![]() Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly |
When an operative for al-Qaeda named Lyman Farris came to New York, his plan was to take down the Brooklyn Bridge and derail some railway cars. But he looked at the heightened security in the vicinity of the bridge, and changed his mind; the “weather was too hot” to complete the operation.
This one incident was prevented, then, thanks to the counterterrorism policing work of the New York Police Department. Our successes in this area are usually a lot more difficult to measure.
We are now, of course, in a new era. When I came back as police commissioner in New York, having served ten years ago under Mayor David Dinkins, the biggest change for the police in New York was obvious -- the threat of terrorism. It has had an impact on virtually every decision the department has made.
But counterterrorism is just one of the "three C's" that the police department under the Bloomberg administration continues to focus on. We are also moving forward on crime reduction and community relations.
Since 9/11, the police department has taken serious steps to defend our city against terrorism.
We have put into place a counterterrorism bureau, really the first of its kind in the country, which now has 250 officers, and we have reformed our intelligence division.
We have identified people with language skills in the department and certified them. We now have certified 45 Arabic speakers -- more, we believe, than any federal agency that we’re aware of. We have even made them available to federal agencies. In addition, we have Urdu, Pashto, and Hindi speakers.
We have assigned detectives overseas – to Lyon, London, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Montreal, and Singapore. In March, we had someone in Madrid the day of the bombing on that city’s subway. Our world has gotten smaller, and we need information of any sort that’s going to help us better protect this city.
With the advent of the Iraqi war we’ve put in place something called Operation Atlas, which is an overlay security program for sensitive locations throughout the city. We have kept that program in place. Today, we have critical response vehicles that come into Manhattan every day from other locations in the city.
Average New Yorkers are also being more vigilant, and we ask people to continue to look at things through the prism of 9/11. Depending on what is in the news, our counterterrorism hotline averages from 30 to 60 calls a day. There are some very thoughtful calls, many about people taking pictures of infrastructure. We also get many bomb scares and powder droppers.
We log those calls in – we have a database where we log those calls. If that location shows up again, then we’re able to match it with previous calls.
There’s just a lot going on, and it’s an expensive undertaking. We believe it cost us close to $200 million for our counterterrorism programs in the city last year. We’re not getting enough money. In addition, a lot of this money is skewed towards equipment, and not structured for operational costs. We need money for operation expenses on an ongoing, day-to-day basis, not just for equipment.
I believe that in certain areas, our counterterrorism tactics are benefiting our crime prevention efforts. On the subway, for instance, crime is the lowest it has been since it has been accurately recorded in the 1960s, which may be in part due to our aggressive counterterrorism efforts.
In other areas, we are looking to combine some of the things we’ve done in counterterrorism with our crime prevention programs, by doing things like incorporating our Hercules program into Operation Impact.
In Operation Impact, we took off across the city and identified locations, primarily based on shootings, that in our view would benefit from an infusion of uniformed police officers alongside officers from narcotics and from the warrant squad. We picked 21 such locations, and put two thirds of our police academy graduating classes from 2003 in these areas. As a result of that infusion of visible police officers crime went down 35 percent in those impact zones in 2003, with shootings down 50 percent. We are seeing the same numbers now in the Impact Zones for 2004.
Now this may not sound revolutionary, but at a time when we have 5,000 fewer officers than we had in October of 2000, this is the type of technique that enables us to continue to reduce crime. Crime rates are now down over three and a half percent this year, after dropping six percent last year, and five percent the year before.
To continue this trend, we’re establishing a crime information center, which will hopefully be functioning by the middle of this summer. We have already established a room at police headquarters; there will be screens that graphically depict crime and we ultimately intend to get that information on PDA’s, hand held devices. The intention is to gather information on a real time basis, digitally analyze it, and push it back out to the field as quickly as possible.
We will use this as an adjunct to Compstat, which is a valuable auditing tool that looks retrospectively at what commands have done to address crime. The police foundation has been very helpful in assisting to put this capacity in place, and obviously the mayor is very interested and involved as well. So that’s the next wave of crime fighting: information.
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All members of the department are aware of the need to communicate with the public. Throughout their careers, we have them in service training. I think our community relations are better now than they’ve ever been.
But every day is a new day in New York, and when we make a mistake in this business, it costs people’s lives.
In the recent shooting of Timothy Stansbury in a Brooklyn housing project, the police department made a mistake, and we said so. It is the policy of this administration, if you make a mistake, to get the facts out as quickly as possible. That’s what we did in the Stansbury case, just as we did with terrible tragedy of Alberta Spruill, who died of a heart attack after several officers mistakenly raided her apartment. I think it cooled the environment.
If you have the facts and they’re obvious, you should get them out, but that is unusual. The Stansbury shooting in Brooklyn was a very simple case: there were two officers together, and one officer observed what happened. There were witnesses in terms of the tangential events that were going on that indicated right away that this was a mistake, so it wasn’t complex. Other shootings are more complicated; it all depends on the circumstance.
It is the nature of police work that we’re going to have tension with some communities because of what we do. We are sometimes the bearer of bad news. We give out traffic summonses, we arrest people, we use force, sometimes deadly force; it’s the nature of police business. People are not always going to love you in some places.
We’re not firefighters – everybody loves a firefighter.
So we have to work on community relations, and I think precinct commanders as a group do a tremendous job in fostering and understanding communications in the communities. We have 76 precincts, and the commanders of these precincts spend a large percentage of their time focused on fostering communication in their communities.
They know they have to do that.
Other than terrorism, the biggest change since I left the department is the size of the organization. There has been a merger of the housing police force, the transit police force, all the school safety agents, and traffic enforcement agents. So the department increased significantly in size.
We now have about 51,000 employees.
Though the department has grown, the loss of officers to attrition is an ongoing issue in the police department. We have 5,000 fewer officers below our level in the fall of 2000, because of the budget situation that we find ourselves in. At this time, we have about 36,000 officers; we’re authorized to employ 37,000 officers. We’ll hire up to reach that number in July of that year.
Much of the current loss has its roots as far back as the 1970s. In 1975 there were layoffs in the department because of the serious fiscal crises. The department didn’t start hiring in a significant way until the 1980s. Those people are reaching their twentieth year anniversary, when they can retire at half pay. When police officers hit their twentieth anniversary, about 80 percent retire. Sergeants retire at about a 65 percent rate. So we know that we have to do a big job in recruiting additional people to the department.
Under Mayor Bloomberg, we’ve hired four large classes to address our attrition losses. We’re doing well with our recruiting, and our diversity is improving. The department is about 15 percent African American, about 20 percent Hispanic, and about 3 percent Asian. 16 percent of the department is female. We’re the city agency, I think, that best reflects the population of the city.
Attrition remains an ongoing issue. From recruiting to vetting to training new officers, it is a challenge. I think we’re doing that well. But those three C’s are what this administration is all about.
Raymond Kelly is the police commissioner of New York. This essay was adapted from comments he made at Baruch College.
Later this month, members of the New York City Fire Department and the New York City Police Department will face off for the 32nd time on the football field. The game, which garnered national attention in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks that killed eight active players and staff from the fire department’s team, symbolizes the friendly rivalry between these two vital city agencies. But recent conflicts and events highlight how easily a rivalry can escalate into a feud, and only add to the worries of New Yorkers concerned about how effectively the city’s emergency workers will respond should another large-scale terrorist attack occur.
Both agencies have had more questions then answers this year. Loutish behavior among firefighters grabbed headlines, with a New Year’s Eve firehouse brawl in a Staten Island firehouse leading to the suspension of five firefighters. Several reports of firefighters drinking or even using drugs while on duty led the department to implement a new, random drug testing policy.
Meanwhile, the police department was forced to handle the shooting death of 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury Jr., which occurred on the rooftop of the Louis Armstrong Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and led many to scrutinize the way the police handle the vertical patrols done routinely in public housing developments.
Among those worried that police might be too eager to use their weapons is the fire department, at least according to an internal fire department safety memo sent to all firehouses last month and reported by the New York Post. In an incident similar to the Stansbury shooting, two firefighters opened the door leading to the roof of a public housing development, only to be confronted by two officers pointing guns at them.
Unlike the Stansbury shooting, the officers quickly holstered their weapons. The memo also mentioned that police department’s Operation Impact, which deploys officers to flood high-crime areas, including some public housing developments, frequently used rookie and inexperienced officers. Whether or not the memo was meant as oblique criticism of police procedures, the fact that it became public will certainly do nothing to improve the already-rock relationship between the two agencies.
The most recent and serious disagreement between the two agencies is actually a longstanding one: who should be in control during a major emergency, such as a terrorist attack?
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, this dispute has at least some of its roots in the first World Trace Center attack in 1993. Then, police swooped down in helicopters to the top of one of the towers, despite not having authorization from the fire department, which was in charge of coordinating the rescue effort because of the bombing.
Though the door to the roof was locked, police managed to rescue 28 people. In the long run, however, the rescue angered the fire department, which considered the helicopter mission “a cheap publicity stunt”,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
At that time, confrontations between police and firefighters responding to accident scenes were fairly common, causing bad blood between the departments. In recent months, however, as the city tries to formalize its plans for how to coordinate its emergency response resources, the police department has been aggressive in trying to be the lead agency for nearly all emergencies.
The thinking is that, because the next terrorist attack could occur in an unexpected way, even seemingly routine emergencies such as a water main break should be handled by police. The fire department reportedly wants to be the lead agency not just at fires, but also at explosions and emergencies involving hazardous materials, damaged buildings and certain plane crashes.
"Police want to be in charge of everything. We're supposed to play nice in the sandbox. That seldom works because there's egos involved," Deputy Chief Nick Visconti, who represents chiefs for the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, told the Associated Press.
The Citywide Incident Management System, as such an overarching plan outlining responsibility for specific emergencies is called, remains a work-in-progress. Federal guidelines were approved in March, and the city remains at work trying to put together a plan that keeps all agencies happy and residents safe.
In a recent court ruling related to a St. Patrick’s Day street fight between members of New York’s Bravest and New York’s Finest, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet described the altercation as being between members of “two competing cults.” The two agencies will have to iron out their differences — at least enough to agree on a disaster plan — to fulfill their duties to make the city as safe as possible.
Earlier this year, 18-year-old Huang Chen was beaten and stabbed to death while making deliveries for his family’s Chinese restaurant in South Jamaica, Queens. The two teenagers who are accused of killing him, then stuffing his body into a box and dumping it in a pond, did so because, according to police, having robbed him of $49, they did not want to be identified.
The gruesome and seemingly capricious nature of Chen’s murder was only the latest in what seems to be a pattern of violent attacks on Chinese deliverymen working in the city. At least five Chinese deliverymen have been killed on the job in the past five years.
Officer Michael Lau of the New York Police Department's community affairs office, however, downplays the racial element in these crimes, pointing out that all deliverymen who work in high-crime areas are susceptible to violence regardless of race. "It’s not just crimes against Chinese delivery people," said Lau, "there are crimes against delivery people in general."
The police department, however, has begun conducting an ongoing series of outreach programs specifically designed for Chinese deliverymen, the latest of which took place in lower Manhattan at the end of March. During the program, which was attended by over 200 restaurant owners and workers, police gave a presentation in Mandarin and English on safety measures that deliverymen could take to protect themselves. In addition, flyers with safety tips were also distributed to command centers in each precinct, and from there to many Chinese restaurants.
Some advocates, however, wonder about the police department's ability to deal empathetically with deliverymen, many of whom are recent immigrants to the United States and who may be undocumented.
"In this day and age, the fact that you may be undocumented presents a problem," said Sin Yen Ling, a lawyer with the Asian American Legal Defense Fund. She added that, undocumented or not, "many immigrants are fearful of the police. Many of them come from a homeland where police aren’t trustworthy."
Officer Lau said that the police have taken steps to address these concerns. An executive order prohibits officers from asking victims or witnesses about their immigration status, a protection that is supposed to continue throughout the entire investigation and prosecution of a criminal case.
In addition, the police department’s community affairs office has also developed a new immigrant outreach program that specifically addresses the fears of immigrants who have a distrust of government officials.
Joyce Stephens of the deputy commissioner’s office said that these outreach efforts have led to a flood of tips being phoned in by members of the immigrant community, albeit anonymously.
"The contact that we’re having is worthwhile in building trust," Stephens said, "Even anonymous tips didn’t happen before."
The police department encourages deliverymen to report robberies or assaults as quickly as possible so specific police action can be taken. In the past, the department has used undercover officers to apprehend suspects in areas that have a pattern of assault against deliverymen. Officers have also trailed deliverymen on their routes to see if anybody is waiting to rob or assault them.
Stevens, however, emphasizes the "common-sense" measures the deliverymen could take to protect themselves while on the job.
"Maybe you want to set up some boundaries, like after a certain hour you won’t go into buildings," Stevens said, "You have to feel safe and use instinct, and if you don’t feel safe about going into locations, then don’t go in."
Khairul Effendy, a deliveryman for a Malaysian restaurant in lower Manhattan, said that in his seven years on the job, he has had his bicycle stolen five times, but he has managed to avoid being personally assaulted.
"We’re open until 11:30 PM," Effendy said, "but I’ll only delivery until 11. The area around the
restaurant is okay, but I’m not so sure of the areas to the east and west.
Many deliverymen who work in high crime areas are recently arrived immigrants whose lack of language or job skills prevent them from taking a job in safer areas. In addition, their low profit margins may prompt them to take risks in the hopes of making a few extra dollars.
"Many deliverymen are just scraping by to make a living," said New York City Councilmember John Liu.
Deliverymen in Far Rockaway, Queens reportedly make an average of 60 runs per eight hour shift. Deliverymen often work longer shifts, however, and the frequency of their deliveries make them an easy target for robberies. In addition, deliverymen often venture alone into apartment buildings because they are more likely to get tipped if they deliver food to individual apartments instead of waiting in a lobby.
"The trouble is that there are no quick fixes," said Hyun Lee of the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, "There are a number of things that need to be addressed, such as the lack of job opportunities for immigrants, as well as working conditions so these immigrants don’t always have to work around the clock."
In response to Chen’s murder, members of New York city council, including Liu, Hiram Monserrate and Charles Barron called for a one-day moratorium on restaurant deliveries, suggesting that customers pick up orders themselves. The event was supposed to honor Chen’s memory, and increase awareness among many New Yorkers who take for granted the risks involved in delivering a meal.
"We need to send a message," Liu said, "that it’s not going to be open season on deliverymen or immigrants."