COMMISH SHEA ABRUPTLY
DISBANDS
THE ANTI-CRIME UNITS
TAGS: NYPD, ANTI-CRIME UNITS,
NYPD HISTORY, FORMATION OF
STREET CRIME UNITS, COMMISSIONER DERMOT SHEA
CAPITULATES, US HISTORY 1960's - 1990's
(Friday
June 19, 2020, Midtown South, NYC) In a startlingly head spinning capitulation
to the recent groundswell in some quarters to “abolish”, and/or “defund” the
Police, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea announced the elimination of the 82 elite Anti-Crime Units. He said all affected Officers and Detectives
will be “reassigned”. Such a blatant display of pacifying,
placating, and pandering to the most vocal of the protest groups that have
found a platform in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an African American
man at the hands of White Minneapolis Police Officers, is not only
discouraging; it allows for the rank and file of the NYPD to realize that we
have no backing, no support from the command level in One Police Plaza and in
City Hall. What the future will look
like is hard to speculate but all (or most) of us can recall the days when the
first iteration of the Anti-Crime Units were formed and designated Street Crime
Units back in the simmering cauldron of wide spread social unrest and crimes of every category were
staggeringly high in from the late 1960’s and into the early 1980’s.
SMOKE IN THE AIR, BLOOD ON THE STREETS
The
1960’s will forever be known in American history as the most divisive,
tumultuous, violent, and corrosive of our modern age. While engaged in an increasingly
misunderstood and unpopular war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights struggle spawned riots and events of civil and social disobedience that bordered
on sheer anarchy. The widening
“Generation Gap” contributed to the vast disconnect between the “Greatest Generation” and their children and
grandchildren comprising the ever growing “Baby Boom” The ugly triplets of White and Black
populations living in hunger, grinding poverty, and neglect from, the inner
cities of the north through the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and beyond
becoming known via TV news lead many in the White audience to begin to examine
their conscience and take a stand on Civil Rights. While the last vestiges of an overtly “Jim
Crow” South were bitterly hanging on, a “Black Power” movement came to be in
the choked urban ghettos. The most
prominent and active of these groups were the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam.
They disregarded Dr. Martin Luther King’s philosophy of “peaceful
resistance” and “non-violent activism” and went on the prove far more militant
than Malcolm X had been at the height of his
influence. Both of those men would lose
their lives to assassin’s bullets.
The
“Counterculture” was beginning to ascend from the suburbs as boys of draft age
refused to reply, burned their draft notices in protest, fled the country for
Canada, and began to engage in behaviors that their parents couldn’t understand
and certainly disapproved of. This was the
genesis of the Generation Gap. While
their protests were largely more peaceful than those related to Civil Rights
there were any number of high-profile skirmishes reaching a crescendo when
Governor Jim Rhodes dispatched Ohio National Guard troops to restore order on
the Kent State campus after 4 nights of rioting. In 13 seconds, the National Guardsmen killed
four students, wounded another nine, and leaving one paralyzed. This event galvanized protestors from a wide
range of issues.
These
events were played out to a lesser and greater degree in the streets of New
York primarily as a “declared war” on the NYPD issued by Black activists like
Eldridge Cleaver, Louis Farrakhan, Huey Newton, and others. They declared war and it was war they would
be met with after several brutal Officer ambushes, assassinations,
and murders. This had all gone on long enough. It was, as one seasoned Captain in the 34th
Precinct commented, in a long-lost candid TV soundbite from a moment of sheer
chaos on the front line, “now it’s time to take back our streets”.
WE RECLAIMED THE NIGHT
And
so it was into this breech the Street Crime Unit
was born in 1971. Initially formed as the "City Wide Anti-Crime Unit” it did not take long for them to make
their presence known. Operating in three
member teams of plain clothes Officers they became a force to reckon with. Often, they would use “decoys” to attract
those with a criminal bent. One Officer
would lay on a bench in a subway station, a bus stop or park reeking of
alcohol, appearing disheveled, and drunk; an easy target for the predators that
roamed the night. The SCU patrolled the streets in confiscated taxis hoping an
opportunistic thief would approach the cab when it was stopped at a red
light. Little did the scumbags know
there were three Cops in the taxi and they were going to be spending some time
in Central Booking. The exploits of the
Street Crime Unit are widely documented, their success still demands
respect. They were officially disbanded
in 2002 in the wake of the controversial shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999.
RECONSTITUTED
The
SCU was reconstituted in 2002 and has been widely credited in the increasingly
lower crimes that NYC has seen over the last two decades. Their aggressive tactics and underlying
strategy was largely based on the “Broken Windows” theory as employed by Mayor Rudy
Giuliani and his first Police Commissioner William Bratton. The results, while
controversial to some in the minority communities, were highly effective. Others
in the most crime ridden neighborhoods of color were grateful that the NYPD was
in fact removing dangerous offenders from the streets. They welcomed the Anti-Crime Units presence. By
the end of the sixth year of the Giuliani Administration NYC was unquestionably
the “Safest Big City” in the United States.
The statistics were undeniable (see
CompStat) major crimes across the board, in all categories were ebbing down
to levels not seen in a generation. CompStat was not without its detractors
both in and out of the NYPD but after the rank and file MOS saw proof of the decreasing
crime rate many were sold on the concept.
The
world of Law Enforcement is like no other “business”, for lack of a better
word. Construction workers take years to
erect a structure, upon completion they move on to the next project. Lawyers argue cases and, upon conclusion they
move along to the next case, their next client. This most certainly not true in
the streets that are patrolled by the NYPD, nor is it true in keeping the gains
of lowered crime rates down. It cannot
be so. It seems the most ardent
supporters of wide-ranging, vast “reform” in Policing that it is a time to put
an end to real Policing.
Is
there room for “better” Policing? Sure. The Police across the country have to examine
their practices and procedures, their hiring and training, yet never losing
sight of the often gritty realities of Policing. New York City is a most
diverse, disparate, densely populated urban environment as there is anywhere in
the USA and abroad. Once the smoke
clears, the activists retreat rhetorically, and the tensions recede, the debate
of how we Police, how our population is Policed can begin in earnest. In the heat
of the current climate rational discussion about anything under the rubric of
Police “reform” is simply not possible.
Until
such time the men and women of the Finest Police Department in the world will
show up to work tour after tour and do what it is that they do best.
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Brooding Cynyx 2020 © All Rights Reserved
