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D.C. Riot Exposed Problems with Policing That Must Be Reckoned With


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Donald Trump is endorsed by the PBA (photo: Jim Waston/AFP/Getty)


The January 6 riot at the Capitol in Washington D.C. exposed deep liabilities within law enforcement. Cops and ex-military men and women actively participated in the insurrection. While some on-duty officers acted professionally, even courageously, others were clearly complicit with a violent, lawless assault on our nation's capital. Numerous politicians and pundits, including our new president Joe Biden, commented that if it were a Black Lives Matter protest, and not mainly a white mob, the law enforcement response would have been much harsher, if not brutal and deadly.

All this should not have been surprising given what's known: large urban police departments target Americans of color daily, showing their stark racial bias. A study released in August 2020 by the Brennan Center for Justice reported that "research organizations have uncovered hundreds of federal, state, and local officials participating in racist, nativist, and sexist social media activity.” Abusive cops are tolerated daily. The chickens came home to roost.

For example, in New York, the city that my organization, PROP, works in, we know these numbers regarding NYPD practices: 85-90% of all misdemeanor arrests are of New Yorkers of color; about 95% of juvenile arrests involve Black and Latino youngsters; about 90% of the people locked up on Rikers Island are New Yorkers of color, most of them there because an NYPD officer has arrested them and they are too poor to afford bail.

Last year the two largest police unions in New York—representing police officers (The Patrol Officers Benevolent Association) and State Troopers (The Police Benevolent Association of the New York State Troopers)—endorsed Donald Trump for president. They chose to get behind an autocratic politician whose words and actions have clearly provided comfort and support to white supremacist groups. What message, or warning, were these unions sending to the rest of the country by enthusiastically backing a politician who launched his presidential bid in 2015 with a speech featuring racist comments about Latino people and then ramped up from there.

In jurisdictions across the country, politicians in power and police brass regularly give a pass to officers who engage in misconduct. In Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, the officer who applied his knee to George Floyd's neck, thereby killing him, had at least 22 complaints or internal investigations involving him. He was sanctioned just once, the department sending him a letter of reprimand. Still, that department assigned Chauvin to partner with and train police rookies.  

In Kenosha County, Wisconsin, the district attorney declined to indict Rusten Sheskey, the officer who shot Jacob Blake seven times up close and in the back, not even on a relatively minor charge like reckless endangerment.

The Brennan Center reported that "officers' racist activities are often known within their departments, but only result in disciplinary action or termination if they trigger public scandals."

In New York City, officers who engage in conduct that is undeniably abusive or lawless are rarely if ever fired or even the recipients of slap-on-the-wrist sanctions. The New York Times published 62 videos of NYPD officers physically intimidating and violently assaulting New Yorkers who participated in the protests following the murder of George Floyd. The city's own Department of Investigation issued a report in December finding that the "NYPD...resorted to aggressive disorder control methods that stoked tensions and stifled free speech."

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, according to her office, "filed a lawsuit against the NYPD and its leadership to end its pattern of using excessive force and making false arrests against New Yorkers during peaceful protests." Yet, despite all the contrary evidence and reflecting the corruption of public discourse that leads to police officers thinking they are above the law, last summer both Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio provided very limited criticism of the NYPD and mostly condoned its handling of the demonstrations. De Blasio went so far as to make the Orwellian claim that city cops by-and-large acted "with restraint."

As if to underline the problems cited in the Brennan Center report and in the Attorney General's lawsuit and to emphatically demonstrate the disparity in how police handle a mob of white supremicists and marchers for racial justice, on the night of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the NYPD clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters at City Hall Park in Manhattan. Video clips show officers charging the demonstrators. A Daily News article quoted a participant: "They were really violent. Cops were shoving folks, pummeling people, tackling them."

Asked about the incident, Mayor de Blasio justified the officers’ actions by saying that after the Capitol riot in Washington, there is particular sensitivity about any protest near City Hall.

The DC riot threw a number of our nation's problems into stark relief, including how the racist culture and practices of our policing apparatuses undermine the ability to truly protect and serve all American people. Perhaps the revelation will turn out to be a positive outcome, leading our society and government to seek responses other than cops to address and resolve social problems, and for all localities to look much more closely at their police departments. A recent example of this new attitude took the form of relying on thousands of National Guard troops, rather than local or state police, to ensure public safety on Inauguration Day in America's capital.

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Robert Gangi is Director of the Police Reform Organizing Project. On Twitter @GangiFromPROP & @PROPNYC.

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It's Time to Stop Tolerating Wrongful Convictions and How They Undermine Our Legal System


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State Senator Myrie, a co-author, with other electeds and advocates


2020 was a year of tragedy and despair, hope and resilience. In 2021 we must take long overdue steps to address the myriad injustices laid bare by the pandemic, and others plainly evident well before COVID-19.

We must shore up our medical system and our schools. We must rebuild our social safety net. And we must once and for all, decidedly and without hesitation, address the long-standing harms perpetrated by the criminal legal system against communities of color. This is why, in 2021, we will be advocating for legislation that will finally start to address the pernicious issue of wrongful convictions in New York.

We are a Black State Senator representing parts of Brooklyn most deeply impacted by mass incarceration and a person wrongfully convicted of a shooting in Brooklyn during the 1990s. This summer we marched alongside thousands of New Yorkers to protest police brutality and the racial injustices that are ingrained in our criminal legal system. We were saddened, but not surprised, by the tragic and avoidable deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other Black Americans at the hands of police in recent years, and those going back decades. For us, and the community that we live in and serve every day, stories of injustice are all too common.

Our criminal legal system has been failing the Black community forever. Black Americans make up only 13% of the U.S. population, but almost 40% of the prison population. This stark racial disparity is a result of years and years of inequality and injustice. After slavery was abolished in 1865, the number of Black people arrested and incarcerated surged, leading to the country’s first prison boom. Since then, the incarceration of Black Americans has been used as a form of social, political, and economic control

We are both proud of the pre-trial reforms the New York State Legislature passed in 2019, thanks, in part, to years of advocacy by groups like VOCAL-NY. But bail, discovery, and speedy trial reform enhance legal protections for people accused of crimes going forward, and does not repair the harm committed against Black people and other communities of color by racist or biased policing and prosecutions prior to 2020. Justice demands that we not only look forward, but also bring to light past harms committed by the state against our communities.

In 2020, Senator Myrie (a co-author of this column) introduced in the Senate, along with Assemblymember Dan Quart in the Assembly, a bill to affirmatively address wrongful convictions in New York. The bill, drafted with input from directly-impacted people including Roger Clark (the other co-author here), will remove barriers to post-conviction review to ensure that people who were wrongfully convicted have a meaningful opportunity to clear their names. Under the current law, they do not; people who have been wrongly convicted can only bring their case back to court if their case fits into a very narrow category. Because of this, judges routinely deny hearing new evidence in a wrongful conviction case because of procedural and technical roadblocks. 

Since 1989, 2,619 people nationwide have been cleared of all charges against them after being wrongly convicted of a crime. In New York alone, 291 people have been exonerated, and significantly, over half of those people are Black. But those exonerations are only the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands more wrongly convicted men and women in New York who, because of the way the law is currently written and interpreted, have no legal avenue to bring their case back to court. We must fix that. 

Wrongly convicted men and women may have faced racial injustice or police brutality that was not caught on camera. They may have pled guilty to a crime they did not commit in order to avoid the lengthy prison sentences that arose during the ‘Tough on Crime’ era. Or they may have been denied their constitutional rights while being funneled through a racially-biased legal system. 

No matter what the circumstances were, people who have been wrongly convicted in New York deserve a chance to be heard. Their stories and evidence deserve to see the light of day. Denying people that opportunity discredits our entire criminal legal system.  

2021 provides a crucial opportunity for New York to address decades of systemic racism against the Black community. Passing the Wrongful Conviction Bill is a long overdue first step.

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Senator Zellnor Myrie represents the 20th State Senate District in Brooklyn. Roger Clark is a Community Leader and criminal legal system reform advocate at VOCAL-NY and the Founder of the Crimmigration Initiative. On Twitter @SenatorMyrie & @VOCALNewYork.

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Gowanus Rezoning Exemplifies Smart Housing Policy in New York; Let's Get It Passed


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Housing (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)


Reversing the many factors contributing to New York’s long-standing housing emergency will not be easy, but it is possible. In fact, the path toward a more equitable and affordable city is already emerging. 

In the proposed Gowanus rezoning, we can see the future right in front of us. The proposal is a model example of the sort of planning that, if replicated, will result in the city we aspire to create – one that overcomes rising housing costs and confronts our legacy of redlining and segregation.

To be clear, rezoning is just one piece of a complex puzzle of initiatives that must be implemented together to achieve our goal. These pieces are laid out in the new United for Housing report, which is the product of a coalition comprised of more than 80 experts with backgrounds in housing policy, community organizing, tenant advocacy, and more. 

Gowanus and the surrounding community board are predominantly white, and wealthy. Its proposed rezoning is particularly notable because communities of color have disproportionately been the sites of new affordable housing construction. This practice both reinforces existing residential patterns of segregation and keeps expensive neighborhoods like Gowanus out of reach for too many New Yorkers.

The proposed rezoning would start the process of tearing down those barriers. It would create roughly 3,000 new affordable homes in a neighborhood with a median household income of nearly $120,000. 

These units would rent below the neighborhood average, unlocking Gowanus for working-class New Yorkers with potentially transformative effects for future generations. For example, research shows that children who move from a low- to high-opportunity neighborhood have a better chance to “reduce the intergenerational persistence of poverty.”

It will also improve the lives of countless families already living in the area if it is accompanied by a capital commitment to make improvements in adjacent New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) public housing properties, overdue for much-needed repairs. This, too, is a blueprint for change. For too long, NYCHA has been siloed from the general housing conversation, and must be brought in from the cold to be part of a broad-based solution.

Finally, the rezoning would help create an environmentally-friendly Gowanus that will complement the canal clean-up that is underway, develop sustainable buildings with green roofs, remediate brownfields, and create a publicly-accessible esplanade. In other words, the rezoning provides a boost to the entire community.

This holistic approach does not come easily. It is the product of years of work by community activists, local elected leaders like Council Members Brad Lander and Steve Levin, and the city government itself to create an inclusive rezoning responsive to the needs of the community itself.

The importance and potential of the Gowanus rezoning to serve as a catalyst for change should not be lost on any New Yorker. While there are still the usual not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) objections to new development, in this case encased in unsubstantiated environmental concerns, the final proposal is proof that smart, coordinated, development is not just a pipe dream. It is more than possible: it is already happening.

If enacted, the Gowanus rezoning will improve social mobility and benefit new and long-time neighborhood residents alike, especially once investments in local NYCHA developments are included. And, in the process, it can serve as a template for the next decade of housing policy in New York.

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Rachel Fee is the Executive Director of the New York Housing Conference and an author of the United for Housing: From the Ground Up report. On Twitter @RachelFeeNYHC & @theNYHC.

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