suspect, Walter Harvin, was aggressive and uncooperative. Harvin pushes Officer London at 0:26 and has to go. I turns into a messy arrest, but that’s sometimes how it is.

    As much as I don’t like tasers… tasing this guy sure would have saved both officer and suspect a lot of trouble. Neither mace nor baton worked (though I can’t see the mace).

    Yet again, this shows the problem with expandable batons. They don’t really work. They cause pain but they don’t have stopping power. And they sure look bad when in use, wacking people again and again. The unpopular straight baton, which is much more like a small baseball bat, is a much better tool. It’s cheaper, too.

    But after minute three? After the cuffs are on? You can’t give a guy an ass whuppin’ because he’s yelling, “I’m going to kill you” and you think he deserves it. You can’t beat a guy till he shuts up.

    We’ll see what the jury says.

    [And the hits at minute 8, necessary at the time, should never have needed to happen because Harvin should not have been able to get up and charge the officer.]

    Here’s the story in the Timesand the Post.

  • Schoolcraft Tapes

    The more of these tapes I hear, the more I think how good these secretly recorded NYPD officers sound. And this is the best [read: worst] they could come up with? To me it shows what a good job most men and women in the NYPD do.

    In the latest batch, particular kudos to Lt Rafael Mascol, who offers some pretty good suggestions as to how Officer Schoolcraft could get higher job evaluation rankings. He offers him other tours. And he says, “Go out there answer some more radio runs. Do some more summonses. Write more reports. Do more proactive work. If you’re have trouble seeing activity, we can put you with a more active officer who can see the activity and maybe point it out to you.”

    It’s that last part I really love. And he’s not saying this sarcastically. He’s trying to help.

    Even if Schoolcraft’s basic point may be correct (that crime is being downgraded), and despite an order to talk with his sergeant, he did leave an hour early saying he didn’t feel well. You can’t just walk away from work as a police office. It’s called going AWOL. If he did something violent or had a heart attack, the NYPD would have been held responsible.

    Even Chief Marino sounds reasonable. Schoolcraft certainly sounds sane, but it’s understandable that he has to go to the hospital to get checked out. He was complaining of chest pains, for crying out loud!

    He didn’t have to get EDP’d (or EP’d, as we say in Baltimore, or, in normal lingo, declared crazy and getting taken to the hospital). It sounds like he could have gone on his own free will as a medical patient. Instead, he said was going to lie there until he felt better. So he went as a mental patient.

    The idea of throwing a guy in a mental ward because he’s got evidence against the brass sounds great, but it’s not what you hear on the tapes. Did he need to be kept locked up for days? I don’t know. But that’s on those doctors and not the NYPD.

    Of all these “secret recording,” I couldn’t find one of them that says anything that isn’t common knowledge or makes the speaker look bad. Most of them make the speaker look good!

    Here’s Part 1, 2, 3, 4 in the Village Voice. And Lenny Levitt’s most recent take. And my first post on the subject.

    (Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.)

  • Cops Cuff Cop at Mets Game

    Cops arrest an off-duty cop for being drunk and obnoxious at the ballpark.

    This doesn’t surprise me. But I mention it for those who talk too much of the Blue Wall of Silence and some secret code of brotherhood and that cops never arrest another cop unless they have to and somebody is hurt.

    Now I’m sure (and would hope) that the drunk cop in this case was given a chance to behave maturely. And perhaps one extra chance that a non-cop wouldn’t get. Thatis professional courtesy.

    But then they slapped the cuffs on and arrested the schmuck. And they didn’t let him go and all laugh and have a drink together as soon as they were out of public view.

  • Barry Gibbs speaks

    Barry Gibbs was framed by the Mob Cops and spend more than 18 years behind bars. He was innocent.

    This is the ten minute talk he gave at The Moth in 2006. After hearing him, I invited him to come to my classes and speak at John Jay College. He did.

    He recently got a lot of money for what happened. I wish him the best. But I still wouldn’t change places with him. It really isn’t about the money.

    Eighteen years.

    Innocent.

    I keep thinking there’s some moral to his story. That some good can come from it. But I don’t know.

    I do always show it to my classes. Maybe some good can come out of that.

  • Barry Gibbs gets millions

    Barry Gibbs gets millions

    When I saw the headline, “City to Pay $9.9 Million Over Man’s Imprisonment,” my first thought was, “I hope that’s not mycity.” But it is. That means a few bucks straight out of my pocket. I hate that! Especially for bad policing.

    But then I saw that the man getting the money is Barry Gibbs. I know Barry Gibbs. I like Barry Gibbs. Barry Gibbs has come and spoken to John Jay and to my classes… and for free (though I did slip him a $20 so the poor guy could at least take a taxi after talking to my classes).


    Gibbs was framed by the f*cking mop cops, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa. Gibbs was sentenced for a murder he didn’t commit. A murder he had nothing to do with. He was sentenced to 20 to life. Eventually the cops were arrested and it was clear that Barry was framed. By that time he had served 18 years.

    When the bastard cops were finally put on trial, Barry could be a bit of a showman: “Gibbs stood from his seat in the public spectator’s bench and shouted obscenities at Eppolito. As Gibbs was being ejected by Court Officers, Gibbs received the enthusiastic cheers of many of those in attendance.” He was pissed off. Wouldn’t you be? These cops had appeared in movies and made money off of books. All the while Barry sat in maximum security for nothing.

    I’m happy for Barry. I called Barry just a few minutes ago and congratulated him (and told him to be very wary of people calling him right now!).

    Now Barry isn’t getting all that money. Lawyers get a third. Taxes will take another third. But that still leaves a pretty penny.

    And I learned that Barry’s health has not been great. Prison f*cked him up. And even if it didn’t, I wouldn’t exchange 18 years of my life for any amount of money. He’s been shafted by cops and shafted by the criminal justice system. And nothing can make that better.

    But at least on this day, we’ve got something to celebrate. Here’s to you, Barry! Mazeltov!

    [update: you can hear Gibbs tell his story.]

  • School[craft] Readings

    The NYPD Tapes, Part 2, by Graham Rayman in the Village Voice. (And a link to my comments on Part 1)

    Commentary:

    “Oh, You Mean Those Quotas” by Radley Balko.

    “Those Schoolcraft Tapes” by Leonard Levitt.

    Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.

  • New York Black and Latinos Frisked 9 Times as Often as Whites

    Ninety percent of those stopped by the NYPD are black and latino. So says the New York Times. Is this a cause for concern? I don’t know. Something certainly bothers me when my male black and hispanic students complain of being stopped by the police often (and often rudely stopped).

    But there is one touchy and politically incorrect fact that seems remiss not to mention: nine-in-ten murderers in New York are black or hispanic (just seven percent are white) [here’s a previous post].

    Police go where the violent crime is. And if you work in a neighborhood were the robbers and murderers are black or hispanic, you stop black or hispanic people.

    Given the raw data, the racial disparity doesn’t seem to be the problem. But what do I know? I don’t get frisked. I’m white and live in a safe neighborhood.

    The questions we should be discussing is whether or not aggressive stop-and-frisks are an effective crime prevention strategy. I like the idea that criminals are leaving their guns at home rather than risk being stopped, frisked, and arrested by the NYPD. Is that a result of stop-and-frisks? I don’t know. Do the crime prevention benefits outweigh the negative community interactions with innocent people? 575,000 stops yielded 762 guns. That doesn’t seem like a great hit rate to me.

    If frisks are done because officers really have reasonable suspicion that a suspect is armed, go for it. But if officers are simply trying to meet “productivity goals” (read: quotas), something is very wrong.

  • The NYPD Tapes

    A reader pointed me to this story in New York’s Village Voice.

    In the 81st Precinct in New York City, a cop, Schoolcraft, secretly recorded roll call and other happenings over the course of the year.

    Bold.

    Though all he seems to show is something we all should already know. In the NYPD, everybody is under intense pressure to produce good “stats” (arrests and citations) and reduce bad stats (crime numbers). I suppose the good of the tapes is the department may finally have to stop trying to say with a straight face that officers are not under pressure to meet arrest and citation quotas. Compstat has done a lot of good. But the impact of a stat-driven culture on the incoming rank-and-file is not very productive.

    The article, which is a bit too long (though I look forward to reading the next installment!), makes some claims I strongly disagree with. For instance, responding officer at a scene certainly has a responsibility to judge the validity of a victim’s claim. Police patrol officers are not just report writers. And detectives who claim otherwise are doing a grave disservice to the majority of police officers.

    Overall, reading the story and listening to some of the recordings, I couldn’t help but think what good leaders these were. The men and women leading roll call look out for their troops, warn them of bureaucratic nightmares, and try an instill a strong work ethic.

    And some of the stories just make me nostalgic for my policing days. The sergeant who deadpans the danger of mine shafts in Bed-Stuy? What a progressive pedagogical approach (I’m trying to use fancy words here) to help officers not get in trouble for failing to carry… whistle holders. Yes, in the police word, where you put your life on the line almost every day, if they want to, they can bang you for sh*t like not carrying a whistle holder. (Just FYI, I had previously never heardof a whistle holder. In Baltimore, I managed to hold my whistle just fine without a dedicated whistle holder. The whistle, it turns out, makes an excellent key chain for the easy to lose but important to have handcuff key.)

    Nobody’s got your whistle holder, and half of you don’t have your whistle. That’s unacceptable. When I fall down the mine shaft, I’m the only one that’s going to be able to call for help. The rest of you are going to have to fire off your gun, and they’ll give you a [reprimand] for that.

    I love this guy!

    And is this really too much to ask?: “You want to draw penises, draw them in your own memo book.” Hard to argue with that request.

    But I think the only reason we didn’t “cock” memo books in the Eastern was because Baltimore cops don’t have memo books. (Is there a point to memo books except creating more paperwork?) Makes me think of my buddy who reads this blog (yeah, I’m talking about you). He would wait for any new LT to finish roll call with the very decent question, “Does anybody have anything?” To which he would answer with unbridled glee, “I have this horrible burning sensation when I pee!”

    Cracked me up every time.

    Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.

  • Arrest made in Times Square bomb

    A US citizen from Pakistan. The story in the New York Times.

  • Eyes on the Street Help Defuse Times Square Car Bomb

    Kudos to the NYPD and the bomb squad for doing their job well. That work is no joke.

    In her wonderful The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote, “It does not take many incidents of violence to make people fear the streets. And as they fear them, they use them less, which makes the streets still more unsafe.” Jacobs talked about “eyes on the street,” the idea that strangers are not the problem but an essential public-safety asset. In the city, it’s the deserted street that is dangerous. But in our overly fearful society, this idea is often forgotten.

    Of course Jacobs was talking about “normal” crime and not terrorism, but the lesson is the same:

    First, we must understand that the public peace—the sidewalk and street peace—of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary though they are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves.

    Think of it, in this modern hi-tech age of gadgets and gizmos, what we saw was a scene (minus the SUV) straight out of 1875: a street vendor telling an officer on a horse about a crudely made bomb. There is a lesson in this; there’s no substitute for eyes on the street and good old-fashioned policing.

    And yet…

    New York City, at least until yesterday, has been trying to push street vendors off the streets under the guise that vendors are a public safety hazard.

    Just the other day, the Daily News complained in an editorial that:

    Second-rate peddlers wrapping themselves in the First Amendment do not have unfettered license to set up shop in busy pedestrian thoroughfares…. These folks are freeloaders who assert the right to sell what they want, where they want, on the grounds that they’re expressing themselves.
    …
    In a few key park spots where New Yorkers and tourists tend to gather, a suffocating stream of vendors has descended like flies on a horse.

    In this case that fly helped stop an explosion and that horse had a police office riding on it. Of course the vendor couldhave been a tourist and the tourist couldhave tried to flag down a passing police car. But he wasn’t and he didn’t.

    Too many cities say that horses are too expensive when we need that law enforcement money to, you know, fight terrorism.

    And this vendor may be a military veteran (vendors always claimto be veterans because being a veteran grants them privileged vendor status). But what if he weren’t? What if he were illegal? Most street vendors here are illegal. I’d bet my house that the churrosvendor on the N/R/W subway platform at 59th and Lexington is three times illegal: vendor, food seller, andillegal immigrant. But by standing alertly on that platform, she sees more than any passenger (and the churrosain’t bad). But would she go to police if shesaw something? I hope so. But I wouldn’t place even money on that bet.

    “The police are the public and that the public are the police,” wrote Robert Peel back in 1829 when he invented the very concept of modern police, “The police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen.” The more we get away from that ideal, the more dangerous our world becomes.

    Police are not supposed to be government agents of fear and repression. In the fight against terrorism, local police can’t be jack-booted thugs. The more things we criminalize, the more groups we push underground, the more people fear interaction with the police… the more likely the next bomb will blow.