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.
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.
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.
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."
The NYPD is regularly held up as one of the most sophisticated and significant counterterrorism operations in the country. As evidence of the NYPD's excellence, the department, its allies and the media have repeatedly said the department has thwarted or helped thwart 14 terrorist plots against New York since Sept 11.
In a glowing profile of Commissioner Ray Kelly published in Newsweek last month, for example, journalist Christopher Dickey wrote of the commissioner's tenure since taking office in 2002: The record "is hard to argue with: at least 14 full-blown terrorist attacks have been prevented or failed on Kelly's watch."
The figure has been cited repeatedly in the media, by New York congressmen, and by Kelly himself. The NYPD itself has published the full list, saying terrorists have "attempted to kill New Yorkers in 14 different plots."
As Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in March: "We have the best police department in the world and I think they show that every single day and we have stopped 14 attacks since 9/11 fortunately without anybody dying."
Is it true?
In a word, no.
A review of the list shows a much more complicated reality 2014 that the 14 figure overstates both the number of serious, developed terrorist plots against New York and exaggerates the NYPD's role in stopping attacks.
The list includes two and perhaps three clear-cut terrorist plots, including a failed attempt to bomb Times Square by a Pakistani-American in 2010 that the NYPD did not stop.
Of the 11 other cases, there are three in which government informants played a significant or dominant role (by, for example, providing money and fakes bombs to future defendants); four cases whose credibility or seriousness has been questioned by law enforcement officials, including episodes in which skeptical federal officials declined to bring charges; and another four cases in which an idea for a plot was abandoned or not pursued beyond discussion.
In addition, the NYPD itself does not appear to have played a major role in breaking up most of the alleged plots on the list. In several cases, it played no role at all.
The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment on the list of 14 alleged plots and how it was assembled. A spokesman for Bloomberg declined to comment.
The following is a breakdown of the plots on the NYPD's list.
Substantially developed or executed plots:
The failed 2010 attempt by Faisal Shahzad to set off a crude car bomb in an SUV in Times Square. Shahzad was in contact with the Pakistani Taliban before and after the attempt, according to the government, and he pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his role in the attempt.
The plot was widely seen as a law enforcement failure, as Shahzad was able to plant the rigged car in Times Square without being on the radar of the NYPD and other agencies.
The thwarted 2009 plot by three former high school classmates from Queens to set off bombs in the subway system. One of the plotters, an Afghan immigrant named Najibullah Zazi, testified in court this year that he and the others had received training from "Al Qaeda leaders" in Pakistan. He also admitted bringing bomb-making materials into New York. All three men have pleaded guilty or been convicted of terrorism charges. According to the AP, the plot was uncovered not by the NYPD, but rather by an email intercepted by U.S. intelligence.
Transatlantic Plot In August 2006, British authorities arrested a group of men who were later charged with plotting to blow up planes bound for North America from London with liquid explosives. (This is the plot that led to restrictions on carrying liquids aboard planes.)
The plot is included on the NYPD's list of 14 because, according to British authorities, one of the men had a memory stick that had information on flights bound for several Canadian and American cities, including, in one case, New York. The plan was to blow up the planes over the ocean.
During the trial, there were questions about whether the men were going to act on the plan imminently. Three consecutive trials in the case ultimately resulted in eight convictions. The NYPD was not involved in thwarting the plot.
Cases with significant or dominant role by government informants:
The case of the Newburgh Four, in which four men from upstate New York planted what they thought were real bombs outside synagogues in the Bronx. The men were found guilty in the case in 2010 after the jury rejected an entrapment defense. The bombs were fakes supplied by the government.
An informant posing as a Pakistani terrorist recruited Walmart employee and Muslim convert James Cromitie over nearly a year, giving him gifts, including rent money and a trip to an Islamic conference. The informant plied Cromitie with offers of $250,000, a luxury car and a barbershop. An FBI agent on the case acknowledged under cross-examination during the trial that the government was essentially in control of what the four were doing while they were with the informant. The government maintained that Cromitie was an anti-Semite who talked about committing acts of violence and posed a real threat.
A judge who rejected an appeal last year nevertheless called the government's conduct in the case "decidedly troubling."
Herald Square Pakistani immigrant Shahawar Matin Siraj was arrested in 2004 and convicted in 2006 at the age of 23 of conspiracy to bomb the Herald Square subway station in Manhattan. The jury rejected an entrapment defense.
An informant for the NYPD's Intelligence Division played a key role in the case and was paid $100,000 by the government over a roughly three-year period. He told Siraj he was a member of a (made-up) group called "the Brotherhood" that would support a bomb plot. Siraj was recorded talking to the informant about blowing up bridges and other places in New York, including the Herald Square subway station. The informant later told Siraj that the Brotherhood had approved the plot and that a leader of the group was "very happy, very, very impressed" with the idea. The informant told Siraj the group wanted him to put backpack bombs in the station, and he drove Siraj and another man to the station to do surveillance.
At his sentencing, Siraj apologized to the judge but maintained he had been "manipulated" by the NYPD informant. Siraj did not obtain explosives, there was no timetable for the plot, and there was no link to any foreign terrorist group, according to the Times.
JFK Airport Russell Defreitas, a naturalized American citizen from Guyana and former airport cargo handler, and Abdul Kadir, of Guyana, were arrested in 2007 and convicted in 2010 of conspiring to blow up fuel tanks at JFK airport.
At the press conference announcing the charges, a federal prosecutor said the public was never at risk. A law enforcement official described Defreitas, 63 at the time of his arrest, to the New York Times as "a sad sack" and "not a Grade A terrorist." Pipeline experts told the paper that the men's plan to blow up a wide area was not feasible.
Defreitas was recorded making odd comments talking to the informant, saying he wanted the attack to be "ninja-style" and that the airport was a good target because "They love JFK -- he's like the man. If you hit that, the whole country will be in mourning."
An informant on the case was a convicted drug dealer paid by the government and worked in exchange for a lighter sentence in a pending drug case. He drove Defreitas to the airport several times to do surveillance with a camera that the informant had purchased for Defreitas. The informant also provided plane tickets to South America and, with the help of the FBI, secured a New York City Housing Authority apartment for Defreitas (that was under surveillance).
U.S. officials (often anonymous) question credibility or seriousness of cases:
The case of Jose Pimentel, a Manhattan Muslim convert who was arrested in November 2011 on "rarely used state-level terrorism charges" after federal authorities took a pass on the case.
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. alleged that Pimentel had been "building pipe bombs to be used against our citizens." City authorities said Pimentel had no contacts with foreign terrorist groups and called him a "lone wolf."
In a series of leaks, federal authorities expressed skepticism that Pimentel was a threat. A federal source told the New York Post that Pimentel was a "'stoner' who wasn't a real danger to anybody other than himself." Another source cited by the Post questioned his mental faculties, saying he had once tried to circumcise himself. A federal source told DNAInfo criminal justice editor Murray Weiss: "Let's just say there were issues whether [Pimentel] had the ability to do this without the intercession of the confidential informant." Weiss also noted that the informant went shopping with Pimentel at Home Depot to buy pipe bomb materials, and the bomb was constructed at the informant's apartment. Pimentel, who reportedly could not afford to even pay his cell phone bill, has pleaded not guilty.
The case of Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, alleged "Islamic extremists" and "lone wolves" who lived in Queens and were arrested in May 2011 after buying guns, ammo, and an inert grenade from an undercover police agent. The authorities alleged that the two men were planning to attack a New York synagogue because they were upset with how Muslims were being treated around the world.
But the case was another example of an alleged plot that the FBI took a pass on. Citing federal law enforcement sources, WNYC reported that the FBI passed on the case because the bureau found the undercover operation "problematic" and the allegations "over-hyped." And the website NYPD Confidential reported that Ferhani has a history of mental illness.
The AP noted the case faltered early on when a grand jury declined to indict the two men on a high-level terrorism conspiracy charge. Both have pleaded not guilty to lesser terrorism charges.
Brooklyn Bridge Ohio truck driver Iyman Faris pleaded guilty in 2003 to providing material support to al Qaeda; he met with senior al Qaeda leaders abroad and researched how to attack the Brooklyn Bridge. Terrorism analyst Peter Bergen has called Faris "an actual al Qaeda foot soldier living in the United States who had the serious intention to wreak havoc in America" but "not much of a competent terrorist." Bergen wrote the plan Faris researched to sever the bridge's cables with a blowtorch as "akin to demolishing the Empire State Building with a firecracker."
The plot never got off the ground. According to the Justice Department, Faris sent messages to Pakistan "indicating he had been unsuccessful in his attempts to obtain the necessary equipment." According to the DOJ, Faris also concluded after a trip to New York that the idea "was very unlikely to succeed because of the bridge's security and structure."
PATH Train In 2006, 31-year-old Assem Hammoud was arrested in Lebanon. FBI officials announced that he and others 2014 who had never met but communicated on the Internet 2014 had been plotting a suicide attack on subway tubes under the Hudson River.
The Washington Post quoted U.S. counterterrorism officials questioning the credibility of the plot, reporting that they "discounted the ability of the conspirators to carry out an attack." One official described the matter as "jihadi bravado," adding, "somebody talks about tunnels, it lights people up." A counterterrorism official told the Times, "[t]hese are bad guys in Canada and a bad guy in Lebanon talking, but it never advanced beyond that."
Hammoud never visited the U.S., and there were no charges brought against him here. In 2012, Hammoud was sentenced to two years in prison in Lebanon, which he had already served.
Cases in which an alleged idea for an attack was not pursued:
"Subway cyanide" This alleged plot, first detailed by journalist Ron Suskind in 2006, was reportedly for a chemical attack on the New York subway system. Suskind reported that a U.S. intelligence source had said that al Qaeda was considering such an attack in 2003 but ultimately abandoned the idea. There is no evidence that the NYPD or any other law enforcement agency played any role in al Qaeda's decision to abandon the idea. There were also reported doubts about the quality of the intelligence and the credibility of the alleged plot.
"None of it has been confirmed in three years," a U.S. official told the Times, "who these guys were, whether they in fact had a weapon, or whether they were able to put together a weapon, whether that weapon has been defined and what it would cause or whether they were even in New York."
"NYSE/ Citi HQ" A British citizen named Dhiren Barot or Issa al-Hindi was arrested in the U.K. in 2004 and pleaded guilty two years later to conspiracy to murder. He had attended terrorist training camps and had contacts with Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, according to the government. He had taken video and photos of landmark sites in New York in 2000 and 2001 including the New York Stock Exchange and the headquarters of Citigroup.
An appeals court later reduced his sentence from 40 to 30 years, citing the "uncertainty" as to whether Barot's conspiracy would ever have amounted to an actual attempted attack, and the court's conclusion that one of the ideas for an attack in the United Kingdom was "amateurish." The appeals ruling also noted that after Sept. 11, Barot's plans for any attack in the U.S. "may have been 'shelved'" to focus on the U.K. The court also noted that there was no evidence that al Qaeda leadership had endorsed any of the ideas. Prosecutors also accepted that there was no money or equipment lined up for any of the ideas.
There is no evidence the NYPD had any role in the investigation that led to Barot's capture.
Garment District Uzair Paracha, a young Pakistani living in the United States, was convicted in 2005 of providing material support to al Qaeda. Prosecutors said that Paracha had tried to help a Pakistani al Qaeda member named Majid Khan gain entrance to the U.S., including a scheme to fool immigration authorities into letting Khan into the country.
The NYPD list says that "Paracha is reported to have discussed with top al Qaeda leaders the prospect of smuggling weapons and explosives 2014 possibly even a nuclear device 2014 into Manhattan's Garment District through his father's import-export business." But the indictment against him makes no mention of any such plot.
Instead the NYPD appears to be referencing a claim by Khalid Sheik Mohammed to American interrogators that Paracha's father, who is currently a Guantanamo detainee, discussed a plan with KSM to smuggle explosives into the U.S. through an import business he co-owned in Manhattan's Garment District.
KSM said he wasn't sure of the son's involvement and neither the father nor son has been charged with anything related to it.
According to the government's detainee assessment on the father, Saifullah Paracha, KSM said he wanted to use the explosives "against U.S. economic targets" but New York is not mentioned. KSM told interrogators that another man was to "rent a storage space in whatever part of the U.S. he chose" to hide the explosives. There is no claim in the detainee assessment that the idea ever got beyond discussion. Saifullah Paracha has denied the accusation. Mohammed also later told the Red Cross that in the period when he made the claims about the Paracha, shortly after his capture in March 2003 when he was apparently being subject to torture, he gave "a lot of false information" to interrogators.
Long Island Railroad Bryant Neal Vinas, an American Muslim convert from Long Island, was arrested in 2008 in Pakistan by authorities there. In 2009, then 26, he pleaded guilty to providing material support to and receiving training from al Qaeda. He told the court he "consulted with a senior al Qaeda leader and provided detailed information" about the Long Island Railroad in a discussion of a possible attack.
But in a trial in 2012 in an unrelated terrorism case, Vinas testified that to his knowledge the railroad idea was not pursued beyond discussion. Published reports do not mention any NYPD role in the case.
NEW YORK — In a manila envelope on the table in front of Marlene Steele are hundreds of letters from businesses, churches and foundations politely rejecting her request for help to fund a gun buy-back program at a nearby public housing complex. “No one wants to help me,” she says. “Is it something I’m doing wrong?”>
The question prompts tears and a quick exit to the bathroom. Resurfacing, Steele tells how, in two weeks, her son and only child would have turned 20. Last July, according to news reports, hours after leaving a barbecue at the Queensbridge Houses, her son, 19-year-old Mark Torres, died from a gunshot wound to the head.
She is now working to get guns off the street so that no other children should die.
Police say that getting gun violence is one of the main justifications for stop-and-frisk -- of the 500 homicides the city averages annually, 60 percent are committed with a firearm.
But critics of the stop-and-frisk say it illegally targets mostly black and Latino youth, an argument supported by the police department's own statistics: Of the nearly nearly 700,000 stops last year, 87 percent of those stopped by officers were black or Hispanic. And their opposition of the crime reduction strategy grows louder each day.
Yesterday, thousands of people marched silently down Fifth Avenue from Harlem to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house to call for an end to stop-and-frisk.
But what, exactly, could take its place? Gun buybacks like the one Steele is trying to raise money for are seen by some community residents as an alternative, though criminal justice experts say there is little evidence that they work to get illegal firearms off the street. Other alternatives include anti-gang initiatives and gun control programs that have proven successful in some big cities – but for each of these, like gun buybacks, the obstacle is one of resources.
Bloomberg has said stop-and-frisk needs to be modified, not ended. Speakingat the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn yesterday, he said he understood why some people want the city to end the strategy.
“Innocent people who are stopped can be treated disrespectfully. That is not acceptable," he said. "If you’ve done nothing wrong, you deserve nothing but respect and courtesy from the police. Police Commissioner Kelly and I both believe we can do a better job in this area – and he’s instituted a number of reforms to do that."
In a letter to the City Council speaker last month, Kelly outlined a number of changes to the policing strategy, including requiring top-ranking officers in each precinct to audit reports of street stops by patrol officers.
Unimpressed by stop-and-frisk, however, Steele, who is the director of operations for Gifted Community Services, took the initiative late last year to pursue what she considered a more effective solution: gun buybacks. She was excited at first. But then the rejection letters started to pile up. Phone calls to local churches went unreturned.>
At a standing room only forum of about 150 Harlem residents this May convened to debate the alternatives to stop-and-frisk, the loudest applause of the evening went to one passionate young man who wanted to know why gun buybacks – with one-day takes rivaling those of a year of stop and frisk – weren’t “happening 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.”
But experts say buyback events, or more accurately, amnesty programs for turning guns over to local police for a gift card, no questions asked, are ineffective.
“There isn’t any evidence that [they] reduce street crime,” says Jon Vernick, co-director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Returned guns tend to be non-working or older weapons like revolvers, not the newer pistols used in street crime, participants tend not to be the young black and Latino males who’re most affected by violence and, finally, they don’t get that many guns off the street.
They are also extremely costly. It helps to explain why, at most, only up to four buybacks have been held each year in each borough since NYPD implemented the program in 2008. With a $184,000 price tag and a yield of 919 weapons, Queens’ last buyback was three years ago.
Steele remains undeterred. For her, the buyback is a high-profile teaser to gather her target audience for a main course of community dialogue, on-site therapy and advising from formerly incarcerated men and women. “I want to show people how good life could be without a gun,” she says.
At the Harlem forum in May, David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention at John Jay College said an alternative might be “focused deterrence,” or, the opposite of what critics describe as stop-and-frisk’s dragnet approach.
Kennedy’s policing methods enlist community members to zero in on specific suspects in high crime neighborhoods—never more than a few people, he theorizes—and it has been proven successful in cities like Cincinnati, Boston and Chicago. New York City may be next.
This February, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced an anti-gun initiative, which includes testing Kennedy’s approach for the first time in six sites around the state, three of which are in Brownsville, and parts of the Bronx and Manhattan.
A second promising option is the precariously funded Operation SNUG (“guns spelled backwards”) anti-gang and guns program.
Currently based in 10 sites throughout the state, including three in New York City, it replicates the successful Chicago model featured in the documentary “The Interrupters,’ and employs ex-convicts to work the scenes of violence and dissuade escalations.
“SNUG gets to the root of the problem, the person’s motivation for wanting to shoot in the first place,” says state senator Malcolm Smith, a Democrat from Queens.
He also sees another advantage to the program. “Unlike stops, which can leave anger, the SNUG approach to gun violence requires that communities join forces with the police department,” he says.
Some critics says that ending stop-and-frisk altogether is not only a bad idea but impossible.
“Police officers need stop-and-frisk,” says retired NYPD Detective Carlton “Chucky” Berkeley, who regularly counsels youth and adults on how to have safe encounters with police officers. “When you stop someone, you don’t know what they’re carrying. If they have a bulge, for the safety of the officer, you have to frisk.”
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. Officer safety – not seizing weapons – was the often cited rationale behind the court's landmark Terry v. Ohio decision, which lowered the standard for performing a street stop from probable cause to reasonable suspicion.
The case gave officers legal leeway to briefly detain anyone reasonably suspected of having committed, being in the process of or about to commit a crime – and pat them down if they also reasonably suspected the person carried a weapon.
New York state’s stop-and-frisk law predated the Terry decision by about four years and, from the beginning, it was controversial.
In one of many government-commissioned reports examining the roots of social unrest, civil rights activist and Harlemite Bayard Rustin describes the tactic as a permit to harass “the poor and minorities like Negroes and Puerto Ricans.” Retired NYPD Detective Ray Figueroa says, in practice “we didn’t stop-and-frisk without first having a lot of probable cause. And I mean, a lot – like actually seeing the weapon.”
Other than anecdotal evidence, between 1964 and 1997, it is impossible to know how often the practice occurred, the rationale behind those stops or whether, as Rustin claimed, it was tailored to target minorities. It took the shooting death of unarmed 23-year-old immigrant, Amadou Diallo by four police officers in 1999 and the ensuing citywide outcry to launch the first state and federal investigations into stop-and-frisk. That year also saw the first public release of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk data, which had been collected since at least 1986.
But even by 2002, the year that mandatory reporting of stop data to the city council took effect, the policy had not been deployed to the extent that it is today. Stops have increased 600 percent, after the crime rate had already fallen to historic lows.
Criminologists, retired police officers and recent whistleblowers like officers Adrian Schoolcraft and Adil Polanco allege the exponential uptick in stops can be traced to COMPSTAT, the computerized system that police have used to track and target crime.
Beginning in 1994, critics charge that the NYPD’s widely-replicated crime metrics system fostered a department-wide reliance on quotas to measure performance.
“Officers are being ordered to do things that many find ethically dubious,” says John Jay criminologist Eugene O’Donnell, also a former police officer and prosecutor. “If I frisk you for no good reason, then I’m filling out paperwork that may not be accurate, I have to go to court and swear to things that are not accurate.”
Whether the NYPD boosted stops to meet set performance targets is central to the upcoming federal trial, Floyd v. City of New York. Amid growing public scrutiny, Mayor Bloomberg conceded at a Brownsville church last Sunday that stop-and-frisk encounters should emphasize professionalism. But critics want reforms to go further.
“Every school and corporation in America goes through an accreditation process, but we don’t require that of our police departments," says John Eterno, a former NYPD captain and stop-and-frisk trainer, who is now chair of criminal justice at Molloy College. "It’s time to question why not, and demand that oversight of the NYPD and transparency be a part of stop-and-frisk reform."
They mayor and police have argued that there is sufficient oversight of the NYPD.
John Jay criminologist Eugene O’Donnell, also a former police officer and prosecutor, laments the way that the city has abandoned social policies other than criminal justice since the Giuliani era, and maintains that stop-and-frisk abuses are rising, in part, because “the police have been pressed into action to cover a gaping hole in our gun policy.”
“It is unethical,” he says, “to promise that we can pave the way to a great city with police, jails and courts. You cannot rely on the criminal justice system to make everything better.”
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Carla Murphy is an independent journalist. Follow her at Twitter.com/carlamurphy>
NEW YORK – Cab drivers caught willingly transporting sex trafficking victims could face a fine of $10,000 and have their license automatically revoked under legislation passed by the City Council today.
The legislation passed at the Council's stated meeting also calls on the Taxi and Limousine Commission to develop a program to educate city-licensed drivers on laws prohibiting the use of taxis for trafficking.
"We are recognizing in this legislation the unconscionable and cruel role that taxi drivers and livery drivers are playing in this brutal attack that keeps people trapped, takes their lives away from them," Council Speak Christine Quinn said at a news conference before the legislation was passed.
Advocates for victims of sex trafficking said the legislation targets both traffickers and demand.
“Taxi drivers and livery drivers are often middlemen between trafficked people and the customers that create the demand,” said Sonia Ossorio, president of National Organization of Women New York City.
Currently, city-licensed taxi drivers could face a hearing if they commit a sex trafficking crime.
TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg said the agency was working with the Council to develop the educational component of the legislation. "The TLC will develop the most effective, and most cost-effective, program possible once the bill becomes law," he said.
In April, Manhattan prosecutors charged a father and his son with running a sex-trafficking ring, with livery cab drivers transporting prostitutes and arranging meetings with clients. The father and son, who have pleaded not guilty, were accused of threatening violence against the women for being late or failing to meet quotas.
Advocates said the case had highlighted the problem of livery drivers aiding sex trafficking.
Dorchen Leidholt, the legal director of Sanctuary for Families, a leading nonprofit that helps victims of domestic violence and sex trafficking, said a growing number of its clients had been "victimized not only by their traffickers but by drivers who were driving them from customer to customer, taking half the money that was earned and working very closely with the traffickers."
Bharavai Desai, the executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, said unlicensed cab drivers were most often linked to such crimes.
"There is no iota of evidence linking yellow medallion taxi cabs to sex trafficking," she said. "They are scapegoating our name. The City Council should address the issue but not scapegoat or link illegal services to legal services."
The Council also passed a resolution, created by 23 council members, that strongly recommends that the state Legislature pass the Trafficking Victims Protection and Justice Act. If passed, the bill would amend a 2007 anti-trafficking law that the Council resolution says does not go far enough.
The bill would remove the need for prosecutors to prove that underage victims of trafficking were coerced into prostitution; elevate penalties for patronizing underage prostitutes to the level of statutory rape; and require that anyone under 18 arrested for a prostitution offense be tried in family court rather than criminal court.
Following pressure from New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Sen. Charles Schumer, all four of the nation’s largest phone companies made an agreement with the Federal Communications Commission to help crack down on smartphone thefts by targeting demand for stolen phones.
Each phone comes equipped with an internal ID number which is different from the phone number or SIM card activation code. People who have had phones stolen will now be able to report the thefts, causing their phone ID to show up as stolen in a master database. This will make it impossible for someone else to buy a new sim card for a stolen phone and use it normally.
“We’re gonna make a [stolen] cellphone about as valuable as an empty wallet,” said Schumer who helped broker the agreement by putting pressure on FCC head Julius Genachowski, who used to work for Schumer.
“New technologies create risks,” Genachowski was quoted as saying.
The new rule is not the same thing as a law but all major cell phone carriers agreed to abide by it. Details are still pending for the database timetable.
Smartphones today cost an average of $400 to $600, are small, easy to carry and often held in plain sight, making it the most cost effective target for thieves and muggers. According to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who was among the first chiefs to recommend the new program, cell phone thefts went up from 8 percent to over 40 percent of all grand larcenies and robberies in NYC, even as total crime rates continue to fall. According to the Daily News, that is 81 percent of all electronics thefts in 2011.
In the case of AT&T and T-Mobile, phone users can shut off their SIM cards but in most cases, their phone remains an active device, which can be equipped with a new card and taken right back into use. Verizon Communications and Sprint-Nextel already use stolen phone directories.
Under the agreement, all phone companies will maintain shared directories of every physical device’s unique ID number and track its purchase and use, at their own expense. If the owner of that phone ever reports it stolen, whoever tries to reactivate that phone with major phone carriers in the future, will be denied. These kinds of directories are widely used in European countries such as the U.K., France and Germany.
The phones can still be used as miniature computers with WiFi but since most of a smartphone’s utility comes from its connection to telephone and 4G networks, Schumer and his allies believe that stolen phones will drastically lose their value.
“Like draining the swamp to get rid of malaria, we’re going to dry out the market for stolen phones,” said Kelly.
Thieves can circumvent the blacklist by selling the phones abroad or hacking into the phone and changing its ID number. Schumer said that he will introduce legislation to make phone tampering of the sort punishable by up to 5 years in prison.
The phone companies also agreed to increase incentives for users to password-protect their phones and further deter theft.
An opinion issued by New York's highest court has changed real estate law as it has been understood and applied for hundreds of years. The majority of the Court of Appeals has decided that a landlord can interfere with a tenant's exclusive possession of real property and the tenant is no longer necessarily entitled to a full abatement of rent. In the case of east side exhibition Corp v 210 east 86th street Corp., the court found that the interference was trivial or de minimus and did not warrant the withholding or abatement of rent.
The dispute arose in 2002 when the landlord of tenant's multiplex theater on east 86th St. in Manhattan installed cross-bracing between two steel support columns on each of the tenant’s two floors changing the flow of patrons and slightly reducing a seating area on the second floor. The work was done in anticipation of landlord's plan to add two floors to the building and resulted in a diminution of approximately 12square feet or one tenth of one percent of the leased property.
The real property law which goes back to feudal times originally applied to land, where diminution of tenant's possessory interest generally meant less farm land, but was until this case applied to modern development or improvement of the land.
Prominent real estate lawyer, David Rosenberg argued that his client had suffered "an actual partial eviction" which relived them of the obligation to pay rent. But a mid-level appellate court had already heard the case and said that " current landlord/tenant realities make it particularly untoward tp apply harsh and oppressive strictures derived from feudal law that mirror the policies and concerns of that earlier society."
Before adopting the prior court's reasoning, the high court acknowledged that "the withholding of the entire amount of rent is the proper remedy when there has been a partial eviction by a landlord." Citing long-standing law, the court continued, "If such an eviction, though partial only, is the act of the landlord because the landlord is not allowed to apportion his own wrong." In other words "the tenant has beebread deprived of the enjoyment of the demises premises by the wrongful act of the landlord" and the basis of the agreement to pay rent has collapsed. These principles have been in place even while the tenant remains in possession.
Reverting to an 1865 case decided in the same court, but ignored for the last century and a half, the majority opinion wrote "not every intrusion amounts to an eviction which warrants a full rent abatement ... when there has been no substantial interference with the use of the premises." Judge Ciparick's opinion further cites similar language applied by courts in other states to conclude that "the interference must be more than trivial," and there musts be "some deliberate disturbance of the possession depriving the tenant of the beneficial enjoyment of the demised premises ... to extinguish the rent." Since it was undisputed that the taking was of less than one-tenth of one percent of the space, even though there was some impediment to the flow of foot traffic and the cross-bracing was unattractive, it was "merely a trivial interference," and there was "no measurable effect on the tenant's use."
An unusual dissent followed, in which Judge Read, in a footnote, described her colleagues’' opinion as "schizophrenic." She criticized it for blaming the tenant for not having negotiated a lease which would have given the theater the right to withhold all rent based upon any intrusion, saying, "Why was it not incumbent on the landlord to negotiate" the term. The dissent was committed to following the line of cases which supported the tenant's position and which came long after the Civil War-era case relied upon in the majority opinion, Lounsbery v Snyder. She pointed out that Lounsbery involved a landlord placing firewood on the tenant's rented property. This, Judge Read, wrote was not a permanent taking of land or real estate, unlike the cross-breaching in the theater lobby. Meaning, she concluded, that there was no exclusion or expulsion, trivial or not. "In short," she wrote," a physical expulsion or exclusion is, by definition, non-trivial. Moreover, the intrusion or trespass is permanent, not transitory.
Siding with the theater, and describing the bracings as "an eyesore,” the dissent "would not characterize landlord's unwanted reaming of the lobby as trifling in amount or trivial in effect" and is "considerably different from what tenant bargained for in the lease. Going forward, according to Judge Read, "At least unt [commercial] tenants have the opportunity to negotiate lease terms that account for the change in the laws they have no effective way to combat unauthorized takings by landlords and in leases already entered, there was no way to anticipate this change in the law.
Landlord was represented by David Rosenberg, Tenant by Howard Grun.
The judges concurring with the majority opinion are judges Lippman, Graffeo, Smith, Pigott and Jones.
Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court Justice
In his 2011 State of the City Address Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked Gov. Andrew Cuomo to use an executive order to give control of juvenile offenders from New York City to the city itself. Rather than sending offenders to state-run facilities that are in many cases hundreds of miles away from their homes and are known to be violent and poorly run, the city would place the offenders in facilities close to home.
"The current system is not helping kids, it isn't helping taxpayers and it isn't helping public safety," Bloomberg said at the time. "The bottom line is, I think we all agree we need to stop sending kids miles away from their families and communities. And, instead, authorize the city to fully operate its own juvenile system here in the five boroughs."
But the state budget process had already begun Cuomo had already set his agenda for the year for dealing with the state’s flawed juvenile justice system—by closing some of the most troubled detention centers, trying to improve care in the existing ones and encouraging judges to sentence offenders to alternative treatment programs. Nevertheless at the end of session last year Assemblyman Karim Camara helped the city introduce the Juvenile Justice Realignment Act, that would have accomplished Bloomberg’ goal legislatively.
The bill did not come to a vote but as it turns out this year Cuomo has basically granted Bloomberg’s wish. Instead of using an executive order to hand control of the city’s youthful offenders over to the city Cuomo has made the initiative part of his budget plan as the ”Juvenile Justice Services Close to Home Initiative.” And while the move is not as sure as an executive order—making it part of the Governor’s budget package makes the chance of it becoming law much more likely than if it was a bill being pushed by Camara and the city.
Elizabeth Glazer, Cuomo’s Deputy Secretary for Public Safety, says that the initiative makes sense as part of the Governor’s overall approach to repairing the state’s broken juvenile justice system. She says the state would hand over jurisdiction of juvenile offenders from the city in two phases—offenders who are held in non-secure facilities will be transferred to the city as of this September and offenders in limited secure facilities will be handed over as of April 2013. Kids in secure facilities will remain in state care.
“Before that happens,” explains Glazer, New York City will have to lay out its plan for services that are the least restrictive but meet public safety and are also gender specific and tailored to the LBTQ community. There will public hearings and the city will have to explain how it incorporated the comments or why not.”
The Correctional Association of New York says that it is really the detail of the city’s plan that matters.
“The Governor’s initiative provides a unique opportunity for the creation of a new youth justice system in New York City, one that potentially could bring about better life outcomes for children and strengthen communities,” said Soffiyah Elijah, Executive Director of the CA.
“The CA has, for many years, advocated for keeping children in custody closer to their homes and communities. However, given the many challenges youth justice systems face both in keeping children safe and secure and in meeting the complex treatment and service needs of young people in custody, the details of the city’s plan are paramount,” said Elijah. “We very much look forward to receiving and being able to meaningfully respond to the city’s proposed plan.”
Glazer says it is important to realize that while “stepping back,” the state will, “Maintain crucial strong oversight of the city’s system, conduct on-site inspections and develop performance metrics and analytics,” for the facilities.
Advocates insist that recidivism rates can be reduced if juvenile offenders are kept near home, given support and not treated as career criminals. Kids in state run programs have recidivism rates of 80 to 90 percent while kids treated in alternative programs have only a 20 percent re-offense rate.
Assemblyman Camara has visited a number of treatment facilities and explains that sending a young offender to a secure detention facility in upstate New York can guarantee the child never reforms. “There is a much different culture in alternative programs. Kids that commit non-violent offenses may act tough, they might put on a show but they are not ready to deal with the setting of a secure facility. It crushes their spirit. They don’t get supportive services and the recidivism rate is so high—it is the whole culture and become a part of it.”
Why is the initiative part of the Governor’s budget package? Simply put—because detaining kids costs money--keeping a youthful offender in a secure facility costs around $260,000 a year. Alternative treatment programs cost about $20,000 per child, per year. And the state, to the chagrin of public employee unions, is slowly but surely getting out of the business of juvenile justice. Last year Cuomo closed detention facilities and this year the system is expected to further lose around 300 beds. The reductions are being carried out in a way that will allow for a regional model of care to possibly be implemented across the state.
Overall the state expects to save $9 million dollars by implementing the “Close to Home Initiative” in the 2012-2013 fiscal year and $12 million in FY 2013-2014. Thanks to the reduced number of kids in the system the state will be able to downsize the detention system and expects to save quite a bit on that--$9 million in FY 2012-2013 and $37 million in the following fiscal year.
Perhaps most indicative of the way the Cuomo Administration expects to approach juvenile justice for the entire state is another mandate that is part of the “Close to Home Initiative” that will require all family court judges to have a “predispositional risk assessment” of each juvenile offender before sentencing. The one-page document would be designed to help judges decide how likely someone is to reoffend and exactly what kind of setting would best suit them.
According to Glazer the risk assessment will likely evaluate a child’s criminal offense, school attendance and other factors that play into the risk that they will reoffend.
“There is a complete shift of resources being used more effectively and accurately state wide. Every county will be required to have risk assessment at detention.” Glazer points out that the move will not only save money but hopefully prevent offenders who are generally “good kids” from being sent to secure facilities where they might fall in with a far worse crowd than they know at home—thereby reducing recidivism.
Glazer says that the Office of Child and Family Services is working with the Department of Justice and the department of probation to make sure judges and everyone else in the chain is comfortable with working with these new evaluations.
Camara says he thinks his colleagues in the Assembly are supportive of the “Close to Home Initiative” and he expects that when Senators here more about the plan that they will get on board. He says he has seen firsthand what a difference being near home can make for a child in trouble. “I’ve toured these places and there is a huge difference between the facilities in Brooklyn than the juvenile facility on Rikers Island. There is different atmosphere and kids are closer to their family and have the support staff they need.”
Wanda Chambers came to understand motherhood in an unlikely setting: the solitude of a maximum-security prison.
Chambers, now 41, had struggled with addiction for years; she had tried treatment but couldn't stop using. Her crisis bottomed out in 1998, when child welfare authorities took her infant daughter, Princess, and placed her in the home of a foster parent. Soon afterward, Chambers was incarcerated on a drug conviction.
At Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester, "I was locked up long enough to really strengthen my mind and change my way of thinking," she recalled. When she got out about three years later, she was determined to prove to the government she deserved to have her daughter back. She went through 18 months of court-supervised drug treatment and parenting skills programs before finally regaining custody.
The experience continues to shape her family. She works as an advocate for parents dealing with child welfare. Meanwhile, Princess' former foster mother remains involved, helping care for the child as a co-parent.
For Chambers, prison and foster care brought regret and revelation. "It was definitely a learning experience," she said. "You lose everything, and you break family ties. And I always wanted to get it right, but I just didn't know how."
In New York City's social service structure, two major institutions wield the power to separate families in the name of safety. With the aim of protecting society as a whole, criminal justice agencies sweep up parents through courts and prisons, while the Administration for Children's Services, charged with safeguarding individual children from harm, routinely removes young people from troubled homes. Though driven by different goals, the two systems interact in many families. Critics warn that both types of intervention may further deepen patterns of emotional and social trauma for children and parents.
There are no comprehensive statistics on families involved with both the child welfare and criminal justice systems in New York City. According to New York State's Department of Correctional Services, the majority of inmates report having at least one child. The Correctional Association, a New York-based advocacy group, estimates that statewide, more than 10,000 children had a mother imprisoned in New York prisons or jails. National data indicate that most mothers in state prisons lived with their children before their current sentence. Of mothers in state prisons with children under 18, about one in ten reported having a child in foster or institutional care; many more had children living with other relatives, though some relatives may also serve as "kinship" foster caregivers.
But national child welfare data reveal more subtle overlaps between the systems. One third of all children reported to local child welfare agencies for being maltreated at home had a primary caregiver who had been arrested at least once. Long-term studies show that families often cycle through social problems that can lead both to losing a child to foster care and to losing a parent to prison: issues such as poverty, substance abuse and mental illness. Demographics underline the connections: people in poor and black communities tend to have heavier involvement with both child-protective services and the criminal justice system.
Reflecting the synergy of environment and family dynamics, most child maltreatment reports are tied not to outright abuse, but "neglect" -- failure to provide sufficient care. A child could become technically neglected if her parent cannot afford adequate food and housing, or is consumed by addiction.
Although a parent's encounter with law enforcement also will not necessarily cause her to lose custody, Children's Services may intervene on an emergency basis if an arrest leaves the child unattended. Reform advocates say these placements can lead to prolonged separation as families wade through the child welfare bureaucracy.
"Over a child's lifetime, mothers and fathers may be arrested multiple times, intermittently use drugs, or have other problems that affect the child's home," said Susan Phillips, a professor of social work at the University of Illinois-Chicago. "People not only progress through the criminal justice system; they loop through it."
The same crises make the home more vulnerable to child welfare intervention. Whether one system is a cause or an effect of the other may be impossible to discern, but both can pull children into a spiral of instability.
Cathy Faust barely had a chance to be a mother before Childen's Services decided she was an unfit parent. A survivor of child abuse, she struggled with depression and drugs throughout her youth, right up to the birth of her daughter Jimeaka in 1990. After charging her with neglect, she recalled, Children's Services pressured her to turn her baby over to the care of her sister-in-law.
Without access to legal help or support services, Faust said, she went along with the plan, but three years later, her sister-in-law moved to adopt Jimeaka and terminate Faust's parental rights.
Though Faust maintained some contact with her daughter over the next few years, losing custody stoked her emotional volatility. "I just felt worthless and hopeless," she said. "It was like I was [the] worst person in the world. So it just made me indulge in drugs more, because I'm feeling less than a woman because I can't even be a mother to my child."
Faust was arrested on drug-related charges in 1998. When she met her daughter again after her release from prison six years later, the legal separation had grown into a permanent distance, and they remain estranged.
Faust, now 47, holds down a job at a social service organization and receives regular therapy. But while her life has become more stable, she said, it is not whole.
"That's my only child," she said. "And it's like, OK, my life is together, but it's not together, because that's a piece that's missing. And so much damage that has been done-not just for me, but for her also, for the family."
Recent reform efforts in both child welfare and criminal justice have emphasized preventing mistreatment or neglect and preserving family bonds. Some alternative sentencing programs can route parents into drug treatment rather than prison. Children's Services has stepped up social support services to help children in distressed homes remain with their parents. But advocates say both systems still fail the city's most vulnerable families.
To regain custody of a child in foster care, a birth parent must demonstrate her willingness and ability to care for the child by meeting an array of legal obligations, such as a mandated "service plan" that could include parenting classes or drug treatment, along with periodic review by family court. But Sarah From, director of public policy with the Women's Prison Association, said complying with this can be nearly impossible for a parent behind bars. "The onus is very much on the woman to manage this process of keeping her family together, while she's under the very hard and stressful situation of incarceration," From said.
Children's Services, which must facilitate visits with birth parents, has helped ease the strain of separation with its Children of Incarcerated Parents Program, which provides foster care children with transportation to correctional facilities across the state. In recent years, some prisons have become more accommodating as well. Parenting centers at Rikers and Bedford Hills, for example, allow family visits in a more open, "child-friendly" setting.
Yet, according to the Correctional Association, problems persist at other facilities, including cumbersome security clearance procedures, a lack of social support services for parent-child interaction, and difficulties coordinating visits with child welfare and corrections personnel.
As an advocate, Chambers said she sees many incarcerated parents set back by unresponsive case managers, who are overworked, out of reach or just insensitive to the challenges of incarceration. "I feel like, when a parent is locked up, out of sight, out of mind," she said.
Unlike a criminal trial, the family court process centers on assessing a child's well-being, rather than judging evidence of alleged criminal activity. The judge and the city tend to take a preventive approach, focused on broad risks to family safety -- from a lack of medical care to domestic violence.
Shortages of money and staff complicate the legal landscape. Despite recent efforts to make the process more efficient, parent advocates say the system still lacks the personnel and funding it needs to conduct adequate investigations or provide competent counsel.
The hurdles facing imprisoned parents grew higher in the late 1990s with the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act. If a child has spent 15 of the previous 22 months in foster care, the law requires that child welfare authorities file for termination of the birth parent's rights. The aim is to set a time period so the child can find "permanency" instead of foster care -- generally, either reunification with the birth parent or adoption by another family.
Though child welfare agencies can make limited exceptions to the timetable based on family circumstances, the law has tightened pressure on parents to defend their custodial rights. Meanwhile, state policies make no specific exemptions for incarcerated parents, whose sentences typically exceed the time line. According to research led by Columbia University law professor Philip Genty, in the years following the act's passage -- 1997 to 2002 -- termination proceedings for incarcerated parents more than doubled.
Criminal justice reform groups have pushed for state legislation to make the foster care timeframe more flexible for incarcerated parents.
The law's aim of promoting stability has backfired, Genty said. "There's no unified, enlightened policy going on," he said. "The correctional system is making its decisions for its own reasons, the foster care system is making its decisions for its own reasons, and nobody's really keeping track of whether that creates inherent tensions."
After returning to their communities, many formerly incarcerated women say prison was the necessary "break" that compelled them to change their lives. But to activists, that attests not so much to the positive aspects of incarceration as to a lack of alternatives. Reform advocates argue that neither locking up parents nor removing children from their homes can substitute for community-based programs that intervene to keep families intact before a crisis hits.
"It's not that the transforming factor or moment had to be prison, per se," said Tanya Krupat, a program director at the Osborne Association, a criminal justice-focused service and advocacy organization. "But it was that prison may have been the first time that a woman felt safe, let's say, because she was in a domestic violence relationship, or it's the first time someone could actually detox and think clearly. Then that's a failure of us not having adequate or accessible drug treatment, domestic violence services and other programs."
After Natalie Credell was arrested in 2005 with her boyfriend on drug-related charges, she was placed on bail and ordered into a residential rehabilitation program, designed to house her and her infant son, Nasir, while she got treatment. But Credell, 31, found the program stressful and stifling. After clashing with the counselors, she dropped out and relapsed. She ended up doing 15 months in a federal prison in Virginia, and Administration for Children's Services placed Nasir in the care of Natalie's father.
Like Chambers, Credell hit a wall in prison. "It just dawned on me that I'm a mom now," she said. "This is not where I want to be. This is not the type of mother that I want to be to my son."
Following her release, Credell found her way to Hour Children, a Queens-based organization for women transitioning from prison that offers job training, childcare, and supportive housing. She regained custody of Nasir in March 2007, and the two now live together at Hour Children while she studies to become a drug-treatment counselor.
Credell traces her crisis farther back than her arrest or even her addiction. She first encountered Children's' Services as a child, she recalled, when her mother's drug use prompted a child welfare investigation. She eventually went to live with her grandmother. But her mother's turbulence had started her on a chaotic trajectory.
"The streets taught her," she said, "and this is what she passed on to me."
Now on the outside, Credell hopes to pass something better onto her son. "A mother is a child's world," she said. "So in order to make things happen for him, I have to make things happen for me."
Michelle Chen is a freelance writer and a native New Yorker. This article is part of a series that will explore the connections between the criminal justice and child welfare systems in New York City. The project is supported by a fellowship from the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.The Civilian Complaint Review Board is negotiating with City Hall for an exception to the citywide hiring freeze. The Board wants to rehire an attorney for a program called the Administrative Prosecuting Unit (APU), which independently prosecutes police misconduct trials.
In the past, New York City Police Department attorneys handled all substantiated cases of police misconduct. With APU, the CCRB’s own lawyer is authorized to take on a portion of cases as a lead prosecutor.
In November 2011, the city extended funding for the program through fiscal year 2012, including funds for one attorney and one investigator. However, with the hiring freeze in effect, the Board is unable to hire an attorney who would be the centerpiece of the program. This may change as Daniel Chu, CCRB’s chairman, expressed optimism about his talks with City Hall.
“CCRB is beginning the search for highly qualified candidates for the APU attorney vacancy,” said Chu. “Recognizing the importance of this hire to the continued success of the APU, City Hall has agreed to review our final selection with a view to permitting the hire as a critical hire.”
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s press office did not comment on the negotiation, except to say “While a hiring freeze affects all City agencies, each case is reviewed individually. Once a candidate is identified, we will review right away.” CCRB has posted a job vacancy on its website.
Talks about a program like APU date back to 2001 when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik proposed giving CCRB the authority to prosecute cases. The state courts ruled that all cases that involve disciplinary actions against officers must be filed with the deputy commissioner for trials, instead of a new office proposed by Giuliani. However, CCRB and the police department began working more closely together.
In 2008, the CCRB and NYPD launched a pilot program where CCRB lawyers would participate in a “second seat” capacity during some police prosecutions. In 2010, Commissioner Kelly and the CCRB took this farther, to grant the Board lead prosecution authority on a random selection of cases.
In the years leading up to 2010, the city saw a rising number of complaints against the NYPD, especially over controversial stop-and-frisk practices where police were encouraged to stop and search large numbers of people for weapons. Many complaints dealt with alleged racial profiling by the police.
Christopher Dunn, an associate legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union said that the NYPD moved to accept the program “because of public embarrassment due to PD handling of cases” in 2009 and 2010, when NYPD allegedly threw out many substantiated complaints of police misconduct.
Only substantiated cases ever make it to trial and it may take the CCRB many months to determine whether a complaint has merit. About 5-6 percent of all complaints to the CCRB are substantiated.
Attorney Laura Edidin prosecuted and won her first solo case for the Board in May 2011 against two Bronx police officers. She served as solo lead prosecutor on seven total cases for the Board and has since moved on to work as deputy executive director for legal affairs at CCRB at the pilot’s conclusion in November.
The CCRB petitioned and won approval from the city to continue the program, citing its effectiveness in maintaining strong police accountability due to the Board being independent from the Police Department. According to a CCRB testimony, the practice also improves communications between the Board and the police and lessens the chance that the NYPD will drop substantiated cases for trial.
Additionally, attorneys who investigate misconduct are in a unique position to give crucial and correct details to a judge and prepare complainants for trial outside 1 Police Plaza.
However, despite City Hall’s authorization of funds for the program, the city’s hiring freeze prevented CCRB from hiring an attorney to replace Edidin and continue APU’s work. The allocated funds currently sit unused.
“This makes the program meaningless because there’s no one there to prosecute the case,” said Dunn.
The CCRB can hire someone from within city government but its director of communications, Linda Sachs, said that the Board would prefer to seek attorneys from the broadest possible pool of qualified candidates. Potential hires will be reviewed by City Hall, which may make a rare exception to the hiring freeze.