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Council's Police Reforms Could Alter NYPD Tactics, But Face Hurdles


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NEW YORK — A set of bills that could dramatically alter the New York City Police Department’s tactics, including how officers conduct street stops, will likely undergo significant revisions before it can be brought to the City Council for a vote.

The bills, known collectively as the Community Safety Act, are the subject of a public hearing today before the City Council’s public safety committee. The Council has also scheduled public hearings on the bills in Brooklyn and Queens for later this month.

The bills would enable residents who believe they’ve been unlawfully stopped to sue the NYPD; prohibit officers from considering race, age, sex and other factors when deciding to stop someone; create an office of inspector general to oversee the department; and require officers to obtain proof that subjects consented to being searched after they were stopped.

The bills’ critics argue the departmental changes could have a chilling effect on police officers,  because they would be less likely to stop people for fear of being sued.

In June, City Council members proposed the bills in response to the drumbeat of criticism from civil rights groups over policing methods, including an increase in the practice of stopping, questioning and frisking civilians and the monitoring of Muslims by the NYPD’s intelligence unit.

Police “stop-and-frisk” practices have come under increased scrutiny over the past year, as reports in the New York Times showed a 600 percent increase in stops between 2002 and 2011. Critics argue that data shows the police tactic disproportionately targets blacks and Latinos, who make up 90 percent of the stops.

While the practice is legal because of a 1968 Supreme Court decision that held police can stop citizens if they believe they are armed and about to commit a crime, very few of those stopped under the city’s policy are actually armed — roughly one in 1,000 stops yields recoveries of weapons. Critics also question the legality of other policing methods, such as the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims.  

Crime rates have been brought down to unprecedented low levels over the past decade under the Bloomberg administration’s police department, led by Commissioner Ray Kelly. Both Kelly and the mayor have cited the low crime rate as a reason for continuing the practice of stopping, questioning and frisking civilians, even as they have acknowledged it may need to be reformed.

In recent months, all of the presumed mayoral candidates to replace Michael Bloomberg in 2013, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, have called for reforms to the city’s stop-and-frisk practices.

But Quinn has not signed on as a sponsor of any of the CSA bills and is reserving her opinion until after today’s hearing.

“I’ll be going and participating in that hearing and will have more to say about this version [of the bills] and potential other versions in the future,” she said yesterday.

And the bills won’t budge from the public safety committee without the approval of committee chairman Peter Vallone, Jr., who is skeptical of the proposed laws.  

“It will change police work as we know it,” Vallone said of the suite of bills.

Over the last few weeks, Vallone has been openly critical of one bill in particular that would allow individual lawsuits against the NYPD. He cited potential costs to the city of more than $1 billion from a projected half-million lawsuits.

Bill sponsors say they will consider an amendment that would remove monetary damages from the remedies courts could award.

“I’m sure the mayor would take this bill to court, because he’s an adult and he understands what this bill would do to the city,” Vallone said, warning that the costs could bankrupt the city. “The city doesn’t have a billion dollars extra to pay,” he said.

Vallone said he thought many of the bill’s current sponsors had signed on without knowing the potential consequences. Vallone also noted the conspicuous absence of Quinn’s imprimatur on the bill. “She’s not on the bill and she has not come out in support of this,” Vallone said. “That’s going to be an important consideration.”

But police reform advocates expressed optimism that the speaker would support the bill package, and said the bill could become law even without the mayor’s stamp.

“I’m pretty confident that a supermajority of councilmembers support these bills,” said Udi Ofer, advocacy director at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

If the mayor vetoes the bills after the Council passes them, 34 members will be required to override his veto. Even the inspector general bill, which has the broadest level of support, has just 30 co-sponsors — less than the minimum necessary to thwart a mayoral veto.

Ofer said advocacy groups would be willing to consider supporting even an amended version of the current bill package, citing Council members’ concerns over possible lawsuits. The important thing was to reform the practice, he said.

“The mayor has also recognized that stop and frisk needs to be mended. Those were his words,” Ofer said. “And Commissioner [Ray] Kelly has complained that communities are not offering solutions,” he said, adding, “Well, here it is. The community safety act is promising solutions.”

The bill to create an inspector general for the NYPD has the most council support, with 30 cosponsors, but at a news conference held yesterday before the Columbus Day parade, Mayor Michael Bloomberg cautioned against it.

“I think if you want to bring crime back, let’s go politicize control of the police department,” Bloomberg said in response to reporters’ questions on the bill, which would create an office of inspector general to independently oversee the police department and submit reports on police practices to the mayor, police commissioner, City Council and public.

Currently, the NYPD oversight is handled by the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau and the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates complaints made against city police officers. Some critics claim the department’s current oversight has not been independent enough to stem incidences of police abuses.  

“If people aren’t happy with this Police Department and what Commissioner Kelly has created, and all the 55,000 people that work in the PD, I don’t know what would make you happy,” Bloomberg said, adding, “I think this Police Department is well-supervised, it’s well-led and the last thing we need is to have some politician or judge getting involved with setting policy, because you won’t be safe anymore. But today you are.”

The Council’s public safety committee hearing on the police reform bills is scheduled for 10 a.m. today, at 250 Broadway, 16th floor, in Manhattan. Hearings will be held before the civil rights committee in Brooklyn on Oct. 23 and in Queens on Oct. 24.

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Laura Nahmias is a freelance political reporter. She can be found here on Twitter.

Image of police officers by cons.maximus, used under Creative Commons license.

An earlier version misspelled Udi Ofer's name.

The Political Reality of Gun Control


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NEW YORK — The movie theater massacre by an assault rifle-toting suspect in Aurora, Colo. The slaughter of Sikhs at a temple in Milwaukee by a white supremacist with a handgun. An uptick in shootings in New York City, including the stray-bullet killing of a 4-year-old boy.

Elected officials have had plenty of reasons to tout the need for more gun control this summer. Political solutions, however, have been blocked.

Last week, Democratic state Sen. Mike Gianaris and a number of his fellow legislators introduced a package of 10 bills designed to combat gun violence. The centerpiece of that package would limit the purchase and sale of firearms to one individual to one per month. Another bill would institute a universal background check for gun sales — including private sales — along with a 10-day waiting period.

The bills would, Gianaris said, “set an example for the rest of the states in the country.” If passed, they would make New York number one in a list of states doing the most to prevent gun violence, according to The Brady Campaign, which supports the measures.

But Gianaris and his bills face a gigantic obstacle — the cold, hard cash of the influential gun lobby.

In recent years, groups like the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation have been pouring tens of thousands into state Senate Republicans’ campaigns in an attempt to stem the rising push for legislation that would make it more difficult to own guns in the state.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the battle over microstamping.

A technology that labels each bullet fired with markings unique to the gun that fired it, microstamping has been derided by critics who say the technology is untested and expensive. But it enjoys support from major law enforcement groups that say the technology would make it easier to trace shooters and solve gun crimes.

Democratic Assemblywoman Michelle Schimmel has introduced a bill to enact microstamping each year since 2008. But the bill only came to a vote once — in 2010. Yet the measure failed in spite of backing from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly. The two even met with the Senate Republican leadership and city-based senators to win over their support for the measure.

But, in the end, Democrats failed to muster the 32 votes they needed to pass the bill as three upstate Democrats voted against it.

Schimmel said the money pouring in from groups like the NRA has had an impact. “There’s been no significant gun laws enacted in over a decade in New York State,” she said.
 
Scott Rief, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, declined to comment on the Democrats’ proposed legislation. He said that his conference was open to working on some sort of legislation.

“We agree with the governor that more can be done to combat criminals who use illegal guns,” he said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said earlier this summer that he is only prepared to back a winner when it comes to addressing gun violence.

“We’ll discuss all the legislative proposals and see if we can come up with a consensus package,” Cuomo said during an August 7 press conference.

Republican senators face a dilemma: While they do receive campaign cash from the NRA, they also enjoy even more generous financial support from Bloomberg, who founded the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition and generally supports gun crime prevention initiatives.

But Republicans are loathe to address the issue of gun violence in the same way Democrats are. Part of their tight-rope walk is making sure any legislation they propose is presented in a way that the NRA and other gun lobbyists can tolerate.

Sen. Martin Golden, who represents Brooklyn, is the only Senate Republican to put forward a bill in recent memory that would in some way regulate guns. His measure would increasing the penalty for criminals who use “community guns,” which are weapons stowed away for gang members to share. Bloomberg has announced his support for Golden’s measure.

Golden’s opponent, Andrew Gounardes, has questioned Golden’s commitment to fighting gun violence.

"If Marty Golden were serious about gun control, he would have fought to pass several gun control bills over the past few years. Instead, he worked to turn his 2008 NRA rating of 'B' into an 'A' in 2010. Golden acted against the wishes of police unions everywhere when he walked out of the chamber during a microstamping bill in 2010,” Gounardes said in a statement.

Golden did not respond to a request for comment.

It is unclear how Golden’s bill will fare in comparison with measures backed by Democrats over the past few years.

For her part, Democratic state Sen. Liz Kreuger said the struggle to pass gun control bills indicates the need for campaign finance reform.

“A small minority is spending too much money in political campaigns across the country preventing the political will from moving forward to doing the right thing,” she said.

Gianaris said he thinks there is no reason for Republicans or the gun lobby to oppose his bills.

“There is nothing in any of these bills that would hinder a sportsman, a hunter, a collector from doing what they want with firearms, this is targeting specifically to illegal gun sales, illegal gun purchases … and that’s why we’ve had so much support, even from gun owners,” Gianaris said.

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Kamelia Kilawan contributed to this report.

Gun Violence as Public Health Threat


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Photo courtesy Save Our Streets, used with permission.


NEW YORK — Amid debate over the New York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" policy and following a rash of fatal shootings — including the recent death of a young child by a stray bullet — city lawmakers are giving money to programs that approach gun violence as a public health threat.

The City Council said yesterday it would fund programs in South Jamaica, the South Bronx and at Richmond University Medical Center that use the CeaseFire model that has been nationally recognized for reducing violence in Boston and in Chicago.

The city is already home to at least two programs modeled after CeaseFire — one in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, called Save Our Streets, and another, called SNUG, in Harlem and Brooklyn.

The new programs will be funded through the Council's anti-gun violence initiative, which received $4.8 million in June. Two additional CeaseFire programs in Harlem and East New York are expected to be funded by the city Department of Health.

The CeaseFire model approaches gun violence as a public health crisis, as epidemiologists might address obesity or any other disease.

The model calls for trained, street-smart individuals to intervene in group disputes to avoid violence. Outcomes are tracked extensively. The goal is to prevent violence.

Councilman Jumaane Williams, the co-chair of the anti-gun violence task force, says that a strategy of "focused deterrence" — getting police to target specific individuals or networks that have been determined to pose a threat — will help the initiative achieve that goal.

"It puts police resources into the members of the community who are known to have had run-ins with the law, instead of focusing on the entire community," Williams said.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn said in a statement yesterday that CeaseFire focuses "on both rapid response and early prevention."

"We believe this initiative will complement the work of the NYPD and help save lives," she said.

Focus on Prevention

The city's most debated tool for combating gun violence — stop-and-frisk — has been criticized for a heavy reliance on scattershot policing and for affecting predominantly black and Latino youth. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYPD have defended it.

The spike in shootings has complicated the narrative, throwing the stop-and-frisk debate into a new light, with some former critics announcing their newfound support for it.

"If the stop-and-frisk policy can make a difference, then we need to realize that it’s time to support stop-and-frisk," wrote Senator Ruben Diaz in a statement posted on his website on July 23rd, the day after 4-year-old Lloyd Morgan was killed in Morrisania. Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson shared the sentiment. “There is a 4-year-old dead. Now we should really consider not stopping stop-and-frisk,” Stevenson told the New York Post.

In recent days, police reported that stop-and-frisk encounters had declined by 34 percent in the past three months, compared to the first three months of the year.

As part of the public health approach, the Council-funded initiatives will attempt to treat entire communities stricken by violence, with a sort of "holistic cure." That means offering training and job-placement services, therapy, and conflict mediation classes for public school students.

"The cause isn't one thing, so the answer isn't going to be just one thing," Williams said.  

Robert Gangi of the Urban Justice Center, an outspoken critic of stop-and-frisk, is another advocate for focused deterrence.

"One of the factors that contributes to street crime is lack of services," Gangi said. "The failure of schools, the lack of jobs, those are the issues and the problems that should be directly addressed … Addressing those problems would be more effective in stopping crime than any policing activity."

Dr. Mark Rosenberg, editor of "Violence in America: A Public Health Approach," said the public health focus shifts the problem to prevention. It also demands rigorous evaluation.

"It's very easy to spend $5 million on a problem and not learn anything about it, to get inconclusive results," Dr. Rosenberg said. "If we don't evaluate, there's a risk we will implement policies based on bad data."

It is not yet clear whether the Council has or will set aside for evaluation a portion of the $4.8 million allocated to the anti-gun violence initiative.

The Model in Action

Save Our Streets, a Crown Heights community organization, is one New York City program that has already adopted the public health approach. It is a project of the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center and the Center for Court Innovation.

Founded in 2004 with a grant from the federal government to replicate the Chicago program, like that pioneering effort, S.O.S. organizes community responses each time a shooting takes place in the neighborhood, and employs "violence interrupters" who spend their overnight shifts trying to learn of conflicts early enough to prevent them from turning violent.

The organization also recruits local businesses and residents to join in the mission to "articulate that shooting is an unacceptable behavior," namely by posting the flyers — ubiquitous on Kingston and Brooklyn avenues — that keep track of how many days the neighborhood has gone without a shooting.

That community engagement helps boost the neighborhood morale, said S.O.S. Director Amy Ellenbogen.

"Until this approach there was a feeling of hopelessness, there wasn't really a job for people to do," she said. "With this model, people can get involved."

That involvement took a creative turn this June, when the organization's youth component, known as Youth Organizing to Save Our Streets, pitched in to contribute to the S.O.S. "Week of Peace."

The youth organizers, a group of teenagers aged 13 to 17 who live in Crown Heights, were gathered at a neighborhood corner when two of them began to argue.

The conflict quickly escalated, and soon a shouting group of teenagers had gathered around the pair and seemed ready to join in as soon as the situation called for backup.

It was a familiar sight for most onlookers, but this conflict was different, because it was staged.

Just as violence seemed imminent, the "fight" morphed into a coordinated dance routine to "Waving Flag" by K'naan. It was a flash mob, meant to convey a very specific message to the teens' peers and community.

"They feel an urgent need to prove that when young people gather it is not always for malice," said Ruby-Beth Buitekant, a case manager for YO S.O.S. "They used a current trend and brought it to their neighborhood to say, 'enough is enough. We are sick of the guns.' "

"After we finished dancing everybody came [to] us, they took our pictures, and some of them was crying," said Reean Charles, a youth member of YO S.O.S. "They were shocked."  

The S.O.S.'s sister organization in the South Bronx will receive $500,000 in Council funding to create a similar CeaseFire program, also run by the Center for Court Innovation.

The Council has also allocated $500,000 to the South Jamaica, Queens, program to be run by Life Camp, Inc.; and $100,000 for a hospital-based program out of Richmond University Medical Center.  

Ellenbogen said she's been lucky to work with elected officials who have been open to the organization's non-traditional approach.

"Every time I've sat down with a politician and they've heard me explain the model, they've been very interested," she said. "People are desperate for innovative approaches, and this one not only sounds right to a lot of people, but there's a growing body of evidence that indicates it's effective."

That evidence has caught the attention of experts outside of the criminal justice field as well.

In April, the Institute of Medicine held a two-day workshop where professionals in the health field met to consider the merits of treating violence as a disease. And, in Philadelphia, a consortium of hospitals collaborate on the Healing Hurt People, a violence intervention program, which counsels shooting victims to try to prevent retaliation.

"The fact that this is a public health issue is definitely accepted within the task force, and is becoming accepted more widely," Councilman Williams said. After all, he added, "what we've been doing is not working."



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