My friend and I were walking toward the subway, relieved to be out of school, when we heard a voice behind us. “You,” the voice said. It was deep and authoritative.
I turned to see a man dressed in a light blue shirt and dark pants. “Security officer,” I thought. I was ready to ignore him -- after all, I wasn’t in school anymore. Then I noticed the gun at his waist. He was a police officer.
Walking toward us, he signaled to my friend. “Let me see your ID.” My friend handed the card over to the officer. Turning it over in his hand, the officer looked at him, his eyes hidden behind shades. “Go to the dean’s office to get this back,” he said. He turned and walked away.
It was the second time that week that one of my friends had given their school ID to a police officer only to be told they would have to get it back at school the next day. This constitutes a major inconvenience, since students need their IDs to get into their school, Brooklyn Technical High School. To get the ID back, they have to go through another entrance and convince the security agents that they are students by jumping through hoops such as showing a class schedule and then answering questions to prove its theirs. This can take around 20 minutes -- just to get in the school.
More commonly, police will tell Brooklyn Tech students sitting on the steps of nearby apartment buildings, standing in the doorways of corner stores or hanging out on crowded sidewalks to go home.
Students can no longer hang out outside the school or even in the area. The police do not allow it. What was once a mass of chatting teens spread over several blocks has become a steady line of pedestrians, headed to the subway. And the situation is not limited to Brooklyn Tech.
When teens at Youth Communication, a nonprofit youth media organization, surveyed students at high schools around the city, they found that being reprimanded by police has become a normal part of teenage life in New York. Police officers have started clamping down on teens hanging out where, since time immemorial, they have always hung out: around their schools.
Of the 19 students surveyed from throughout the five boroughs, only four said that their schools and the local police allowed them to stay outside their school after classes ended. Many others responded as though the very idea was foolish. “Of course, no,” gawked Yaki Lin, 17, a student at Flushing International High School in Queens.
The teens said that both school security agents and the police regularly told them to “move along.” Some said that police even escorted students to the next block. This approach is not limited to so-called dangerous schools – ones cited by the state for high incidents of crime or required by the Department of Education to use metal detectors to scan all students entering the building.
New York City has the authority to institute this policy at any public school due to a section of the New York Penal Law, which says that a person is guilty of loitering when he or she “loiters or remains in or about school grounds, a college or university or grounds or a children’s overnight camp.”
Last February, Lee McCaskill, who was then principal at Brooklyn Tech, told the student body that the police clampdown on loitering near the school was prompted by safety concerns. Students from Tech were being robbed by outsiders and getting involved in fights, he explained in an announcement on the school’s Web site. “We are working very closely with the 88th precinct and other law enforcement officials to identify those involved in acts such as rowdiness, fighting, assault and even robbery,” the announcement read. It went on to ask the students to “whenever possible, travel in groups and leave” in a timely manner.
“ Students not involved in after-school activities should leave the school area immediately. Do not hang out near the subway, on our neighbor's property or other inappropriate areas. The officers of the 88th precinct may also ask you to move swiftly to your destination,” it continued,
A recent call to the New York City Police Department confirmed that the police presence at Tech was a response to fights and robberies in the neighborhood.
Students surveyed at other schools revealed that complaints from people who live near the school spurred police to approach students and tell them to find somewhere else to socialize.
“ We can’t stay next to the building because people in the neighboring apartment buildings complained to the school over noise,” said Ilya Arbit, 17, from Edward R. Murrow High Schoolin Brooklyn.
Many students find the policy inconvenient, especially if they live far from the school or want to wait for friends. “The police presence forced us to rush our after-school plans,” said Lionel Cox, 19, a former student at Tech, which draws students from all over the city. “We weren’t allowed to wait for friends who hadn’t left school yet or who were still in stores.”
Some of the teens surveyed have learned to outwit the police by walking, instead of standing, in front of the school building. As long as they do not stop in any one spot, the logic goes, they will not attract police attention. Others simply move to a block where police are less likely to go.
Many more teens end up spending money in local stores or businesses near their schools -- pizza parlors, corner stores, billiard halls or bowling alleys - just so they have a place to hang out with friends after classes end. And as they hang out in these establishments, the teens say, they buy and eat junk food. As private property, stores are not covered by the loitering laws.
A few especially productive students have found that after-school clubs, such as debate teams and the Model UN, provide a good way to socialize with classmates after school, far from the watchful eyes of the NYPD. But over all, when it comes to facing police officers or extracurricular activities, most teens choose the police.
Donald Moore is now a senior at City-as-School in Brooklyn. This article is adapted from the pages of our partner youth communication.
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The case of two civil rights lawyers who say they were victims of police abuse has attracted outrage among ministers and other black leaders who say that New Yorkers, particularly people of color, continue to suffer mistreatment at the hands of the police department.
The case occurred as several reports have highlighted problem with police conduct. In August, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the independent board charged with investigating police behavior, found that the police department is increasingly unlikely to prosecute officers on charges of misconduct. A month later, the New York Civil Liberties Union criticized the complaint board itself for being too lax and lenient on the police. And even according to the mayor's own statistics, complaints against the police continue to increase.
The Warren Case
Against this backdrop, the new Interfaith Commission on Police Accountability gathered on the steps of City Hall on September 13 to protest alleged abuse. "Too frequently, we listen to accounts of the young and the old regarding their mistreatment at the hands of some of the members of the New York City Police Department," a statement signed by 12 religious leaders said. "And while residents of our communities suffer indignities, personal injury and in some cases death, we see no meaningful efforts on the part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg or Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to eliminate the problem."
The ministers expressed outraged over the arrests of Evelyn and Michael Warren. The Warrens, who appeared at the rally, are civil rights attorneys who are married to each other.
Michael Warren told the News that he saw officers hitting a handcuffed suspect in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, at around 6 p.m. in June 21. "It reminded me of lions chasing down a zebra," Michael Warren said. "We got out of our cars. ... We expressed our concerns and requested that it stop."
Michael Warren said he then returned to his car but Sgt. Steven Talvy came after him. According to Michael Warren he was punched by an officer and forcibly removed from the vehicle."
Michael Warren, who specializes in police brutality cases, was charged with obstructing government administration, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Evelyn Warren faces disorderly conduct charges. "I got hit in the jaw, upside the head and on my lip a few times, and you can see that my pants are torn, but I'm fine. I'm great," Michael Warren told a crowd of 20 supporters the next day. Evelyn Warren was allegedly struck as well.
A police source told the News that officers were arresting a man on drug and theft charges when the Warrens stopped their car to criticize them. The source also said Evelyn Warren scratched an officer's face while she was being arrested.
The Warrens' cases will next be heard on October 23 in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Demands for Change
Whatever happens in the Warren case, the ministers at the September 13 interfaith press conference want changes in the way the city deals with the police. When the 30 or so ministers and their supports were asked whether they themselves had been subjected to police abuse, virtually every hand went up, however reluctantly.
Police abuse is "not just against Michael Warren-and his wife who are exemplary citizens, but those not as high profile who get even worse abuse," said State Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem. He called the police department "out of control" and said that many in the black community feel "terrorized."
The interfaith group put forth four proposals that in one form or another have been kicking around for decades. They are seeking:
In another recommendation, City Councilmember Charles Barron of East New York called for passage of a bill mandating that police interrogations be videotaped or recorded. This, he said, would have the effect of "protecting the officers and those falsely accused." But the office of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn had no response to any of the proposals put forth at the press conference. While hearings were held in the spring on police-community relations, no substantive legislative agenda has come out of them.
The Civilian Complaint Review Board
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The city does have mechanisms intended to improve police-community relations, but critics charge they are not effective.
The number of complaints has risen dramatically in the last several years. Civilian complaints against members of the department went up by almost 50 percent from fiscal year 2003 to 2007, with 7,662 complaints last year. The department attributed the increase to the creation of the city's 311 non-emergency hot line, which has made it easier to file a complaint.
In its report "Mission Failure: Civilian Review of Policing in New York City, 1994 - 2006," the civil liberties union said: "Even as complaints of police misconduct have increased sharply over the past five years, the CCRB has been closing more than half of all complaints without an investigation." (For a commentary on theboard by its former executive director, see "The Failure of Civlian Oversight".
Overall, the board has substantiated only about 5 percent of the complaints -- well below national averages. Andrew Case, a spokesman for the board, maintained that many of the complaints were not pursued because the person filing the charge did not follow through as required. Many complainants,he said, fail to appear at the board's office and make the required formal statements.
Case agreed with the comment on the police department's failure to cooperate with the board, but disputed the NYCLU's computation of its substantiation rate.
"True to form, the NYCLU has distorted or ignored the facts to reach its predetermined conclusions," Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Paul Browne said in a statement. "The NYCLU cherry-picks data and information, much of it outdated, to distort findings."
To remedy the situation, the NYCLU offered several proposals for reform. These include establishing an office to conduct audits of the complaint board, providing more resources to the board and setting up complaint board units in each borough.
Even in those cases where the Civilian Complaint Review Board does find wrongdoing, the police department frequently rejected the board's findings and recommendations. "When discipline is imposed," the report states, "it is often strikingly lenient in light of the severity of the misconduct documented by the CCRB."
The NYCLU could get support for this contention from the complaint board itself. From March 1 to June 30, the police department declined to seek internal departmental trials against 31 officers, most of whom were charged with stopping people in the street without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, according to figures from the board reported in the New York Times. In comparison, over the previous four years, the department reportedly declined to pursue only 49 officers.
The police department has faulted the board for the decline in prosecutions, saying it does not apply "appropriate legal standards." But some at the board disagree. They reportedly believe the department is simply too easy on its people.
"Misconduct is part of a continuum of behavior and the police commissioner is entitled to draw the line wherever he wants to draw it, meaning he can impose discipline where he sees fit," board chair Franklin Stone told the Times. "But he cannot tell us that the standard we are applying is inappropriate or suddenly, after 14 years, that it has become inappropriate."
A Troubled Past
The city's attempts to deal with civilian complaints of police abuse have a troubled history, recounted on the complaint board's own web site. And the New York Civil Liberties Union has a history of advocating to make it stronger.
When Mayor John Lindsay put four people from outside the department on a review board in the late 1960s, police union president John Cassese said, "I'm sick and tired of giving in to minority groups with their whims and their gripes and shouting."
The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association proposed a referendum to bar civilians from the board, and it passed overwhelmingly. The City Council restored civilian participation in 1986 and in 1993, and under Mayor David Dinkins, the board became the all-civilian body we have today.
But that move spurred controversy. In September 1992, 10,000 police rallied outside City Hall to protest the Dinkins administration's policy on several issues, including the mayor's support for City Council legislation creating a truly civilian board and his opposition to issuing 9mm guns to police. Journalist Wayne Barrett has recounted future Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's participation in this race-tinged rally. "He screamed 'bullshit' twice in a condemnation of Dinkins' actions." When Giuliani beat Dinkins in 1993, he quickly moved to slash the complaint board's budget.
The issue of civilian review of the police has remained largely absent from the front pages since. The arrests of Evelyn and Michael Warren, working their way through the courts and being protested in the streets, may not be high profile enough to force all sides to sit down together and hammer out some new reforms. But the incident has clearly touched a long-frayed nerve, especially among black New Yorkers. "We need things to change," said Rev. Charles Curtis, pastor of the Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Harlem at the press conference. "We pray that something will be said to cause change."
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Imagine walking alone along a dark street at night, perhaps heading back to your apartment after picking up some groceries. All of a sudden, you notice a pair of footsteps behind you clapping on the pavement, growing faster and faster. You turn to see a figure briskly walking between the shadows of street lamps, one hand held behind his back. Would you feel scared? Threatened?
Now replay the same scenario with a New York City police officer standing at the end of the block. Whether or not this shadowy figure was about to commit a crime, wouldn’t the presence of an officer make you feel calmer and safer? Of course it would, and it should, because the chances of anyone being mugged are much less where there’s a strong police presence. It’s a fact backed up by both scientific data and common sense.
Sadly, while the number of street corners in New York remains the same, the number of officers standing on them is dwindling. And our sense of security will soon dwindle with it.
Since reaching a high of 41,000 police officers in 2001, the ranks of the NYPD have shrunk to less than 36,000. Since 9/11, no other major metropolitan police department has reduced its staff. I find it sad and strange that we alone have allowed our police force to decrease, especially considering New York always sits in the crosshairs of terrorists.
More Police, Less Crime
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This drop is particularly troubling if we remember our recent history. Over the past three decades, the novel title that would best describe New York would be "A Tale of Two Cities." In the 1970s and 1980s, crime was rampant, drugs were plentiful, and economic development had come to a halt, leaving the government bankrupt. Today, we are the safest big city in the country, residents and businesses are scrambling over themselves to move here, and our coffers are plush with surpluses.
The remarkable change in New York City can be directly tied to the drop in crime – a decrease of 75 percent since 1990 – which can be directly tied to a decision to flood the streets with more cops. The Safe Streets, Safe City initiative, started by my father City Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr. and Mayor David Dinkins in 1991, increased the police department from 31,000 to 41,000 officers over 10 years. Although police departments were expanding around the country, that jump was three times the national average, and, in turn, crime rates here plummeted more than in other metropolitan centers.
If you don’t believe me, ask the experts. In fact, New York City has been the focus of many academic studies concerning the unprecedented national decrease in crime during the 1990s, including one by noted economist Steven Levitt. In his bestseller "Freakonomics," which was co-authored with Stephen J. Dubner, Levitt proves that more police means less crime even when other factors are taken into account. Combined with more aggressive prosecutions, Levitt argues, New York’s influx of officers enabled it to outpace the rest of the country in lowering its crime rate.
Of course, having been a prosecutor for six years, I could have told you the same thing without the complicated economic analysis. More officers mean more patrols to canvas and protect our neighborhoods. It means more low-level criminals will be caught and sent to prison before they commit worse acts. And it means more eyes and ears to spot suspicious activity before a terrorist can carry out a deadly plot.
A Shortage of Officers
Unfortunately, we are expecting the NYPD to do more work with fewer resources. Not only is our city expanding and growing every day, but our officers now need to be the city's first line of defense in the war against terror. I led the fight in the City Council for more police, and last year the mayor listened, adding funding for 1,200 additional officers in the budget. Yet today the Police Academy cannot produce classes large enough to meet the attrition and retirement rate of active officers, let alone out pace it at a rate needed for this expansion.
The root of the officer shortage seems to be the poor compensation package given to rookie cops. New York City police officers have a difficult and dangerous job, one they deserve to be paid handsomely to do. The initial base pay of $25,000 does little to attract quality recruits, and the maximum pay of $59,000 does little to keep quality officers when other counties offer twice as much.
Also contributing to the shortage is the low esteem many of our elected officials hold for our police. While critics have pointed to the disproportionate number of members of minority groups stopped by police, according to recently released police statistics, they have neglected other data. (See related article.) For instance, those statistics showed that police stop minorities in almost the exact same proportion as the race cited in criminal complaints by citizens. The information on stops was distorted and many irresponsible elected officials loudly proclaimed that these statistics were proof that the entire NYPD was racist. It would be naĂŻve at best to assume this attitude does not negatively affect police performance and recruitment.
Without more recruits it will not take long for police performance, and our way of life, to suffer. For example, if the ranks continue to hemorrhage officers – and sadly, they show no signs of stopping – Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a recent Public Safety Committee hearing that he will have to abandon Operation Impact, one of the department’s most successful programs. That initiative brings the same general principle – more cops means less crime – to the local level, flooding high crime areas with an infusion of cops. Police officials credit Operation Impact for virtually saving several crime-ridden neighborhoods, where the quality of life has since improved dramatically.
Public safety has been the catalyst for almost every positive development in New York City. No one would open a store if they and their customers were being robbed. No one would invest in housing if tenants were being attacked. Our police force is the dam that holds back the waves of squalor and danger that characterized the old New York.
That dam is weakening, and we must reinforce it before it is too late. We must ensure our officers are fairly compensated and fairly judged for their noble work, allowing the ranks of the NYPD to swell to past levels. Because the next time you’re walking down the street, a blue uniform on the corner could make all the difference in the world.
Councilmember Peter F. Vallone, Jr. represents Astoria and is the chair of the City Council's Public Safety Committee. He has sat on the council since 2002.
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Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have never expressed the slightest doubt over the police's handling of the protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. "The Republican National Convention was perhaps the finest hour in the history of the New York City Department," Kelly has said.
The courts, though, have been less enthusiastic. Few cases have ended in conviction, and the city has had to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages with hundreds of additional cases pending.
The arrests at the convention represent only the most obvious sign of the city's increasingly tough line on protest. In the past several years, the city has denied permits, arrested protestors and stepped up its surveillance on political dissidents. While the policy comes from on high, police officials have had to defend and explain it, while individual cops have had to enforce it.
Some find the administration's stance hard to fathom. "This is a level-headed police department lead by a level-headed headed police commissioner. What in the world are they doing?" one civil liberties lawyer, Jethro Eisenstein, has said.
What they are doing, Bloomberg and Kelly would argue, is fighting terrorism. "We live in a more dangerous, constantly changing world, " Kelly has said in calling for more police powers to monitor anti-war activists, like alternative transportation advocates and Billionaires for Bush.
Like their counterparts elsewhere in the nation, for much of their history the New York City police have taken a dim view of protest. Following what many saw as police abuses during the 1960s and 1970s, the courts and city officials put restrictions on police surveillance of political activity and on police conduct at protests. Dissenting political activity seemed, if not welcome, certainly tolerated.
But the official tolerance of protest faded during the Giuliani administration. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani limited access to City Hall plaza for press conferences and protests and restricted the movements of marchers at the 1998 "Million Youth March" in Harlem, where police confined protestors in pens, then stormed the stage to end the rally and buzzed the crowd with helicopters.
Time and time again, the courts stepped in to stop the administration from playing it fast and loose with the Constitution. Norman Siegel, a lawyer, later said he brought about 27 challenges against the Giuliani administration on First Amendment issues and won virtually all of them.
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The hardline stand continued into the Bloomberg administration, exacerbated by security concerns after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. "The Bloomberg administration is less forgiving of dissent than the Giuliani administration, and I never thought I'd say that," Dan Perez, a lawyer who has represented protestors, said in 2004.
As people throughout the world prepared to protest the war in Iraq on Feb. 15, 2003, the police department, citing security concerns, denied New York demonstrators a permit to march by the United Nations. Instead, police directed demonstrators to block-long pens created with barricades. More than 250 people were arrested, many for trying to get to the rally. Others tried to leave but were prevented from doing so.
"The NYPD crackdown on peaceful protest that happened at the anti-war protests [in 2003] cannot be repeated at the convention," Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said at the time.
The Republican convention in New York City - the first one ever held in the city - brought out memories of the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, when the whole world watched police clash with and beat protestors on that city's streets. Clearly it was not a scene Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted repeated - either for what it would do to the city's image or to the re-election prospects of President George W. Bush, who the mayor then supported. Law enforcement officials and others also feared the convention, attended by a who's who of GOP leaders, would provide a target for terrorists.
"The threat of terrorism is just about paramount in all of our thinking for all of these events," Chief of Department Joseph Esposito told reporters before the convention. "We'd have to be out of our minds not to have that as the paramount concern."
In response, the city strictly regulated access to the area around Madison Square Garden. It refused to allow a mass rally in Central Park the day before the opening gavel, saying the thousands of protesters, unlike, say, thousands of concert goers, would ruin the lawn. It set aside a pier to hold anyone arrested and mobilized all its resources.
Police arrested about 2,000 people during the convention. In one day - Aug. 31, 2004 - they rounded up about 1,100 protesters. Rather than being issued summonses and promptly released, hundreds were fingerprinted and detained for more than a day.
In some sense, the operation could be seen as a success. The events in New York in 2004 did not produce film footage like that from Chicago in 1968, nor did terrorists strike.
Demonstrators, their lawyers, journalists and others, however, quickly challenged the idea of the police operation as an unmitigated success. Eyewitness accounts, many backed up by videotapes, disputed police accounts of what happened on Manhattan streets. In the eight months following the convention, as many as 400 demonstrators had their cases dismissed as videotapes showed either that they had not committed the crime of which they were accused or that there was insufficient evidence of their guilt. As of this August, the city faced 605 lawsuits sparked from the arrests. It already had to settle 35 cases for a total price tag of $694,000.
The New York Civil Liberties Union filed suit, challenging three aspects of the city’s convention strategy: the mass arrests; the no summons policy, which resulted in the detention of many of those arrested; and the blanket fingerprinting. The city, according to Dunn, has already backed down on the fingerprinting, having said it destroyed the records. Now, the plaintiffs in the case await the release of thousands of pages of police department surveillance records. The federal courts have ordered their release, but the city has been slow to comply.
While there haven't been demonstrations to rival the size of the RNC convention's in the past three years, the police have clashed repeatedly with Critical Mass, a monthly group bicycle ride. The city has sought to limit the ride, targeting cyclists and confiscating bikes. In the two years after the city first decided to crack down on Critical Mass - the impetus for the tough policy was apparently the GOP convention - it spent $1.3 million to suppress the activity, according to Times Up!, an environmental group associated with Critical Mass.
When judges expressed doubts over the city's strategy, the administration sought to change the rules on mass gatherings -- with Critical Mass in mind. After its first proposal was widely assailed for being so strict it might make it difficult for a group of friends to walk down the street, the city issued a new version, requiring any group of 50 or more people to get a permit before gathering. A judge ruled the city can use the rules to regulate Critical Mass - and they have. At the June ride, police arrested and handcuffed 15 cyclists. They were released quickly and received tickets, perhaps indicating that tensions between the city and the cyclists were abating.
During the anti war and other protests of the 1960s and '70s, people organizing any kind of protest activity took it for granted that the police had an eye on them. At some demonstrations, protestors would even call out to those they believed to be undercover cops - the shoes were widely believed to be the giveaway.
That changed in the 1980s, though. In response to a class action suit, a judge set up a series of strict guidelines – known popularly as Handschu after the lead plaintiff – governing police oversight of political activity. In particular, police could not investigate political groups without “specific information” that they were planning a crime. These restrictions remained intact for decades, much to the irritation of some officers.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, provided the department with an opportunity to try to have the guidelines changed. In 2003, Federal Judge Charles Haight ruled that terrorism presented "dangers sufficient to outweigh any First Amendment cost." In response, Jim Dwyer of the Times reported in December 2005, police spied on people "protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident." To mask their true identities, the police not only watched the events but participated in them, in some cases, protestors have charged, provoking trouble.
In February, Haight appeared to reverse himself, ruling that, once again, the police could not videotape people at a political event unless they seemed likely to break the law. Zeroing in on two events in 2005 — a march in Harlem and a demonstration by homeless people in front of Bloomberg's Upper East Side home — the judge said the city had little justification for taping the protests. There was, he said, “no reason to suspect or anticipate that unlawful or terrorist activity might occur,” he wrote, “or that pertinent information about or evidence of such activity might be obtained by filming the earnest faces of those concerned citizens.”
A few months, later, though, the judge changed direction again deciding that the people at the two protests may have been candidates for videotaping after all. New information, he said, indicated the demonstrations might have become “unruly.”
For its part, the Police Department considers surveillance a useful tactic and undoubtedly hopes the judge does not change his mind again. In memos involving a 2002 incident revealed under a court order and reported in the New York Times, police officials discussed how “proactive arrests” and surveillance helped avoid problems at a gathering of the World Economic Forum in the city in 2002. Paul Brown, deputy commissioner for public informatin, said that the event attracted “hard-core violent elements that were surveilled by the NYPD. Yes, we used surveillance techniques to track and hopefully disrupt violent elements. That’s proactive.”
Given that Handschu has been in the courts since 1971, it will no doubt remain there, subject to future twists and turns. The legal tug of war between the police and demonstrators and civil libertarians on an array of issues seems unlikely to end any time soon.
Dunn of the civil liberties union said his organization wants to ensure the city cannot repeat the tactics they used at the GOP convention. “The whole point of our case it to make sure the department doesn’t use these policies again,” he said.
The department under Bloomberg and Kelly shows little sign of backing down, though. Looking back on the events of 2004, Kelly recalled in a television interview that thousands of protesters came to New York City. In meeting up with the New York City Police Department, he said, “they met their match.” Â
In minority communities across the city being stopped and frisked has become routine, according to some community leaders. "It's almost like brushing your teeth in the morning, because in our community you never know when you're going to get stopped," said Ken Cohen, director of the Metropolitan Council of NAACP Branches in New York City.
Cohen and others regularly offer advice on how to respond when halted and patted down. They tell young people to follow directions and remain nonconfrontational, even if it means disregarding their right to ask for the officer's name or badge number.
"We've found that when you do ask, that only infuriates the officers and makes things worse," said Cohen. "Things can get quickly out of control if [officers] feel like they're not in control or if you're asking too many questions."
Police released statistics earlier this year showing the amount of stops conducted by police increased five-fold in from 2001 to 2006. The police patted down someone on the streets of the city half a million times last year. Some experts credit the practice for the drastic reduction of crime in the city. Many community activists and civil liberties advocates, though, claim stop and frisk is an example of racial profiling, since the vast majority of stops are black or Latino.
The stop and frisk debate was fueled earlier this year when the New York Civil Liberties Union learned that the Police Department was compiling a vast database of all the individuals who had been stopped and that more than 86 percent were black or Hispanic in 2006. The debate now not only concerns the stops themselves but the records of those stops and what information on the police department should have to provide to the public.
That has shoved the practice back in the city's center stage, resulted in a Freedom of Information Law Request by the civil liberties union and an independent analysis of the data due out any day.
Getting the Data
The department is expected to hand over its stop and frisk data to the City Council every quarter. It released data in 2002 and not again until 2006. The huge increase over that period fueled suspicions of the practice and concerns from City Council and civil libertarians about what information was not being made available.
The City Council stepped up its demands for access to the department's electronic database. The civil liberties union has followed the council's lead by filing the Freedom of Information Law request. That request is still pending.
Stop and frisk data from 2003 through 2006 is currently being processed by a private vendor, a spokesman for the Police Department said, because its collection predated the electronic system currently used. The police department also contends the data correlates with descriptions of race given by victims and witnesses.
The department did not give even all of its 2006 data to council. While it hand delivered raw data to the City Council, it did not provide its electronic database, which, according to the civil liberties union, details reasons for each individual stop. That database, advocates said, could also provide the council with greater ability to conduct oversight.
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The City Council stepped up its demands for access to the department's electronic database. The civil liberties union has followed the council's lead by filing the Freedom of Information Law request. That request is still pending.
Councilmember Peter Vallone, who is also chair of the council's public safety committee, said, "The best way to prove or dispel these concerns is to operate in the daylight." The negotiations over the database, Vallone said, are "at the highest level" - between the City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. (For an artilce by Vallone on the police, see "A Dwindling Police Presence.")
While the NYPD has been reticent to release the database to the City Council, the department has turned it over to the RAND Corporation for an independent analysis into whether the department was using race as a factor in stop and frisk instances.
Announcing the partnership in February, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a press release, "While the police department's analysis of the data in general terms showed that stops were consistent with concentrations of crime and of victim descriptions of suspects, we've asked RAND...to make an in-depth inquiry to determine whether there are any flaws that we may need to address."
The onset of an independent investigation into the data has not stopped calls for further transparency. "The private company asked to do a study of these statistics is using the raw data that the City Council doesn't have," Vallone said. "Clearly without access to the same information, we won't be able to verify their conclusions or in fact do as in-depth a study."
Chris Dunn, legislative director for the New York Civil Liberties Union said an independent analysis was important to police accountability.
"There's been a lot of evidence to suggest that race is playing a big role in people getting stopped in stop and frisks," he said. "That's an important policy issue, but there needs to be a more serious analysis of the data to confirm that."
Dunn fears that RAND's exclusive access to the data will result in a one-sided analysis. He said by not widely releasing the stop and frisk records, it appears that the department has something to hide. "I don't think there's anything complicated about it," Dunn said. "[The NYPD doesn't] want anyone else to see [the data]. And I don't think they want people to see it because there's trouble in the database for them."
In an emailed response, Deputy Police Commissioner for Public Information Paul Browne said the department is not required nor will it give the council access to the database because it identifies individuals.
Figures released in August for the second quarter of 2007 revealed the amount of stops decreased by more than 12 percent compared to the same quarter in 2006. But the new numbers have not stalled the call for increased transparency.
Effect on Communities
The fatal shooting by police of Amadou Diallo in 1999 produced greater calls for police oversight. As part of that, the City Council was charged with receiving and reviewing the stop and frisk data. Since then, allegations of stop and frisk abuse have not ceased and minority communities, some leaders said, have been especially hard hit.
For minority communities, Cohen of the NAACP said, the policy goes beyond crime control. Stop and frisks have a negative impact on communities, he added, by putting individuals through humiliating interrogations and pat downs. And, he said, racial profiling is rife.
"[The police] might get a call on their radio about a suspect and they might start stopping an 'African American male,'" Cohen said. "That's what they're looking for: an 'African American male.' They forget about tall, short, heavy, stocky, brown hair, red hair, braids."
In addition to the number of minorities that have been stopped, the 2006 data also revealed that less than 10 percent of stop and frisks result in arrests or summonses, according to the civil liberties union.
"The problem with stop-and-frisk is that even if you've got good police, the hit rate is still pretty low," said Peter Moskos, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former police officer in Baltimore.
Moskos, who stopped and frisked people during his time as a police officer, has conflicting feeling about it. While he said the practice helps get guns off of New York City streets, he also finds it troubling. "It's not pleasant," Moskos said. "Police approach the situation assuming that you're armed until it's proven otherwise. It's a hands on, intrusive, inherently bad experience that creates a lot of the resentment that's out there."
He said much could be done to improve stop-and-frisk encounters. "It sounds mundane, but police could be more courteous and less rude when they do it," Moskos said. "It's never pleasant to be frisked. But it can be made a little less unpleasant."
But others seek greater changes. Cohen and the NAACP want to stricter accountability and increased diversity training for police. Dunn said the numbers of stop and frisk encounters needs to diminish. The police, he said, need "to find a way to train police officers to stop people on the basis of suspicious activities instead of things like race."
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New York City touts itself as being the safest big city in America, and murders in the first nine months of this year declined by 18 percent from their level in 2006. Various commentators credit the police department with having prevented another terrorist attack in the city. A recent poll found 64 percent of New Yorkers approve of the job Ray Kelly is doing as police commissioner. And the furor over police conduct in black communities, which erupted after the fatal police shooting of Sean Bell last November, largely has faded from the front pages.
Despite all the good news, though, the city's police face a number of challenges. Amid all the praise for Kelly, many black and Latino New Yorkers -- particularly young people -- see themselves singled out by officers and subjected to outright abuse. Complaints against officers a have reached record levels while the Bloomberg administration dismisses much of the criticism -- both of the department itself and of the independent agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, charged with policing the police.
In many neighborhoods confrontations with the police are a daily fact of life, but in others, demonstrations provide the spark for disputes between police and civilians. While the police cracked down on protests during the Giuliani administration, the policy gained force and it seems a greater degree of public acceptance after the September 11 attacks as the administration sought to equate policing demonstrations with preventing terrorism. It could not, though, fend off all the legal challenges, particularly over the arrests at the 2004 Republican convention. So far, in court, the police have tended to be on the losing side.
Against this backdrop, the department has found it increasingly difficult to attract new recruits. The latest round of contract negotiations between the city and the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association ended with an arbitration panel ruling that rookie cops would only make about $25,000 a year, about half what their counterparts take home in Los Angeles.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Kelly have highlighted the starting pay as a major problem but the union has chosen to focus on the wages for experienced officers. NYPD officers, the union says, make far less than their seasoned counterparts in the suburbs, a fact the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association blames for 4,500 departures from police ranks in the last five years. The recruitment difficulties and the departures have left the department about 2,800 officers short of its projected level, According to one estimate.
This week, Gotham Gazette examines several of the issues confronting the New York City Police Department:
Policing the Police
The number of complaints against the police has increased rapidly in recent years, and critics charge the department and the civilian agency charged with monitoring it do not do enough to stop the abuses.
The Failure of Civilian Oversight
The former executive director of the Civilian Complaint Review Board argues that the agency has been co-opted by the police department and is not serving as the strong and independent agency New Yorkers need.
Stop and Frisk
Police stopped and searched more than half a million New Yorkers in 2006, making the procedure as common in some communities as brushing one's teeth.
Up Against the Constitution
The police department considers its handling of protests at the 2004 Republican convention a major success, but the courts do not seem to agree.
A Police Shortage
A police presence prevents crime, writes the head of the City Council Public Safety Committee, which makes the shrinking of the New York City Police Department particularly distressing.
Previous Articles
New York's 'Ring of Steel'
The police department says a plan for high-tech security downtown is simple common sense, but critics see it as a waste of money and an invasion of privacy.
Police in the Schools
Schools have metal detectors, safety agents and even police officers. What effect does this have on what goes on in classrooms and hallways?
Auxiliary Police
In the wake of the shooting death of two of its officers, great changes may be underway in the way New York City's 4,500-member volunteer police force is trained, deployed, supervised...and protected.
50 Bullets, Many Issues
The shooting of Sean Bell on his wedding echoes other shooting of unarmed black men by police. A look at the reactions, the issues raised and what some say should be done to prevent similar tragedies.
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A Poster from VietAct
It took 12 years for Martina Okeke to break free. After moving from Nigeria to New York in 1988, she cooked, cleaned and took care of a Staten Island couple's children on the promise of a $300 monthly wage and tuition help for her kids back home. She never received a penny.
Friends from Okeke's church finally convinced her to leave the family, but she refused to report them to the authorities. "I did not want to have a bad name," she told a reporter from the New York Times.
In June 2001, two Indonesian women, who paid $3,000 each for a falsified visa, airline tickets from Jakarta and the promise of a well-paying restaurant job in New York, escaped from a Brooklyn brothel. They had arrived in New York only to find that their "debt" had increased to $30,000. The men waiting for them at the airport also threatened to kill them if they refused to work as prostitutes, according to the Brooklyn Rail.
Human trafficking for labor or sex would seem to be something from another century — or at least another place. Stories like these, however, make clear that the practice exists in modern-day New York. Galvanized by such shocking anecdotes, an unlikely coalition of Bush administration officials, Christian conservatives and liberal activists have focused attention and money on human trafficking, passing landmark federal legislation and committing over $150 million to find and help domestic trafficking victims.
This June, New York joined the effort, becoming one of 29 states to pass state-specific human trafficking legislation. The law, designed to address some of the perceived gaps and shortcomings of the federal law, gives local law enforcement agencies new tools to prosecute traffickers and new services for victims. Scheduled to take effect on November 1, it was immediately hailed by a broad group of supporters, including victim and immigrant rights organizations as well as the editorial board of the New York Times.
Having set the legislative framework for anti-trafficking legislation, New York turns to the difficult task of implementation. Fighting trafficking is difficult, and the problem is complicated by the fact that no one can even agree on how many victims are currently in the United States.
By its very nature, human trafficking is a shadowy enterprise. Traffickers commonly say they will harm victims or their families if they attempt to leave. Language barriers and a suspicion of government rooted in their home countries often prevent victims from going to law enforcement or others who might help them. Traffickers may confiscate passports or warn victims that they will be deported if they approach authorities, according to Juhu Thikral, a lawyer who leads the Urban Justice Center's Sex Workers Project.
At the same time, the media, government officials and some advocates appear to inflate the number of people affected by human trafficking. For example, Congress enacted the Trafficking Victims Protections Act in 2000 on the basis of a State Department report that put the number of foreign-born victims entering the United States at 50,000 a year. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, the estimate was reached by a CIA analyst who relied on overseas news clippings. After the Government Accountability Office issued a report criticizing the methodology, a new estimate was created, essentially by using a more sophisticated version of the same methodology. A later calculation cut the figure by two thirds, resulting in an estimate of between 14,500 and 17,500 foreign-born trafficked victims per year. In 2006 former attorney general Alberto Gonzales told Congress that even that might have been overstated.
Determining the number of trafficked victims in New York presents even more problems. With its international airports and ethnic neighborhoods, New York is believed to be a major hub in the trafficking business, but no reliable data exists on the nature or extent of the problem.
A final complicating factor relates to how trafficking is defined. Under New York law, a trafficking victim does not have to be foreign-born. The definition includes anyone who is forced into sex work or other types of work, such as domestic labor. That means, for example, that a young woman born and brought up in New York City who is recruited as a sex worker under false pretenses can be counted as a victim of sex trafficking. The New York State Office of Children and Family Services estimates that over 2,500 children are forced into sex work every year in New York.
Perhaps wary of these problems, advocates and government officials would not offer an estimate of the total number of trafficking victims working in New York City. They all couched their answer in terms of broad ranges and were careful to note the unreliability of “official” totals. Whatever the numbers, though, experts believe that only a small number of human trafficking victims ever come to the attention of victim support agencies. For example, Crystal Deboise, the coordinator of Human Trafficking Programs at the New York Association of New Americans estimates only between 100 and 150 human trafficking victims are currently being served by the main victim support organizations in New York City, including the Association of New Americans and Safe Horizon.
Whatever the numbers of victims, most need help. To encourage more victims to come forward and seek assistance, the New York State law seeks to fill gaps in victim services authorized by federal law.
Under the federal trafficking prevention, passed by Congress in 2000, victims can receive services if they are certified as victims by the Department of Health and Human Services. They are also eligible for so-called T-Visas, which allow foreign-born victims to stay in the United States while they help law enforcement agencies prosecute the case. Advocates say, though, that the benefits offered by federal law are often slow in coming. It can take 18 months for the federal government to issue a T-Visa. According to humantrafficking.org, in the first six years since their creation, only 500 T-Visas were issued.
To address this, the New York law will make “pre-certification” assistance available to victims. It authorizes the state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance to enter into contracts with social service agencies to provide services immediately to victims who come forward. The goal is help address what Deboise calls the “first week problem”: meeting the immediate needs of trafficking victims for food and shelter. “People don’t (always) know they’re a victim of trafficking,” said Deboise. “They want to know, â€am I allowed to leave?’ We’ll send a cab to pick them up, do a quick assessment and try to find them a place to sleep for the night.”
Even under the new law, victims, especially illegal immigrants, face a difficult choice: co-operate or face deportation. “We make it clear to people that if they’re over 18, in order to pursue services or legal status, they have to cooperate with law enforcement” said Thikral of the Urban Justice. For many individuals, that can be a difficult choice: Despite being beaten by her boss at a Suffolk County brothel, one Long Island immigrant who initially agreed to cooperate with police recanted, according to the New York Times. Now in federal custody, she is awaiting deportation.
A second goal of the New York law is to crack down on the practice of trafficking itself. Three new felonies have been added to state law, including laws that specifically target the methods used in sex and labor trafficking, such as withholding passports and threatening deportation. A third felony targets New York businesses that knowingly promote “sex tourism” in other countries. Finally, a number of misdemeanor crimes were also added to the New York law, including increased penalties for patronizing a prostitute (the so-called “Johns” law).
Advocates hail most of these changes. “This is a strong definition of trafficking,” said Thikral. Under the law, prosecutors can now target specific techniques used by traffickers rather having to pursue trafficking cases on rape and kidnapping charges, which may be harder to prove.
The advocates do have some concerns however. Because the law makes sex trafficking a higher-level felony (punishable by up to 25 years in jail) than labor trafficking (up to 7 years), some fear labor trafficking will not be taken as seriously. Thikral disagreed with the legislature’s decision to increase the penalties for Johns because she worries it might keep the Johns from bringing trafficking cases to the attention of law enforcement.
Whatever their qualms about specific aspects of the law, most experts believe the most important change is that it will encourage local law enforcement to be more aggressive in prosecuting trafficking. “If you don’t have state penalties, you have to go outside the state system,” said Mary B. Kavaney, the deputy commissioner of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, said. “With three new felonies, you can bring [trafficking] to the forefront” of law enforcement efforts in New York.
This could result in increased prosecution of relatively small-scale traffickers. Federal law enforcement agencies tend to be more interested in cases with major traffickers and large numbers of victims. Under the new state law, local police can help pick up the slack by pursuing cases that involve a smaller number of victims.
For Kenneth Franzblau, the director of human trafficking at the New York State Office of Criminal Justice Services, the key to successful implementation of the new law is training: getting police officers to adopt a different perspective when they confront a potential trafficking situation. He cites the examples of raiding a brothel or investigating a domestic dispute between a nanny and her employer. In those examples, he would encourage the police to ask questions about the living situation of the people they find, whether they are free to leave or if they were forced to surrender passports or other identification to their employer.
Still, breaking up trafficking rings is difficult at any level of law enforcement. According to the Washington Post, 148 federal cases have been brought nationwide since 2000, despite the creation of 42 Justice Department task forces designed to bring representatives of law enforcement and social service agencies together.
While experts dispute the number, no one doubts that there are traffickers in the New York area. But more than a year after a Long Island Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force was organized, not one trafficker operating on Long Island has been arrested, and just one victim, a Chinese woman forced to work in a Wantagh brothel that was disguised as a massage parlor, has been freed from traffickers, according to a May 2006 New York Times report. Convincing the woman to cooperate was a painstaking process -- she had been arrested twice in four months, but it took the intervention of a prosecutor and a police detective to convince her that she wouldn’t be deported. Notwithstanding her testimony, the owner of the brothel has yet to be arrested, in large part because the police still need testimony.
After New York’s law takes effect on November 1, the Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking will have the most responsibility for its implementation. Composed of multiple state agencies, the task force will coordinate training efforts for law enforcement agencies and evaluate the state’s progress in targeting trafficking efforts. It will tackle the issue of data collection in hopes of getting a more reliable handle on the problem. (The Vera Institute for Justice is also embarking on a similar research effort with funding from the federal government, using New York City as a test case.)
This is not a purely academic question. Officials at the state Division of Criminal Justice Services say it is key to their mission. “No one knows the numbers,” Kavaney said. “If we knew the numbers of victims, the ethnicity of victims and perpetrators and the types of businesses being used (by traffickers) as cover, we’d go a long way.”
Aubrey Fox is project director of Bronx Community Solutions, aimed at changing the Bronx court system’s approach to low-level crime.
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In the almost six years since terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center, much has changed for New Yorkers. They have learned to always carry a photo ID, to be sure to take their keys out of their pockets when going through metal detectors and to react calmly to being frisked at a Mets game. But will they accept being subjected to routine surveillance as they go about their business on the streets of lower Manhattan?
The New York City Police Department will soon launch a new counter-terrorism surveillance program named the "Lower Manhattan Security Initiative." It will include some 3,000 cameras – both public and private – below Canal Street to monitor people and cars moving through Lower Manhattan, along with license plate readers, a command center and movable roadblocks. The program is generally seen as having been modeled on London’s so-called ring of steel, a security and surveillance system that keeps many eyes on London’s financial district and historic sites. Some counts estimate that with this system the average London resident is photographed 300 times a day
The planned system for New York City represents a "commonsense approach to protecting what is arguably one of the most sensitive 1.7 square miles on the planet," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said on the News Hour earlier this summer. "It’s a wise use of public funds in protecting certainly a tremendous revenue generator for the city and for the country."
The cordon of cameras and other technology has, however, attracted opposition from critics on both sides of the political spectrum who variously attack it for threatening privacy rights, being ineffective and costing too much money.
The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative is certainly sweeping. Although surveillance programs have been used in other cities such as Washington to help prevent security threats, New York’s new initiative is a significantly larger undertaking than any other previously attempted, or perhaps even envisioned, in the United States, according to Tim Connors, director of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Policing Terrorism.
The thousands of cameras represent a dramatic increase from the 250 cameras already in use for crime prevention. It also represents a major change in technology. The existing cameras can capture moving images, but to be reviewed and analyzed the data first needs to be downloaded. With the new system, images from the cameras would go directly to a surveillance center. The system would include methods to quickly block roads and restrict traffic. The new cameras would have the capability to transmit data in real time to agencies in Washington including the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The program seems ambitious even for a city that has expended so much money and effort to avert another terrorist attack since September 11, 2001. As of last year, New York was reportedly spending some $200 million a year on counterterrorism efforts. Every day more than 1,000 police officers focus on that task – from collecting intelligence to watching cars and trucks entering the Lincoln Tunnel. Experts agree that the city – not the federal government – has put together the most extensive urban counterterrorism operation in the world. Much of that, Kelly said, focuses on prevention – trying to keep terrorists from coming together and even thinking about an attack let alone actually staging one.
This security initiative takes a different approach. For one, it relies on technology more than human intelligence.
So does this high technology initiative indicate a shift in policy? According to Connors, nothing he has heard so far indicates that it does. "Part of the overall strategy here is to complement—as opposed to eliminate—the city’s present reliance upon a large, well-funded police force and, particularly important, one that has received state-of-the-art training in counter-terrorism," he said.
The police use a number of tactics to fight terror, and the surveillance initiative, Connors said, represents a new resource in the city’s tool belt for protecting itself. It is definitely not "an either-or proposition in play here," he said.
By the end of next year, thousands of security cameras will be recording, unfiltered, in real time and without a warrant or the need to demonstrate probable cause, millions of ordinary New Yorkers going about their lives in one of the busiest areas in the world. Civil liberties groups are, not surprisingly, concerned about what they fear is the erosion of privacy rights of U.S. citizens. "[This] plan is a major step towards blanket police monitoring of law-abiding New Yorkers, and it could lead us down a path toward a total surveillance society, " the New York Civil Liberties Union said in a statement on July 9.
The system would not seem to violate any laws. Supporters of the surveillance, including Kelly, argue no one has a right to privacy on a public street. "It’s long been settled in the law that there is no expectation of privacy in the public place," Kelly has said. "It’s simply not a legal issue. It’s not a violation of the Constitution. It’s not a violation of statute."
Skeptics raise a number of concerns:
Racial profiling: The first challenge, according to P.J. Crowley, director of homeland security at the Center for American Progress is the difficulty in determining what constitutes "suspicious" activity. The answer, he believes, is truly in the "eye of the beholder." Already, he notes, people have been detained for taking pictures of bridges or landmarks. It is not unreasonable to think that an amateur photographer who looks Middle Eastern would be subject to more intense scrutiny – and to having his photo sent on to Washington – than a person with Northern European features.
Compiling personal information: It is likely and foreseeable, said Jim Harper, director of information planning studies at the Cato Institute, that the information gathered through the security initiative could be used to develop a database that will include "profiles" on the schedules and movements of civilians—personal information that an individual would normally regard as being private. This might alarm some New Yorkers. "When law abiding citizens go out in public and move around," he explains, "they don’t expect people to use new high-tech surveillance technology in order to track us and monitor us, extracting untold information in the process."
Kelly has said that the police have no interest in holding on to extraneous information.
Invasions of Privacy: For the cameras to be effective, someone has to review the images and that human intervention can create its own difficulties. In a television interview, George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen recalled sitting in a camera control room one night. When boredom set in after midnight, the workers focused not on miscreants but on attractive women and people making out in the park. During the 2004 Republican convention in New York, Rosen recalled, "surveillance cameras on airplanes took pictures of a couple making love on a roof garden, followed them, watched this whole thing and then actually trailed the woman as she left."
Unrelated Uses: Interestingly enough the cameras will be installed in Manhattan as Mayor Michael Bloomberg seeks cameras and other technology for another program – his plan to charge cars and trucks to be in parts of Manhattan during the workweek. In London, surveillance cameras enforce that city’s congestion pricing plan, according to Rosen. "There’s really a form of mission creep, and cameras that are accepted for one purpose are used for another," he said.
According to Kelly, the administration has no plans to use the cameras ringing lower Manhattan for "revenue generation." And he has noted that planning for the surveillance program began long before the city embarked on its congestion pricing proposal.
Even many who themselves have reservations about the security initiative concede that many New Yorkers are willing to accept cameras if they think surveillance will make the city safer. "Most people like cameras," Rosen said. Photos from England, showing suspects in July’s attempted bombings in London and Glasgow and their role in the capture of suspects in the July 2005 bombings of the transit system have bolstered their appeal.
That said, Crowley believes there are steps the city can take to balance citizens’ civil liberties with the need to protect millions of lives. The first, he said, is for the administration to communicate with civil liberties groups who can help ensure that law enforcement and intelligence agencies are doing what is necessary from a security standpoint without stepping over the line and infringing on the legitimate privacy rights of average citizens.
The second step, he said, is developing a robust public review process. Several different agencies are already involved in overseeing issues associated with security and privacy in other cities. "If New York is indeed going to move in this direction," Crowley argued, "they have to make sure there is adequate oversight, and offer an opportunity for those who believe they have been unfairly targeted as a result of this [to] challenge the way the surveillance is being implemented."
Estimates are that the initiative could cost $90 million. Of that, Kelly said, the police department has received $25 million—a significant down payment. Out of this, $15 million was allocated by grants from the Department of Homeland Security; the other $10 million came from the city’s budget. The funding for it this year represents something of a turnaround. In 2006, the plan seemed largely doomed as the federal government cut homeland security funds for New York City. This year, though, Washington increased its allocation of anti-terror funding for New York.
The price tag for the 3,000 surveillance cameras alone could reach about $8 million to implement in the first year. The police department press office declined to provide further details on cost estimates. According to Connors, Bloomberg has indicated that he will do whatever is necessary to secure the city, without being influenced by budgetary constraints.
Even if the city has the money, is the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative the best use of it? While the city’s strategy in the last six years has focused on preventing terrorist attacks in their earliest stages, the "ring of steel" technology would be most useful in the event of a failed terrorist plot, such as this summer’s thwarted car bombings in London, Harper said. Thousands of surveillance cameras could provide police with unedited video of the individuals involved and a precise timeline of how the event unfolded. The material recorded on camera has the potential to be an unparalleled resource for the city to learn what mistakes both sides made and help the city better prevent a future attack.
"Cameras are good at figuring out, after the fact, what happened," Harper said. "Their limitation is that they provide law enforcement with essentially no capability to actually stop an attack before it happens."
Kelly believes the security system can act as a deterrent. "It is not a panacea," he said, "but it is a valuable additional layer to put in place."
By its very nature, of course, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative focuses on Lower Manhattan. Other parts of the city also represent obvious targets for a future terrorist attack. Midtown, for example, is home to the United Nations, Grand Central and Penn Station, the Empire State Building as well as the headquarters of many financial service firms.
Connors thinks the decision to focus on Lower Manhattan boiled down intelligence estimates of the area’s threat level. He notes that al Qaeda and other affiliated terror groups have broadcast to America that its most coveted target for a large-scale attack remains Lower Manhattan. And, of course, it has already attacked that area twice.
Crowley similarly believes that the decision to focus on Lower Manhattan, as opposed to the entire city, makes sense. He argues that it is Lower Manhattan that is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the financial capital of the world. "There are other attractive targets elsewhere, but I cannot dispute making the protection of Lower Manhattan a security priority," he said.
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When Andrew Alexander turned 17 on January 3, 2006, the Queens high school senior did not expect that he would be arrested later that day. And he definitely did not expect that his arrest would ultimately bring about a change in New York's procedures for making information about convictions public. But a policy change resulting from Andrew Alexander's birthday arrest, conviction and subsequent lawsuit will affect thousands of defendants in New York City Criminal Court every year.
Alexander was charged with criminal mischief, creating graffiti and possessing graffiti instruments (paint), all misdemeanors. After negotiations, he pled guilty in Queens Criminal Court to disorderly conduct. This was a typical "plea bargain," where a defendant, who has committed a simple misdemeanor and has had little or no prior contact with the criminal justice system, admits guilt and does not go to trial. Alexander’s sentence, a conditional discharge, required him to do community service and avoid being arrested for at least one year.
Disorderly conduct, or "discon," which is used to cover a multitude of acts, is a violation, or an offense, rather than a crime and does not result in a criminal record.
One year later, Alexander applied for a job as a cashier at Sears. The application asked, "Have you been convicted of a crime within the last seven (7) years?"
Alexander answered, "No." He believed that was truthful. When he pled guilty to disorderly conduct, he was advised that the offense was a violation, not a crime, and that he would not have a record of a criminal conviction.
Sears retained USIS, a private screening and background search company, to investigate applicants. As part of its investigation of Alexander, USIS contacted the New York State Office of Court Administration and, providing Alexander's name and date of birth, requested his criminal history, if any.
The next day, for a fee of $52.00, the office emailed USIS "Criminal History Search Results," and disclosed that Alexander had been charged with the three graffiti-related misdemeanors and pled guilty to the violation of disorderly conduct.
Based upon this information, Sears rejected Alexander's job application.
Alexander sued the Office of Court Administration and Jonathan Lippman, who was then chief administrative judge, claiming that his rights had been violated since findings or pleas of guilt to violations are supposed to remain sealed. The lawsuit was brought by Stuart Lichten of the Manhattan firm of Schwartz, Lichten and Bright. The suit was based on criminal procedure law, which provides that, when someone is convicted of disorderly conduct or another violation, no statewide search by the Office of Court Administration of electronic records can be disseminated to the public. A person who is convicted, by plea or trial, of a violation is entitled to have the record sealed and fingerprints and any photographs returned. Disorderly conduct is a "non-printable" charge for which fingerprints are not required.
The state took the position that, while Alexander was entitled to the return of fingerprints and "mug shots," sealing did not apply. The counsel for the Office of Court Administration, Michael Colodner, argued that the sealing does not apply to court records, but only to records of arrest and prosecution in the files of the Division of Criminal Justice, police agencies and prosecutors' offices. He further argued that paper (i.e. non-electronic) records kept in the courts also did not have to be sealed.
The dispute arose at least partly because the original charges against Alexander were misdemeanors. As a result, the records of the violation also went along into the state system. But according to Lichten, the release of the information violated his client's rights to sealing. That is, the search made available to USIS should not have included anything about the violation; any reference should have been deleted.
Under the Criminal Procedure Law that governs the confidentiality of records, where the criminal action ends in a violation conviction, the Office of Court Administration is not permitted to disseminate to the public, statewide records kept electronically. A person who is convicted is entitled to have that statewide record kept confidential. However, the actual paper records kept in New York City Criminal Court are not sealed, and the public does have access to the physical record in the clerk's office. The intended balance is that there is a public record in the office of the Clerk of the Criminal Court, but not in the statewide database made available to investigators for a fee.
As a result of the suit, the Office of Court Administration agreed to change its policy on disseminating information. If that agreement -- which is not formally written -- is violated, the lawsuit can be reopened. Justice Joan A. Madden of New York State Supreme Court issued an order discontinuing the lawsuit "based on the office’s agreement to change its policy."
A separate lawsuit brought against Sears has also been settled, but due to a confidentiality agreement the terms are not known.
Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court JusticeÂ
Every New Yorker has seen it happen. A group of teenagers enters a subways car, talking loudly, perhaps cursing or using other epitaphs. Once in the car they expand to fill all space, sprawling across available seats, extending their arms as they hang onto the poles. The other passengers stare at the ground, peer resolutely at their newspapers, trying to avert their eyes from what many see as a threatening presence in their midst.
For decades if not longer, many older New Yorkers have viewed teenagers, particularly those of a different ethic or racial group, as dangerous. The youth gangs of the 1950s, the reports of so-called wilding in the late 1980s and the often-profane shouting of today’s teenagers have reinforced that notion.
For their part, teenagers complain of being harassed by police and others for simply being there. School guards shoo students away from their own schools upon dismissal. Community boards debate how to keep them off the sidewalks (see related story) , and parents of younger children wish the older ones would stay away from playgrounds and even parks. Stores post signs warning students away, particularly during schools hours.
Conflicts and Resolutions Police in the Schools: Hanging Out and Hurting Business: Breaking the Cycle of Violence: Taking A.C.T.I.O.N. at The Point: Cutbacks After School: |
While this tension has long existed, a number of recent incidents have focused attention on it.
--About 30 students on their way to a wake for a murdered teen, a gang leader, police said, were arrested in May in Brooklyn. Police said they feared the gathering would lead to violence and more gang activity, but the young people charged the police acted only because they were young and black or Latino. Later Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said the young people jumping on cars and being generally rowdy. He has not yet produced any evidence to this effect.
--Police arrested more than 200 people, many but not all young, at this year’s Puerto Rican Day parade. Many said they were picked up simply for wearing yellow and gold, the colors of the Latin Kings gang. Police denied it, saying people were stopped for their conduct, not what they wore.
--Following a string of robberies police last October reportedly stopped any all male black teenagers at the 7th Avenue subway station in Park Slope Brooklyn.
--A 13-yearold middle school student in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, was handcuffed and arrested, reportedly for writing on her classroom desk.
At the same time, a number of studies and reports have documented the sometimes tense relationship between teens and police. The New York Civil Liberties Union issued a study last spring charging that policies designed make New York City schools safer have "transformed New York City classrooms into hostile and dysfunctional environments that damage students and disempower educators.” (See related story.) In particular, the report found that 93,000 of the city’s approximately 1 million public school students had to go through extreme security – metal detectors, searches and so on -- because they attend schools the Department of Education considers dangerous. Further the report found that, with more than 4,600 school safety agents, “the NYPD's School Safety Division alone constitutes the tenth largest police force in the country.”
Stop and frisk data released by the New York City police department found the police stopped five times as many people in 2006 as in 2002 and that half of those stopped were black – and young black men say they are disproportionately the targets of such searches. The City Council has asked for more information, which it says the police department has not furnished.
A series of columns by Bob Herbert of the New York Times focused on the intense policing of young people in the city in the schools and on the streets.
While most teenagers—like most people of any age – are not criminals, police and others have reason to be concerned about illegal acts committed by young people. Crime statistics for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2006, found a rise in crime, including murder, committed by young people in New York City.
Last summer saw a spate of teenage violence across the country leading Sarah Karnasiewicz to write in Salon, “The story of summer 2006 has been one of kids and killing,” although she added that most of the deaths were in middle-sized cities, rather than New York or Los Angeles. But in one large city – Chicago – some 32 students were killed in the school year that ended in June.
People who work with young people, such as Waddell Parks in East New York (see related story), confirm that an increasing number of young people settle any difference, however minor, with a gun. And while gangs are a less serious problem here than in some other cities, they do exist.
Then there are the incidents that, while they may be far less common than they once were, remain chilling: The teenagers who killed a Brooklyn teenager for his iPod or the high school conflict that spilled out into busy Union Square shortly before Christmas, leaving one youngster dead of stab wounds and two other seriously injured.
The current crackdown in schools was instituted in 2004 after a series of well-publicized incidents prompted politicians and the press to condemn the Bloomberg administration for not doing more to keep schools safe. Further, while some teens say police, schools officials and others monitor their activity too closely, statistics show that teen violence may fester because adults do too little. A study conducted in the late 1990s, based on interviews with young, violent offenders in New York City, found that 100 percent of them said adults ignored older youths fighting in the street, 74 percent said they ignored young people selling drugs, and 37 percent ignored property being vandalized.
Few people would argue that police have no role in guarding against youth violence or that schools do not need some kind of security. Disagreements, though, arise over when such measures infringe on the rights of teenagers who, of course, are entitled to the constitutional protections of other people living in the United States. In addition many who work with teens say security measures can only do so much. To address the problem in a more fundamental way, they maintain, teenagers need to have more respect for themselves and for others and must to be actively involved in their communities in a constructive way.
This week, Gotham Gazette, examines several aspects of this issue, including the situation in the schools, programs to address the problem – and the funding difficulties afflicting some of those programs. Â