NYPD
BECOMING MORE TOP HEAVY AND
HAMSTRUNG
Governor
Cuomo wants broader authority for the NYS Attorney General
to conduct
investigations into use of deadly force reviews
TAGS:
NYPD, CCRB, IAD, NY STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL,
ADDITIONAL
POLICE “OVERSIGHT”, JURISDICTIONAL ISSUES,
SEPARATION
OF STATE AND CITY
(Thursday July, 9 2015 Mott
Haven, The Bronx, NYC) The Members of
Service (MOS) of the NYPD who patrol this gritty precinct
in the South Bronx are in many substantial ways a world away from the public
eyes of many of the more “high profile” precincts in the City such as those in Manhattan. While much has changed in this corner of The
Bronx including the Port Norris and the Melrose neighborhoods of the 40th
Precinct, there remains a tenacious criminal element that make this one of the
busiest Precincts in the City. The
narrow blocks of historic buildings and pre-war 5 story walk-ups can take on an
air of menace after the summer sun slips off into the western horizon. Gang related activity thrives and it is not
unusual to hear random gunfire punctuate the familiar City sounds of a Bronx
night. Speaking to some of the men and
women of the 40th Precinct about recent politically driven efforts
to “reform” the NYPD and to install another layer of outside “oversight” to the
already bloated upper echelon structure in One Police Plaza, you will hear the
frustration of Cops who feel abandoned by their leadership and pawns in a
potentially lethal political games of charades. In the 40th Precinct however,
you will find some of the most dedicated Cops, Cops as committed and invested
in this community as any of the thousands of hard working residents who live,
work and raise their families here.
Life can be cheap in Mott
Haven; violent death roams these streets as a familiar specter sometimes
precise and pin point, at other times callously random. Innocent very young children have died in the
crossfire of thug on thug violence and, at times it is not too far a stretch of
memory for those old enough or imagination for the younger Cops, to picture
this segment of the South Bronx during its infamous “War Years” from the mid
1960’s through the mid 1990’s. Despite
some dire predictions that Precincts like the 40th are just the
outliers of what will soon be a City-wide descent back to the “bad old days”,
enough progress has been made to make that likelihood very remote if not
impossible.
What you also hear from MOS of
the 40th and Cops from Precincts in upper Manhattan, Brooklyn South and slivers
of Queens is an emerging sense of reluctance and trepidation at play
consciously as they go about their patrol tasks. It has become fashionable, politically
correct, and somehow “noble” to criticize and lambast Cops across the country
in the past year. Any Cop will tell you
that it is the instincts and “feel” for the streets they work developed over years
that allow them to perform at their best while keeping the general public and
their colleagues safe. Any measures
designed to curtail, limit or otherwise restrict a Cops street judgement
endangers lives by a significant factor.
OVERSIGHT
After years of bitter,
rancorous debate in 1993 Mayor David Dinkins provided the executive mandate
that allowed for the creation of the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) to
function as an “independent” body tasked with handling public complaints about
Police misconduct. In the years since it
assumed its current structure and mandate, there has been an uneasy, often
fragile relationship between the CCRB and the NYPD. It has typically been as aggressive in its
mission as whomever the sitting Mayor has been.
The last years of the Michael Bloomberg administration had the two
entities “peacefully coexisting” for the most part.
The NYPD has their own
Internal Affairs Division (IAD) that has proven their worth in eliminating some
of the most flagrant corruption and in weeding out “dirty Cops” since the heyday
of the Knapp Commission
in 1970 and the controversial Mollen Commission in
1992. Other efforts have been conducted
over the years including major “sting operations” that did in fact identify and
prosecute MOS after lengthy investigations.
(It should be noted, just for the record, that among the rank and file
MOS, members of IAD are voracious rats intent on uncovering Officer misconduct
and aggressively prosecuting. Their
value is limited in part because of their history of often employing their own
“corrupt” means towards an end that is the ruination of MOS careers. Some of their tactics have been proven to
constitute entrapment but the damage is done).
Aside from IAD each Borough
has an Office of the Chief Prosecutor more than adequately staffed with
attorneys, paralegals, clerks and a contingent of investigators. A line of duty shooting is currently
subjected to a rigorous after action report and debriefing as well as being
reviewed by the Borough Prosecutor’s Office.
This is a level of oversight that has been reliably effective,
objective, transparent and fair. Despite
the expected public outcry of “cover ups”, the silence among MOS in the form of
The Thin Blue Line, and their perceived notion that the Police do function with
impunity, the system has worked well.
The public is not privy to the deliberations of a Grand Jury so they are
equally disqualified to pass judgement on its efficacy.
THE AWOL GENERAL
The New York City
Department of Investigation (DOI) is
one of the oldest Law Enforcement Agencies of its kind. With a broad mandate the DOI is a corruption
fighting force investigating any allegations of corruption, fraud, and
misconduct across the array of City agencies and entities contracted to work
for the City. The NYPD has an Inspector
General (NYPDIG) whose Office receives its license to function by the DOI and
the City Charter. With little fanfare on
May 27, 2014 Philip K.
Eure assumed the post of NYPD Inspector General and, for all intents and
purposes, that was the one and only time he has been heard from. Throughout the past year as the NYPD faced
harsh criticism, grand jury investigations and an ever growing chorus of Police
critics, Eure has been out of the public eye.
This is somewhat bizarre since he above anyone else is in a position to
launch oversight efforts such as those related to the Eric Garner case. If he is on the job while opting to remain
out of the public eye he has been a huge success. It is difficult to say with any degree of
certainty what he has been doing since taking the helm as NYPDIG. It is the
responsibility of Eure and his Office to provide oversight as well as review
all cases of alleged Police misconduct.
It seems now that Governor Cuomo’s announced proclamation that such
cases will fall under the purview of the NY State Attorney (NY State AG)
General’s Office that Eure has lost any credibility he may or may not have had
at the beginning of his tenure.
OUR HAPLESS MAYOR
Mayor Bill de Blasio ran for the
Office he now holds pandering to some of the malcontents and special interests
groups who had seen themselves as “long suffering victims” of an abusive,
racist Police Force, one that did not “value” Black lives, practiced SQF
disproportionally with young men of color, and could maim or kill with impunity. His aggressive anti-Police, anti-Stop,
Question and Frisk (SQF) campaign did resonate with certain factions across NYC
and it was due to their support that he won the election. Odd thing about campaign promises is that
when you are voted into Office based largely on a specific platform those who
cast their votes for you expect you to make good on your campaign
rhetoric. As a candidate/critic of NYPD,
de Blasio came into power with a Police Department that felt alienated by the
new Mayor. He did nothing to “mend
fences”, so to speak and, if anything, he doubled down on his harsh assessment
of the NYPD and in particular how MOS interacted with the Black and Brown
communities.
The new Mayor quickly learned
that campaign hyperbole was vastly different from having to actually conduct
business and work with the NYPD. Perhaps
for political cover he hired a former NYPD who had been very popular in the mid
1990’s in the Rudy Giuliani administration Bill Bratton, to serve as his NYPD
Commissioner. In the 20 plus years since
Bratton left the NYPD he became more of a politician and less of a Law
Enforcement Officer and that transformation was an additional insult to the
injuries de Blasio’s campaign had inflicted on the rank and file of the
NYPD.
CUOMO’S OVER-REACH
Bowing to public pressure and capitalizing
on the recent trend of disparaging MOS of the LEC, Cuomo now approves a plan to
have the NY State Attorney General review some of the “use of deadly force”
episodes. This raises some important
questions regarding jurisdictional authority, the State’s encroachment on the
City’s legal prerogatives, and is ripe with the potential for creating a
tangled knot that will only make the investigation and review process of such episodes
needlessly top heavy. There remains
unanswered the question as to when and why the NYSAG will be “invited in” to
conduct an “independent investigation” and to what extent they will be cooperating
with the local Borough Prosecutors and the NYPD itself.
The NYPD like any LEA closely
defends its territory and the possible incursion of representatives of the
NYSAG into NYPD matters will only prove to erode the jurisdictional and
territorial boundaries as recognized by the NYPD. Given the profound corruption in Albany and
years of failure by Governor Cuomo to address the State’s problems in any meaningful
way, it is difficult to see the validity in this his latest folly.
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