Federal trial provides window into NYPD practices (The Associated Press) and Other Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 NYC Police Related News Articles

 

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 — Good Afternoon, Stay Safe

 

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NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk

 

Federal trial provides window into NYPD practices

By COLLEEN LONG (The Associated Press)  — Tuesday, March 26th, 2013;  12:55 a.m. EDT

 

 

NEW YORK — The right people at the right time in the right location.

 

That phrase — repeated over and over in a secret recording of a police supervisor — is at the crux of a civil rights challenge to the New York Police Department's contentious tactic known as stop, question and frisk.

 

"So, who are the right people?" asks officer Pedro Serrano, during an argument with his supervisor about how to make a legal stop.

 

"Depends where you are," replies Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack.

 

The recording was played during Serrano's testimony last week at a federal trial that's providing a window into the workings of the nation's largest police force, the instincts officers rely on to do their jobs and the difficulty police supervisors have in translating written policies into practice on the street.

 

Serrano works patrol in the 40th Precinct in the Bronx, among the more crime-ridden in the city. Robberies there rose from 397 in 2011 to 478 in 2012, and grand larcenies rose from 412 to 469.

 

Serrano said his supervisors believed he tallied too few arrests, summonses and stop, question and frisk reports, known as "250s." When he appealed his annual evaluation earlier this year, Serrano decided to use his phone to record his boss.

 

"So you're saying what? Summons everybody for whatever reason?" the patrolman asks.

 

"No, see, listen to me. Understand this. All right? I don't summons people for any reason, all right," McCormack responds. "We go out there and we summons people and we '250' people, the right people, at the right time, the right location."

 

Lawyers for four men who have sued police say McCormack's phrase should be interpreted as a thinly-veiled mandate to stop blacks and Hispanics to inflate numbers so the department looks proactive. Police officials and city lawyers said the inspector is trying to explain that to help stifle a specific crime, for example, the right people may be black or Hispanic males — those who are most often stopped by police.

 

"Again, take Mott Haven, where he had the most problems ... robberies and grand larcenies. The problem was, what? Male blacks," McCormack said. "And as I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21."

 

Serrano raises his voice: "So what am I supposed to do? Male blacks 14 to 20 wearing dark clothing? What do you want me to do specifically?"

 

The appeal of Serrano's evaluation is then declared over, with his superiors suggesting he needs more training.

 

The ongoing trial is creating an uncomfortable spotlight for a department more accustomed to bragging about its crime-fighting prowess and a drop in crime to levels not seen since the 1960s. Several top brass are expected to testify in the coming weeks, including Chief of Department Joseph Esposito and Paul Browne, the deputy commissioner for public information and a close adviser to Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Kelly have hailed "stop and frisk" as a program that has deterred crime and saved lives by taking weapons off of would-be killers and by making crooks reconsider carrying weapons in the first place.

 

But the trial has exposed how in practice, the tactic creates often messy and difficult encounters between police and the public. So far, men have testified that they were stopped and frisked by officers as they went about their lives — getting milk at a store, walking home, going to a party. The men say they were doing nothing wrong and felt victimized by overzealous officers.

 

One man who testified, Nicholas Peart, described an encounter in which officers swarmed, pointed their weapons and told him and two relatives to get down on the ground late on the night of his 18th birthday. According to police radio calls, the officers were looking for robbery suspects who resembled the three men. But Peart was scared and felt harassed — and didn't think police had enough reason to stop him. No one was arrested.

 

Most officers believe they are stopping someone for a purpose — namely because a crime has occurred, and most crime suspects in New York City are black and Hispanic.

 

The department has made about 5 million stops in the past decade, mostly young black and Hispanic men. Only about 10 percent were arrested and few weapons are actually recovered, leaving many let go feeling angry and humiliated. They include the four plaintiffs, who contend they were wrongly targeted because of their race.

 

The suit, now a class-action case, is seeking to reform the tactic, which is legal under a 1968 Supreme Court decision.

 

The nonjury trial is being heard by U.S. District Court Judge Shira Schiendlin, who has the power to order changes that may substantially alter the department's methods. She has already expressed concern over the tactic in previous rulings.

 

McCormack is expected to testify later in the trial. But thanks to the tape, the judge already is familiar with his voice. She's heard him tell the officer that his goal is to allow honest citizens to go about their business without fear of violence.

 

"Ninety-nine percent of the people in this community are great, hardworking people, who deserve to walk to the train, walk to their car, walk to the store," he said.

 

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Associated Press Writer Tom Hays contributed to this report.

 

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3 Officers, Prolific at Stops, Will Get Their Say at Trial

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

One officer described how car thieves might pretend to be beggars, sifting through curbside trash. “If someone is in the middle of a dark street, staring into the car and then when we drive by, they start ripping up garbage bags,” the police officer, Michael Noboa, said, “that would give me reasonable suspicion to conduct a stop, question” and possibly frisk.

 

Another officer in the same Brooklyn precinct, Kha Dang, explained how gang members often stash a gun nearby when they congregate outdoors. So he might grow suspicious, he explained, if he observed people repeatedly glancing over at a trash can or “at the bushes, you know, no person would sit there and keep looking at the bushes like that.”

 

In the debate over the Police Department’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, the discussion has largely pitted the accounts of those who have been stopped — mostly young black and Latino men — against a staunch defense of the strategy by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly; and others who say it is a crucial crime-fighting tool that has saved lives. But largely absent has been the perspective of officers who spend their days on the streets carrying out the tactic, which has stoked intense resentment in many parts of the city and is now at the center of a federal trial in Manhattan.

 

Now, as a result of the unusually large number of stops they conducted, Officers Noboa and Dang, as well as a third officer in the same Brooklyn precinct, Edgar Gonzalez, are poised to become intriguing players in the trial over whether the city’s street stops have resulted in constitutional violations.

 

The officers have already described in pretrial testimony the kinds of suspicious behaviors that might lead to a street stop. At one point, the three officers were conducting an average of about 10 street stops a week, far more than other officers. Over one three-month period in 2009, according to legal papers, they were “three of the four N.Y.P.D. officers who recorded the highest number of stop, question and frisk encounters.”

 

Pretrial depositions from at least one of the officers are likely to be submitted into evidence in the next week or so. Officer Dang is also expected to be called as a witness, lawyers say.

 

Hundreds of pages of testimony from the officers, obtained by The New York Times, offer a window into the unvarnished street-level experiences of the officers who were unusually active when it came to finding and confronting behavior they deemed suspicious. It also goes to the central issue of the trial: whether officers only stop individuals who they have reason to believe are engaged in criminal activity, or whether the stops are a result of racial profiling.

 

In their statements, the officers described various legal standards related to encounters between the police and the public. While officers have a right to approach anyone to request information, the encounter only becomes a stop, as Officer Noboa explained, once “you temporarily detain somebody while you’re speaking to them.”

 

Officer Gonzalez, in his deposition, explained that, “We can’t just stop anyone for the sake of stopping a person.”

 

Indeed, before conducting a stop, Officer Gonzalez said an officer had to believe “the person has committed a crime, is committing a crime or is about to commit a crime.”

 

The officers offered examples of situations in which suspicious behavior might result in a stop.

 

Officer Gonzalez said he might grow suspicious if someone were waiting at a bus stop and “every possible bus that they could possibly get on has come through and went, and this person is still there.”

 

Officer Dang said that men “randomly looking in apartment windows” had led to a number of stops.

 

Still, Officer Noboa said he tried not to jump to conclusions when observing seemingly suspicious behavior, often pausing before moving in to stop someone. “I don’t want to stop someone without having the reasonable suspicion, and I usually just wait and make the observation,” Officer Noboa said. “Maybe I’m overlooking something, maybe I’m not seeing the bigger picture.”

 

The officers also explained that not every stop was the result of an out-of-the-blue observation. Some stops occurred in response to a specific crime, often as an officer drove a victim in search of a suspect. “When you have a victim of a crime in a car, and she tells you this is the person that did it, and you would obviously stop them, you know,” Officer Gonzalez explained.

 

The officers’ testimony also contained reminders that even in a large city, crime can be local. The three officers, assigned to the Clinton Hill and Fort Greene neighborhoods, grew familiar with the criminals in their precincts. According to the testimony, they often compared notes about the demeanor of a particular suspect during interactions with various officers.

 

Officer Dang explained that he might know a person he was stopping given “my previous experience from arresting the person, or the person has been wanted by the detective squad for a particular crime.”

 

The three officers all joined the Police Department in 2005. Two of the officers are Hispanic and the other is Asian. All three worked in plainclothes, part of the 88th Precinct’s anticrime teams, a destination for young, hardworking officers eager to prove they have the makings of a detective.

 

Anticrime officers perform far more stops than uniformed patrol officers, who primarily respond to 911 calls. It is common for an anticrime officer to perform about 20 street stops a month. But the three officers each recorded between 126 and 134 stops over a three-month period. Some of the stops came amid an escalating gang war in July 2009 at the Ingersoll and Whitman public housing developments.

 

A number of the deposition questions focused on the fact that blacks represented about 90 percent of the people the officers stopped.

 

“A lot of the times people are calling 911 and giving us a description and whoever they described is essentially who we end up stopping,” Officer Dang explained, adding that a suspect’s descriptions went well beyond race.

 

“If all you knew was the person’s race, and nothing else, then no, you couldn’t stop anybody,” he said.

 

The officers denied ever engaging in racial profiling. “I know not to stop somebody for their race,” Officer Noboa said. “That’s wrong. Morally wrong.”

 

The testimony offers few clues into the tenor of the actual street interactions. When a lawyer for the plaintiffs asked why so few of his stops seemed to result in an arrest, Officer Dang replied, “Hopefully the reason I’m not arresting them is because I’m preventing them from doing certain crimes.”

 

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The Community Safety Act Puts Mayoral Candidates' NYPD Views on Display

By John Surico — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013  ‘The Villiage Voice’ / Manhattan

 

 

We're almost close to labeling 'NYPD actions' as the hot button issue for this mayoral race.

 

Two weeks ago, the Voice reported that the NYPD had committed its 5 millionth stop-and-frisk. Then, a few days later, hearings began downtown on Floyd v. New York, which challenges the practice all together (follow Graham Rayman's coverage here).

 

And, for the sake of political timeliness, a bill titled the Community Safety Act is making its way through the City Council. This piece of legislation would staff the NYPD with an Inspector General for oversight, given the recent flare of scandal for the boys in blue. Essentially, it would create cops for the cops.

 

The bill recently picked up support from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. But Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg are not at all down with such a measure, arguing that it will stall normal procedures by adding another layer of bureaucracy. As a result, the act has already been labeled "controversial," laying the path to a showdown that will involve all of those running for the coveted throne in City Hall.

 

Let the mayoral candidates sign off themselves.

 

As we know, Quinn and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio are the highest figures in the race fighting for this thing to pass.

 

However, Ms. Quinn has made it clear that she supports Kelly's actions, and would not mind if he stayed in his position for another term. However, she is on the fence about stop-and-frisk. She has called for reform of the practice, but with stop-and-frisk, the question is not about its reform, but its elimination.

 

Earlier on in the race, Comptroller John Liu had mentioned that he would be in support of an Inspector General for the NYPD. Since then, he's flip-flopped, and now he's joined Kelly and Bloomberg in arguing that oversight will cause unnecessary delay.

 

But Liu is the only candidate who has made one position clear: Stop-and-frisk must be struck from NYPD policy books immediately. (de Blasio has inched toward this stance as well, but his campaign has yet to release a clear platform on the issue.)

 

Practically all of the Republican candidates side with the commissioner and the mayor. That makes sense, though--law-and-order conservatism, Giuliani/Bloomberg's legacy, yada yada yada. As of now, former Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota and billionaire grocer John Catsimatidis oppose the Community Safety Act. And whether we should stop stopping and frisking millions of people or not isn't even a question for them.

 

As we've said before, here are your candidates, New York. You have a few months to choose wisely.

 

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Mayor Attacks Candidates on Crime

By ANDREW GROSSMAN — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY

 

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking aim at the candidates vying to succeed him, questioning their ability and will to fight crime.

 

Over the last two days, the mayor has had harsh words for all of his potential successors. The comments have largely come in the context of his opposition to a plan to create an inspector general for the police department, but they suggest he is concerned about whether the next mayor will be able to maintain the relatively low city crime levels that have persisted for much of the last two decades.

 

The mayor also differs with most of the major contenders on the stop-and-frisk police tactic, which many would-be successors would like to rein in. Mr. Bloomberg has said it's key to keeping crime down.

 

"Recently, we've heard a lot of promises from the people running for office....What we don't know is what they will actually do to reduce crime. We don't even know if it's a goal," Mr. Bloomberg said Tuesday.

 

On Monday, he called the proposals of the seven candidates who spoke at a forum on public safety last week "depressing."

 

The mayor hasn't publicly endorsed a candidate, though he and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Democrat, have been close allies.

 

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly—whom Ms. Quinn has said she'd like to keep on the job—said Tuesday that "There's real cause for concern" with the inspector general proposal.

 

"Putting in another layer of so-called supervision or monitoring can ultimately make this city less safe," he said.

 

Ms. Quinn and other backers of the inspector general rejected that idea, saying it would improve the relationship between the NYPD and citizens.

 

On Tuesday, the candidates defended their records on public safety. Ms. Quinn's spokesman said she's "proud of the job" that the Bloomberg administration has done on crime.

 

Former Comptroller Bill Thompson, another Democrat, said that while he supports an inspector general, he has "serious reservations" about the council's plan to create one.

 

The leading Republican candidate, Joseph Lhota, also sought to tie himself to Mr. Bloomberg's record on crime, saying: "While I applauded the mayor's success in reducing the number of murders, I did say that we must re-deploy resources in high crime areas where felonies have gone up."

 

Mr. Lhota, who oversaw the police department as a deputy to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said he'd "welcome the opportunity" to discuss his crime-fighting ideas with Mr. Bloomberg.

 

—Joe Jackson contributed to this article.

 

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Police Commissioner Ray Kelly speaks out against proposed NYPD monitor
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn supports the idea of having an inspector general, but Ray Kelly said the position could threaten lives in the city. The move shakes up the relationship between Quinn and Kelly, as the mayor hopeful has said she would let Kelly continue on as commissioner if she is elected mayor of New York City.

By Rocco Parascandola AND Jonathan Lemire — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

The latest city official to trash Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s plan for an NYPD inspector general is the man she says she’d choose to lead the department if she becomes mayor: Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

 

In his first words on the hot-button issue since Quinn announced her support for it last week, Kelly blasted the plan as a threat to public safety.

 

“There’s real cause for concern,” Kelly said. “Putting in another layer of so-called supervision or monitoring can ultimately make this city less safe.”

 

But Kelly stopped short of saying he would not serve in a potential Quinn administration.

 

“I haven’t made any plans for the future,” Kelly said.

 

Kelly’s comments joined a chorus from critics who have accused Quinn of pandering for joining other Democratic mayoral contenders in calling for an independent NYPD watchdog within the Department of Investigation.

 

The Sergeants Benevolent Association, which represents 11,000 current and retired NYPD sergeants, has a full-page ad in Wednesday’s Daily News knocking Quinn for “political pandering at its most reprehensible.”

 

The ad questions how Quinn could want Kelly to continue as commissioner while supporting legislation that would give an inspector general the power to subpoena documents and witnesses to probe police policies and actions.

 

“What does Speaker Quinn really stand for?” the ad asks.

 

Mayor Bloomberg says he would veto an inspector general bill, but Quinn says she has enough support in the Council to override his veto.

 

Bloomberg said the bill would “saddle the NYPD with additional bureaucracy.” He also slammed all of the mayoral candidates Tuesday for not spelling out their plans to reduce crime, in part due to the answers they provided at a Daily News-sponsored forum on public safety last week.

 

“We don’t even know if [reducing crime] is a goal,” the mayor said. “And I believe that the people of this city have a right to know that their mayor will keep fighting to reduce crime.”

 

A spokesman for Quinn said Tuesday that the speaker believes even the closest of allies “can disagree from time to time” and that she would not rescind her offer to Kelly.

 

“The bill that the speaker supports will do nothing — not one thing — to limit the Police Department’s ability to do their job well,” said spokesman Jamie McShane. “[Department of Investigation] monitoring would include recommendations for the mayor and NYPD to review, creating no confusion over who’s in charge.”

 

The proposed watchdog has become a flashpoint in the Democratic mayoral primary as candidates struggle to distinguish themselves.

 

While all four Democratic candidates supported the inspector general plan last week, City Controller John Liu changed his stance Tuesday, calling it a “distraction from the real issue” — the department’s stop-and-frisk tactics.

 

Former Controller William Thompson clarified his stance Tuesday, saying he wants an inspector within the NYPD who would report to the commissioner.

 

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Kelly: NYPD monitor would imperil lives

By DAVID SEIFMAN — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

 

 

Handcuffing the NYPD with a new oversight agency could “ultimately make the city unsafe,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday.

 

“I think there’s a real cause for concern,” Kelly said in his first direct remarks on City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Christine Quinn’s proposal to create an inspector general to probe police policies such as stop-and-frisk.

 

“I think putting in another layer of so-called supervision or monitoring can ultimately make this city unsafe.”

 

Quinn, leading in the polls for the Democratic mayoral nomination, has promised to keep Kelly as commissioner if she becomes mayor.

 

But when Kelly was asked if he would work for a mayor who wanted an NYPD IG, he responded, “I haven’t made any plans for the future. I have no plans as to what I’ll be doing at the end of the mayor’s term.”

 

Kelly himself was wooed by the Republican Party to be its standard-bearer for mayor, but he declined the entreaties.

 

Meanwhile, a police lieutenant who was at Mayor Bloomberg’s Passover Seder wondered “who’s going to have our backs” if the next administration isn’t protective of the NYPD, Hizzoner said.

 

“He grabbed me and took me aside,” the mayor recalled of the unnamed lieutenant, who is the son of a family friend. “He said we no longer understand — ‘My whole precinct, all we’re talking about is who we’re going to report to, who’s going to protect us, who’s going to have our backs?’ ”

 

Bloomberg went on, “You cannot have a command that doesn’t have the confidence of the leadership and it can’t have the confidence of the leadership if at the very top — at the mayor’s level — that isn’t somebody that really understands how we’ve gotten to have the safest big city in the country.”

 

The mayor’s comments came unprompted during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Central Park police precinct, where he was accompanied by Kelly and Chief of Department Joseph Esposito, who was marking his last day on the job.

 

“I think we’re doing a phenomenal job and our critics still want to take shots at us,” said Esposito. “It just seems like we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t sometimes.”

 

Jamie McShane, Quinn’s spokesman, insisted an IG wouldn’t limit the NYPD’s ability to fight crime.

 

“The bill . . . will do nothing — not one thing — to limit the Police Department’s ability to do their job well,” McShane said.

 

He said the police IG would operate within the city Department of Investigation, and would merely make recommendations for the mayor and NYPD to review, “creating no confusion over who’s in charge.”

 

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Ray Kelly Says Christine Quinn’s NYPD Oversight Plan Could Make New York ‘Less Safe’

By Margaret Hartmann — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘New York Magazine ’

 

 

Christine Quinn is one of only two mayoral candidates who remain enthusiastic about keeping NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly on the job, though that position recently got her booed. Nevertheless, Kelly doesn't seem too concerned about staying on Quinn's good side. On Tuesday at a ribbon cutting ceremony for the renovated police precinct in Central Park, Kelly slammed her push to create an inspector general for the NYPD, saying that there's already "more oversight of this department than any other department in America and I think it’s more than sufficient.” In fact, he believes the measure could be dangerous. “I think there’s real cause for concern," added Kelly. "I think putting in another layer of so-called supervision or monitoring can ultimately make this city less safe."

 

The NYPD's opposition to the inspector general plan has been noted, but this is the first time that Kelly has commented on the issue since Quinn announced that she has the votes to get the measure through City Council, and override Mayor Bloomberg's veto. The issue is already driving a wedge between Bloomberg and Quinn, who's believed to be his preferred successor, and during his brief remarks on Tuesday he attacked the plan again. “Lately we’ve heard a lot of comments from people running for office. We know that many will saddle the NYPD with additional bureaucracy,” the mayor said. “What we don’t know is what they’ll actually do to reduce crime. We don’t even know if this is their goal.” All four Democratic candidates supported the plan last week, but the Daily News notes that since then John Liu changed his position, and Bill Thompson clarified that he wants an inspector inside the NYPD who reports to the commissioner.

 

Quinn's office tried to downplay Kelly's public grousing, saying that even close allies “can disagree from time to time," and this hasn't changed her plans to keep him on if elected. The Sergeants Benevolent Association has a full-page ad in Wednesday's Daily News questioning Quinn for claiming to stand by Kelly while pushing for an inspector general, calling it "political pandering at its most reprehensible." Apparently Kelly isn't quite as offended, since he still isn't ruling out taking a position in a possible Quinn administration. "I haven’t made any plans for the future," he said on Tuesday. "I have no plans as to what I’ll be doing at the end of the mayor’s term."

 

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NYPD Expands Interrogation Recording Program

By Carol D'Auria (CBS News - New York)  — Tuesday, March 26th, 2013;  7:15 p.m. EDT

 

 

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is expanding a program in which the interrogations of felony suspects are recorded after their arrests.

 

As 1010 WINS’ Carol D’Auria reported Tuesday, Kelly said the pilot program in the 67th Precinct in Brooklyn, and the 48th Precinct in the Bronx, worked well. So he said the first week of April, the program will be expanded and conducted regularly in all 16 precincts in Queens.

 

“We are assembling money, you might say. The Police Foundation has agreed to fund a portion of it,” Kelly said.

 

And so, Kelly said, video recordings will be made of all detectives questioning subjects after their arrests for felony assaults, murders and sex crimes.

 

He said it will give the public more confidence in police procedures, and help both prosecutors and defense attorneys.

 

Under the pilot program, Kelly said in December that a number of recorded interrogations led to early pleas from defendants.

 

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Chief of Department Joseph J. Esposito

A ‘Cop’s Cop,’ Who Led the Force for 12 Years, Retires

By WENDY RUDERMAN — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

The ingredients were there for an ugly encounter.

 

Thousands of protesters had converged on Herald Square during the 2004 Republican National Convention. They surrounded police officers who stood in the middle of the intersection and steeled themselves to push back the surging crowd.

 

“It was an extraordinarily tense and chaotic situation,” recalled Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who that day had witnessed a high-ranking officer tackle a woman to the ground.

 

But then the chief of the Police Department, Joseph J. Esposito, appeared on the scene. He urged calm among his officers and the protesters. In short order, the tenor changed.

 

For more than 40 years, as Chief Esposito has risen to become the highest-ranking uniformed member of the department, he has shown an uncanny ability to defuse heated moments. His clearheaded leadership style has won over the rank-and-file and earned him the respect of some of the department’s most ardent critics, including Mr. Dunn.

 

Chief Esposito will retire on Wednesday — one day before he turns 63, the force’s mandatory retirement age. A rarity, he has served as chief for more than 12 years, longer than any of his predecessors, and held the position over two administrations. A successor has yet to be named.

 

Chief Esposito was first appointed by Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik in 2000. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Chief Esposito entered the department as a police trainee in 1968 after he graduated from high school.

 

“He was a regular cop’s cop,” said Joseph Pollini, a retired police lieutenant commander and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “He knew how to talk to people.”

 

Mr. Pollini recalled a bitter cold day in January 2002 when he was posted on a Midtown corner during the World Economic Forum. Chief Esposito rolled up, stepped out of his sport utility vehicle and shook hands with Mr. Pollini and the other officers, reminding them to take breaks to warm themselves.

 

“He rose through the ranks and he never forgot that at any time,” Mr. Pollini said. “He never forgot that he was a police officer, the guy out on the street, in the rain and in the cold. He would walk up and talk to you and make you feel comfortable.”

 

During a ribbon-cutting at the newly renovated Central Park Precinct station house on Tuesday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg praised Mr. Esposito, crediting him with spearheading policing strategies that significantly reduced crime.

 

“The story of Central Park symbolizes how far we’ve come,” the mayor said. “When Chief Esposito joined the N.Y.P.D., the park was notoriously unsafe, and shunned by New Yorkers and visitors. Today, about 40 million people enjoy Central Park every year.”

 

Mr. Bloomberg noted that Chief Esposito, who directed and oversaw the daily operations of seven major enforcement bureaus as chief, managed the department’s response to some of the city’s most difficult moments, from the Sept. 11 terrorist attack to Hurricane Sandy and the storm’s aftermath.

 

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony, echoed the mayor’s sentiments about Mr. Esposito: “He’s done a phenomenal job. We’re going to miss him, but he has been tremendous.”

 

Chief Esposito, who has typically shunned the limelight, told reporters that he had no future plans. (His name has been floated as a possible contender as the department’s next police commissioner.) When asked to share one of his happiest memories on the job, he said, “The entire career.”

 

Chief Esposito’s tenure, however, has not been without bumps. Last March, Mr. Esposito was seen on video jabbing Occupy Wall Street protesters with his baton and yelling at them to stay on the sidewalk. In 2006, he was accused of making a derogatory comment about Jews during a clash between police officers and Brooklyn residents. He promptly wrote a letter of apology, which was accepted by community leaders. Those leaders said he helped close a rift created by the protests, in which hundreds of Orthodox Jews demonstrated in Borough Park. Some set bonfires and burned a police car.

 

Mr. Dunn, who was not privy to either episode, said he had seen Mr. Esposito chatting with protesters, noting that he genuinely “likes people.”

 

“Over the years I’ve had many dealings with Chief Esposito, including having spent a lot of time on the street with him at large protests,” Mr. Dunn said. “Though he can be a tough guy and has gone overboard on occasion, he’s usually reasonable and engaging, and he has a good relationship with many longtime protesters. I will miss him, and his departure will leave a real void at the top of the department.”

 

Edna Ishayik contributed reporting.

 

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NYPD Losing Its 'Four-Star General'

By TAMER EL-GHOBASHY — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY

 

 

It was a particularly crime-ridden weekend in the Bronx a few years ago when then-New York City Police Capt. Peter Moreno heard a crackle on the radio that "Car 3" was en route to his command center.

 

"It wasn't unusual to hear 'Car 3' come up on the air—he was in the trenches quite often," Mr. Moreno, who is now retired, recalled recently. But what came next wasn't typical.

 

Joseph Esposito, the department's highest-ranking officer and its third in command, strode in wearing cargo pants, kicked his feet up on Mr. Moreno's desk and started discussing tactics for handling the bump in activity that weekend.

 

"He's the four-star general of the largest police force in the country and here he is," Mr. Moreno said. "That's a big deal."

 

The public face and hands-on leader of the NYPD is undoubtedly Commissioner Raymond Kelly. But behind the scenes, Chief Esposito, who retires Wednesday, has long been regarded as the guy who makes it work.

 

He will leave the force after more than 44 years, more than 12 of them as the longest-serving chief in department history, with a reputation as a steady strategist, a cop's cop and a loyal defender of the agency with enough charisma to doff his hat at protesters during an Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Times Square. He also takes with him decades of institutional knowledge at a time of transition for the department, which could get different top leadership after the city elects a new mayor this year.

 

"He's not a household name," said civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel, a frequent critic of NYPD tactics. "Kelly and [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg get the credit, but you have to recognize the operational person. That was Chief Esposito."

 

He doesn't go willingly. On Thursday, Chief Esposito will reach the mandatory retirement age of 63. "In 44½ years, I've never asked for a transfer," he said in a recent interview in an office decorated with commendations and photos. "I went and I did it and I was happy there."

 

Among many rank-and-file officers in the 35,000-member force, Chief Esposito has achieved a near-mythical status. He is often respectfully called a "grunt," reflecting his climb to the department's upper ranks while seeming to recall the lessons of his street-cop days. Out of earshot, he is called "Espo."

 

"I'm quite certain he never asked anyone to do anything he hadn't done himself," Mr. Moreno said.

 

He took the chief's job about a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and oversaw the agency's evolution from a traditional crime-fighting organization to one that embraced an anti-terror mission. Under his tenure, crime rates have fallen to historic lows. "He's been a bulwark of everything we've done here," Mr. Kelly said recently.

 

At the same time, Chief Esposito has executed policies that haven't settled well with everyone in the city. Mr. Siegel said his legacy won't be clear until legal challenges to tactics such as stop-and-frisk, surveillance in Muslim communities and the handling of large-scale protests are heard by the courts.

 

"At a minimum, you have to say that during his tenure, there were practices and policies that were unconstitutional and therefore he has to be held accountable for that," he said, adding that he respects Chief Esposito.

 

Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said he has watched Chief Esposito operate during large street protests over the past decade and called him "a calming influence."

 

"He clearly is well-liked by people throughout the department, and he even seems to have good relationships with some longtime protesters," Mr. Dunn said. "Though no one would describe Chief Esposito as a civil libertarian, his departure will be a loss."

 

During the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests, Chief Esposito took on his most public role, attending the protests regularly. Many blamed him for tactics they saw as overbearing, but others noted the role he took in negotiating between the demonstrators and his officers. At a private Halloween party in 2012, the chief dressed as an OWS protester, a person familiar with the event said.

 

In the interview, Chief Esposito defended the department and its policies. He said 10% of the population "will say we're being heavy-handed and stretching constitutional rights," while another 10% will support the NYPD unequivocally.

 

"You have to protect everybody," he said. "But the only people I'm going to convince that we're doing the right thing are those 80% in the middle."

 

Born in Brooklyn and raised mostly in Bensonhurst, Chief Esposito considered entering the priesthood. His future father-in-law nudged him toward law enforcement, and he joined the department after high school.

 

After a few years as a "police trainee," a position that no longer exists, he was assigned as a full-time police officer in Brooklyn's 77th Precinct in Crown Heights in April 1971. That year, the city registered 1,466 homicides, nearly triple the number of murders recorded in 2012.

 

In 1978, as a plainclothes officer in Bushwick's 83rd Precinct, he shot and wounded a suspect. Two years later, he and his partner, Fred Falcone, killed two armed suspects and wounded a third. A Brooklyn grand jury declined to indict them. "I think about them all the time," Chief Esposito said of the incidents.

 

The pair was commended but also reassigned to Flushing, Queens, and then to Chelsea amid community unrest over the second shooting. Mr. Falcone, who retired in 1992, said the investigation and the grand jury deliberations unnerved him but not his partner. "He would say, 'Hey, we will get through this,'" Mr. Falcone recalled. "We had to make an instantaneous decision, and he knew we did the right thing." The pair is still close.

 

Chief Esposito quickly rose through the ranks, taking command of several precincts before assuming control of in the high-profile Patrol Borough Brooklyn North. He was an early and enthusiastic adapter of Compstat, a crime-tracking system implemented in 1994 that uses computer analysis to identify problem areas in order to deploy officers and make tactical adjustments to drive down crime. It was soon credited with a 20% drop in major crime. Over his career, Chief Esposito oversaw more than 600 Compstat meetings. "He was a very sharp guy and Brooklyn North was a very tough place to police," said Thomas Reppetto, a police historian and co-author of the book "NYPD: A City and Its Police."

 

In August 2000, former Commissioner Bernard Kerik appointed him chief of department. Before him, the longest-serving chief was Robert J. Johnston Jr., who was in the job for seven years until the early 1990s.

 

Chief Esposito was coy about his next step. He pointed skyward and said he would "do whatever He tells me to do." But he is aware there will likely be a shake-up of the NYPD's civilian leadership next year. The mandatory retirement age doesn't apply to civilians, such as Mr. Kelly and now, the former chief. "If they're smart, they'll keep Ray Kelly," he said. "Public service: I love it. I'd love to do something."

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

With gratitude, NYPD Chief Joseph Esposito brings his tenure to a close: 'This is not a job. It's a calling'
The police chief had expected to serve for just 16 months. But that was nearly 13 years ago. Now, as he hits the mandatory retirement age of 63, he reflects on his Brooklyn upbringing, how it influenced his work, the wonderful people who worked with him and his abiding love for New York City.

By Denis Hamill — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

Final Tour.

 

On Aug. 25, 2000, when Joseph Esposito was sworn in as chief of department, the highest uniformed rank of the NYPD, he thought he would retire in 16 months.

 

“I said so in my acceptance speech,” says Esposito, sitting in his 13th-floor office at 1 Police Plaza on Tuesday, his next-to-last day on the job before the mandatory retirement age of 63.

 

“I told my wife and kids that they wouldn’t be seeing me much for those 16 months, but after (Mayor Rudy) Giuliani was gone, I’d be back home,” he says, straightening his dress tunic with brass buttons that glistened like his eyes after a four-decade-plus career.

 

How did he last so long as chief of department?

 

“I had terrific people working for me,” he says. “From three-star chiefs down to the grunts patrolling the street. I was served well.”

 

Brooklyn-born Esposito was raised in a railroad flat at 100 St. Marks Place, attended St. Augustine’s High, and earned a bachelor of arts in criminal justice from SUNY.

 

And still lives in Brooklyn.

 

“I was a street-smart Brooklyn kid,” he says. “I grew up playing stickball and cops and robbers. Then I became a cop, and they paid me to play cops and robbers. I still play cops and robbers every day and wish I didn’t have to leave.”

 

An ex-cop named Pat Russo, who served under Esposito’s command at the 66th Precinct, says that he traveled to Italy with his old boss. “Espo had won the prestigious NYPD Joseph Petrosino award, and we’re traveling all over Italy going to receptions, but he was never off that damned BlackBerry doing NYPD business. His wife, Chris, was losing her mind.”

 

Esposito laughs at the story the day before he finally stops doing NYPD business.

 

“You gotta understand this is not a job,” he says, twitching his signature mustache. “It’s a calling. I live near an outdoor subway, and every morning I wait to watch a train full of people on their way to work and I wonder how many of them actually look forward to getting to work. Me, I can’t wait to get to work in the morning. I love my job.”

 

He says living in Brooklyn helped make him a better cop and boss.

 

“When I go out for bread for dinner, I see and hear what’s happening in my city,” he says. “When I go to Farrell’s for a beer or Cebu in Bay Ridge for dinner, I stay tuned to the people, the street, the city we police. The city where I was raised and where I raised my three kids. It also helps me know what’s going on with the cop on the street. If I left the city every day after work, I couldn’t have done my job as well.”

 

Esposito also thanks the Brooklyn street code of basic fairness for helping him to bring some heart to the job.

 

“Whenever I had a cop screw up, I asked why the hell he did it,” he says. “If I decided his or her heart was in the right place, I put him on modified duty with pay. But if I thought a guy deliberately broke the rules, he’d be suspended with no pay.”

 

Esposito says 9/11 was the worst day of his NYPD career. “But it also brought out the very best of (the) NYPD,” he says.

 

The second-worst day will be today, Wednesday, March 27, 2013, when the 18-year-old trainee who became the longest-serving NYPD chief of department will work his final tour.

 

Esposito’s friend Dr. John Romanelli, department chief surgeon, says, “Espo is the cop you want leading you out on the battlefield. He’s also very much a Catholic. And so this is hard for him because his long and brilliant career is ending in Holy Week.”

 

“I’ve had lots of offers,” Esposito says. “From other cities. From private industry. Some are great offers. But none are NYPD. So right now I will reacquaint myself with Brooklyn and my wife and three kids and three grandkids.”

 

Walking with him through his office, where the walls are being stripped of plaques and photos, I ask Esposito if he’ll be closely watching the mayoral race. “Of course,” he says, smiling. “I’m a New Yorker. And, no, I don’t rule anything out. There are many civilian NYPD jobs I might be interested in.”

 

End of tour.

 

This one, anyway.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Central Park Precinct

 

Central Park cop shop is NYPD’s new pearl
City's oldest police precinct gets $61.7M renovation

By LAUREL BABCOCK, DAVID SEIFMAN and CYNTHIA R. FAGEN — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

 

 

It may be worth getting arrested just to see the spanking new $61.7million state-of-the art facelift on the landmark, 19th century Central Park precinct.

 

Gone are the boarded up windows to keep the squirrels out, or the leaking slate roof that damaged wood structures or crumbling brick walls. Roll call will no longer will have to be held in an adjacent shed.

 

The two-story station house has upgraded technology, security, and communications. It has a new lobby with a partially bullet-proof glass atrium; arrest processing and interview rooms and central air-conditioning and 2,300 more square feet of additional space than before.

 

At the ribbon-cutting ceremony today at the 86th Street transverse stationhouse, Police Commissioner Kelly boasted, “The city's oldest precinct is now wired for the latest computer and communications technology, with new phones and computers and better heating, ventilation and air conditioning. It brings a 19th century station house into the 21st century."

 

Mayor Bloomberg said, “With the opening today of the beautifully restored Central Park Precinct Station, we have updated a police station that dates back to 1936. The newly restored precinct gives officers in Central Park an expanded and modernized working environment and conserves many beautiful architectural elements that distinguish this 19th century building.

 

“Central Park is safer than ever – with crime down by more than 20 percent since 2001 – and the enhancement to the station will help police officers build on this record of success."

 

Originally, the stationhouse was a complex of horse stables and sheds when it was constructed in 1871 by Jacob Wrey Mould.

 

It was built in the High Victorian Gothic Cottage style and was originally planned as a park administrative complex. But in 1936 it was converted into the 22nd precinct, and in 1968 it was officially renamed the Central Park Precinct.

 

When the dilapidated precinct building was closed in 2001, cops moved to a temporary precinct that was built on the adjacent parking lot. They moved back into the reconstructed precinct in June 2011. The temporary precinct was then torn down. A new parking facility was built in its place for police scooters.

 

The initial cost of the 2009 project was $46 million, but during construction they discovered contaminated soil that had to be remediated and old trolley tracks under the transverse that had to be removed.

 

The final tap came to $61.7 million.

 

NYPD Detective Steven McDonald, who was paralyzed in 1986 after he was shot by three thugs in the park was on hand for the ceremony.

 

Central Park Precinct Commanding Officer, Capt. Jessica Corey, summed it up. “Wow is how we all feel. I've got a lot of people who outrank me who are seeing the place for the first time today and they're talking about taking my office," she joked.

 

When the building opened in 1871 there were about 4.5 million visitors to the park. Now there are 40 million a year.

 

-  -  -

 

Forgotten NYPD History     (What's Not in the Mayor's Press Release  [See below] )

 

A Quick Abbreviated History Of The Central Park Precinct And Its Police

By Michael Bosak

 

 

The command was originally established under the NYC Parks Department as the “Park Police” on Monday, June 3rd, 1856 with one captain, three sergeants and 15 privates. 

 

The headquarters of the “Park Police” was in the basement of the Arsenal Building in Central Park, with a sub-station at Mt. St. Vincent in the north end of the park.  The first Chief of the Park Police was the former Metropolitan P.D. Captain Nathaniel R. Mills.

 

Officers of the NYC ‘Park Police’ had the same power of arrest and authority as the N.Y.C. Municipal Police.  Their main functions in life - as established by ordinance - were to stop people from cutting down the trees in the park for firewood, and keeping cattle, horses, goats or swine from grazing on public land.

 

On April 4, 1866 most of the officers assigned to the Central Park Park's Department command were laterally transferred to newly established 33 Precinct (Mounted) of the Metropolitan Police Department by Chapter 367 of the 1866 Laws of New York State.

 

On April 16, 1870 the NYPD was established.  The Metropolitan PD was not disbanded and continued to exist as a much smaller department for a short period of time.  The law establishing the NYPD still needed a number of revisions re the policing of the parks and the Town of Yonkers and Westchester County.

 

On July 10, 1871 those members of the former Metropolitan's 33 Precinct [Mounted],  who desired to stay in the park then went back to the Park's Department on the re-established Park's Department's “Park Police.”  Those patrolmen who chose to stay in the park were then given the title of "Keepers of the Park," (Title later changed to “Gate Keeper”) and continued to retain the same police powers and authority as officers on the NYPD.

 

Those members of the former 33 Precinct [Mounted] that chose to go to the NYPD were then transferred to the department's newly established “Mounted Squad 1” under the command of Sergeant Alexander ‘Clubber’ Williams.  The newly established Mounted Squad 1's stables and office were then opened at 40th Street and Broadway.  The former 33 Precinct command was then closed, and its designation discontinued until resurrected in the Bronx on January 1st, 1874 as the “33 Precinct [Mounted]” in the former Town of Morrisania. (Today's 42 Precinct)

 

On January 1st, 1898 the Park's Department ‘Park Police’ were disbanded and all its members were laterally transferred to the NYPD under their current rank.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

The Mayor's Press Release on Central Park

 

MAYOR BLOOMBERG, POLICE COMMISSIONER KELLY AND DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION COMMISSIONER BURNEY CUT RIBBON ON NEW CENTRAL PARK PRECINCT STATION HOUSE

 

Historic Landmark Serving New York City’s Central Park Precinct Reflects Multi-Million Dollar Modernization

 

 

Central Park Among the Safest Urban Parks in the World; Since 2002, 400 Million Visitors Without a Murder & Overall Crime Down by More Than 20 Percent

 

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Design and Construction Commissioner David J. Burney joined Tuesday to cut ribbon on the recently renovated Central Park Precinct station house, the national and New York City landmark that since 1936 has served as base for New York City’s 22nd Precinct covering Central Park. The 22nd Precinct was redesignated “Central Park Precinct” in August 1968. The Mayor and Commissioners were joined at the station house on the 86th Street Transverse by NYPD Chief of Department Joseph Esposito; NYPD Captain Jessica Corey, Commanding Officer of the Central Park Precinct; First Deputy Commissioner, Parks and Recreation Liam Kavanagh; Architect Fred Basch; President and CEO of the Central Park Conservancy Douglas Blonsky; elected officials; police executives and personnel.

 

“With the opening today of the beautifully restored Central Park Precinct Station, we have updated a police station that dates back to 1936,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “The newly restored precinct gives officers in Central Park an expanded and modernized working environment and conserves many beautiful architectural elements that distinguish this 19th century building. Central Park is safer than ever – with crime down by more than 20 percent since 2001 – and the enhancement to the station will help police officers build on this record of success.”

 

“The city’s oldest precinct is now wired for the latest computer and communications technology, with new phones and computers and better heating, ventilation and air conditioning. It also has a new lobby and main desk, with additional space for officers to better serve the public,” Commissioner Kelly said. “It brings a 19th century station house into the 21st century.”

 

“The Central Park Precinct is a terrific example of adaptive re-use: converting an old building – in this case from the era of horses and stables – into a 21st century facility,” said Commissioner Burney. “The precinct’s landmark design has been preserved while the building has been brought up to modern standards – and while this stationhouse will be secure, it will also be welcoming to the community. The restored precinct’s lobby was originally a courtyard – but is now enclosed with a lightweight metal canopy and self-supporting glass wall, which protects the space from the elements while maintaining its transparency. To maintain its historic integrity, our team also restored the precinct’s stonework, dormer windows, doors and fixtures, and slate and copper roofing materials. DDC is grateful for the support of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the Parks Department, Commissioner Kelly and all our partners at NYPD to help put the Central Park Precinct back in service.”

 

The two-story station features an updated and expanded new lobby with a partially bullet-proof glass atrium; improved staging, arrest processing and interview rooms, mechanical ventilation and central air-conditioning. There is 2,300 more square feet of additional space than the previous station house provided.

 

Originally stables and sheds in 1871, the park complex was converted into a garage in 1915 and reconstructed and redesignated as a police station in 1936. Part of the complex underwent additional restoration in the 1950s after a fire damaged the structure. In 2002, uniformed and civilian personnel assigned to the Central Park Precinct relocated to a temporary building elsewhere on the site after deterioration, structural stress and roof leaks required a full renovation. The station house grounds make it the oldest Police Department building in the City.

 

Uniformed and civilian personnel assigned to Central Park were able to begin working in the new station house last year. Also in attendance Tuesday were NYPD Detective Steven McDonald, who was paralyzed in 1986 after he stopped to question and was shot by three young men in the northern section of the park, and the family of Lieutenant Steven Cioffi, who was assigned to Central Park Precinct for 11 years, first as a police officer and later becoming a platoon commander. Lieutenant Cioffi passed away in March after battling cancer. He was among the first responders who responded to the World Trade Center attacks and recovery effort that followed.

 

Central Park is among the safest urban parks of its size in the world, with crime in the park down by more than 20 percent since 2001. Approximately 40 million people enjoy Central Park each year and since November 2002, there have been a total of 400 million visitors to the 842-acre park without a murder.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Off-duty NYPD P.O. Vanessa Bobe Allegedly Caught Shoplifting Food

NYPD officer charged with stealing food from Carmel supermarket

By Terence Corcoran and Lee Higgins — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The Journal News’ / White Plains, NY

 

 

CARMEL — A New York City police officer is charged with stealing food from the Hannaford Supermarket, Putnam County sheriff’s spokesman Capt. William McNamara said.

 

Vanessa Bobe, 35, of Kent was charged Saturday with petty larceny, a misdemeanor, and released. She has been suspended without pay for at least 30 days, New York City police told The Journal News.

 

Deputies responded at 2 p.m. Saturday to the store in Putnam Plaza along Route 6 on a complaint by a security staffer, the sheriff’s office said. Bobe was allegedly seen on closed-circuit television hiding food items on her.

 

According to the sheriff’s office, the staffer confronted Bobe when she left without paying and detained her until deputies arrived. Deputy Robert Hudson gave her an appearance ticket and released her.

 

Bobe is scheduled to appear in Carmel Justice Court April 9. If convicted, she could face up to a year in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.

 

Bobe could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday. The NYPD could not immediately provide her salary.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Sgt. Joseph Jette

 

Brooklyn woman sues decorated NYPD Sgt. Joseph Jette and the department after he allegedly groped her breasts during a gun search
'I’m pretty sure that I’m not the first and I will not be the last,' says Latonya Ratcliff, who said the sergeant fondled her behind under the pretense of searching her in June. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

By Christina Boyle AND Bill Hutchinson — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

Once hailed as a hero, an NYPD sergeant has been accused of groping and sexually propositioning a woman after bursting into a Brooklyn home during a search for guns.

 

Latonya Ratcliff says she was so terrified by Sgt. Joseph Jette that she nearly jumped out of a second-story window to escape.

 

“I don’t believe he should have that kind of authority, because he abuses it,” Ratcliff, 39, told the Daily News on Tuesday. “And I’m pretty sure that I’m not the first and I will not be the last.”

 

Jette, 40, received the NYPD’s Police Combat Cross for heroism after he fatally shot an armed man in Brooklyn who opened fire on him and other cops in July 2008. It’s the second-highest medal for heroism in the department.

 

Ratcliff says Jette was anything but honorable when he and other plainclothes cops broke down the door of a home where she was living on June 22.

 

She said she was a full-time caregiver for a 52-year-old woman named Shari Goode, who lived in an apartment at the Tilden Houses in Brownsville. Jette and his plainclothes crew stormed the home without a warrant, the suit alleges.

 

“They violated her constitutional rights and she suffered trauma, humiliation and fear of ... her home being invaded by police officers who appeared to believe they were accountable to no one,” says the lawsuit filed by Ratcliff’s attorney, Matthew Flamm.

 

The NYPD and Jette were named as defendants in the lawsuit seeking unspecified damages.

 

Officials at the City Corporation Counsel declined comment Tuesday, saying they had not received the suit. Jette, a member of the police force since 1998, could not be reached for comment.

 

Ratcliff says that once inside the apartment, Jette cupped her breasts and fondled her behind under the pretense of patting her down. She said she was wearing a miniskirt and a sheer top at the time.

 

She said he ordered her and three other people there to sit in the living room and then unholstered his gun.

 

“He asked everyone that was seated in the living room if we wanted to hold his gun,” Ratcliff said. “No one grabbed the gun; no one reached for the gun. I knew that was going to be bad news.”

 

She said that when Jette and another officer took her in a back room to question her, Jette found a pornographic DVD with sexually explicit photos on it.

 

“He asked me which shots did I like and which one would I like to do with him,” Ratcliff told The News.

 

Goode’s nephew, Robert Sutton, 50, said he was also at the apartment when the cops burst in and vouched for Ratcliff’s story.

 

“He squeezed her breasts,” Sutton said of Jette. “You could see if a female has a gun on her in the summertime with thin garments on like that.”

 

Sutton also says that when he was questioned, Jette asked him if Ratcliff performed a certain sex act well.

 

The ordeal lasted about 90 minutes, Ratcliff said. Before leaving, Jette handed her a note with his phone number on it and asked her if she would like to “hang out,” she said.

 

She said she turned over a copy of the note to investigators with the Internal Affairs cops and the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

 

“It affected me to the point I don’t trust the police,” Ratcliff said of the incident. “When I see a cop now, the first thing I’m thinking is, it’s going to be crazy before it’s going to be something good.”

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Woman sues city after cop allegedly gropes her during search

By JOSH SAUL — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

 

 

A Brooklyn woman who claims a cop groped her body and sexually propositioned her during a search of the apartment where she works as a caregiver has sued the city, court papers state.

 

Latonya Ratcliff, 39, claims that in June 2012 two cops broke down the door of the Brownsville project apartment where she works and lives as a caregiver to look for guns.

 

When NYPD police officer Joseph Jette frisked Ratcliff he cupped her breasts and butt, according to the Brooklyn Supreme Court lawsuit.

 

Jette then took out his gun and asked Ratcliff, the woman she cares for, and two other men who were in the apartment to “touch his firearm,” the suit states.

 

When Jette later questioned Ratcliff in a bedroom with the door closed, he picked up a porn DVD and pointed to its cover.

 

“He asked me if I liked these positions and if I wanted to do them with him and I told him no,” Ratcliff said. “I don’t believe he should be an officer anymore.”

 

Before he left the apartment Jette gave Ratcliff his number and asked if she wanted to “hang out,” Ratcliff said.

 

A City Law Department spokeswoman said they were “awaiting a formal copy of the suit.”

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Fired 30 Precinct P.O. Russell Litwenak

 

‘Dirty 30’ cop rob bust

By JAMIE SCHRAM and BRAD HAMILTON — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

 

 

A disgraced ex-cop convicted in the NYPD’s infamous “Dirty Thirty” scandal nearly two decades ago was charged yesterday with swiping a wad of cash from a woman in Chinatown, sources said.

 

The victim told cops she dropped a plastic bag holding $3,000 at about 1:05 p.m. on Canal Street and that a man grabbed it and fled into a building at 79 Chrystie St.

 

Former Harlem cop Russell Litwenak, 68, identified himself as an officer and pretended to come to her aid. But then he reached into her purse and yanked out another $300.

 

Litwenak and the other man, who cops believe was his accomplice, ran toward FDR Park.

 

The woman screamed that she had been robbed, and good Samaritans held Litwenak until cops arrived. The other man got away with the $3,000.

 

Litwenak was charged with robbery and criminal impersonation of a police officer.

 

In the early 1990s, he was among dozens of crooked cops assigned to Harlem’s 30th Precinct accused of robbing drug dealers and selling narcotics. He was convicted of burglary.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

NYPD $$ Lawyer Lotto $$ Bonanza

 

Brooklyn gift-giver sues cops for false arrest that led to grinch stealing his van, Christmas presents
Yahnick Martin is seeking $2 million for an alleged false arrest and malicious prosecution following an arrest by cops on Dec. 23, 2011 after he made a wisecrack. His van was left running with presents inside, he claims.

By John Marzulli — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

A Brooklyn man claims his van filled with Christmas presents was stolen after he was arrested for mouthing off to NYPD cops who then taught him a lesson by leaving the vehicle unattended on the street with the engine running.

 

The payback from cops is alleged in a lawsuit filed by Yahnick Martin in Brooklyn Federal Court seeking $2 million in damages for false arrest and malicious prosecution.

 

Martin contends he was smoking a cigar and waiting for his wife outside a Bedford-Stuyvesant building on Dec. 23, 2011, when he was confronted by three cops. Martin’s wife was delivering a Christmas gift to a friend in the building.

 

The cops told Martin they smelled marijuana and began searching his pockets.

 

Martin told cops he wasn't smoking pot and protested the search. It might have ended there, but when Martin jokingly remarked that $100 was missing from his pocket, the cops weren't amused.

 

“You want to be a smartass and make accusations, you go to jail,” a cop said, according to the suit.

 

Martin was handcuffed and informed the cops that the parked van at the curb was his, and the engine was running. His wife’s pocketbook and Christmas gifts for relatives in South Carolina were also in the van.

 

“That’s too bad, you should have thought of that before being a smartass,” the cop replied, according to the suit.

 

Martin was issued two summonses for disorderly conduct, but by the time he returned to the scene, the van was gone. The cops denied to their supervisors that they were aware the keys were left in the vehicle, the suit states.

 

An NYPD spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment and a Law Department spokeswoman said the complaint will be reviewed.

 

Martin’s van was recovered on Jan. 6. Besides the missing presents, Martin said he was victimized when the thief ran up charges on his wife’s credit card and he was billed $800 by the rental company for damage to the vehicle.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

6th Precinct P.O. Larry DePrimo

 

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’ Editorial:

 

Give him the boot    (The Skell, Not DePrimo)

 

 

So it now turns out that Jeffrey Hillman, the barefoot beggar who famously received a free pair of boots from a big-hearted police officer, not only has an apartment but pockets as much as several hundred dollars a day while pretending to be homeless.

 

Hillman freely admitted as much to a team of Post reporters who followed him home on the subway Sunday — and then watched as he calmly counted a huge wad of bills. Not to mention that he seems to be the Imelda Marcos of the streets, with at least 30 pairs of shoes and boots.

 

Most New Yorkers will doubtless be disappointed to learn that the inspiring tale of a police officer’s kindness to a man in distress would have such a cynical denouement. Few, however, will be surprised. Even so, there is a moral to this story that is especially timely.

 

New York is a generous city, at both the individual and government level. In addition to private charity, those in need can count on a whole raft of services, from shelter to food to rent subsidies and Medicaid. Our guess is that most New Yorkers are more than willing to pay so long as their dollars go to help people truly in distress.

 

Hillman reminds us how easy it is to exploit generosity. His scam seems to have been directed at passers-by who take pity on a man who goes about Midtown pretending to be barefoot, poor and homeless. His example reminds us why it is important for the city to ensure that its own assistance is not exploited by those who don’t need it.

 

For in addition to the needy, New York also has a whole class of politicians and activists quick to denounce City Hall as cruel and heartless (and to sue) whenever it takes reasonable measures to weed out the deserving from the undeserving.

 

When the NYPD’s Larry DePrimo bought those now-famous boots, he represented the best of this city. People such as Jeffrey Hillman remind us that when the greedy take advantage, there’s more cynicism about giving — and less help to go around for those truly in need.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

P.A.P.D.

 

Port Authority cop claims disability for 'injured' right arm, then thrashes around as lead singer of rock band: Feds
Christopher Inserra was busted for mail fraud by the feds for falsely claiming his right arm was disabled while on duty from his post at the World Trade Center in 2010.

By John Marzulli , Kerry Burke AND Bill Hutchinson — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’

 

 

A Port Authority cop has been busted on fraud charges after he was caught head-banging with his raucous heavy metal band while claiming a disability from an on-the-job accident.

 

Officer Christopher Inserra of Brooklyn was filmed by undercover Port Authority investigators as he moonlighted as lead singer for the aptly named group Cousin Sleaze.

 

Inserra, 31, gave no indication he was suffering from an injured right arm as he gripped a microphone on stage and screamed out deafening lyrics to such songs as “Walk of Shame” and “My Sweet Disgrace,” officials said.

 

Authorities say Inserra falsely claimed his right arm was injured while on duty at the World Trade Center in 2010. He remained out sick for two years — pulling his full $90,000 salary.

 

The do-nothing cop repeatedly lied to PA doctors, in addition to scamming AFLAC insurance company out of $31,486 in short-term disability payments, according to the complaint unsealed Tuesday.

 

But all the while, Inserra took the stage on a “Miles of Mayhem Tour” with his band, with dates in Maryland, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia.

 

Inserra is all over the Internet in photos and YouTube video of performances with his band as they promoted their album, “Sick Maniacs.”

 

While he claimed to be laid up unable to work, his rock star Internet persona shows him “constantly and repeatedly jumping up and down and flailing both of his arms in a back and forth fashion,” said U.S. Postal Inspector John McDermott, who headed the mail fraud case.

 

Inserra returned to work in March 2012. But as he kept taking sick days, investigators were filming him rocking out in Brooklyn clubs, said a Port Authority spokesman. Inserra was even on a sick day Tuesday morning when he was cuffed at his Windsor Terrace home.

 

“This officer dishonored himself and his department by sliding down the slippery slope of deception and fraud,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch.

 

Inserra was charged with mail fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. He would also have to return the undeserved pay he pocketed.

 

During a bail hearing in Brooklyn Federal Court Tuesday, the heavily tattooed Inserra stared glumly at the floor.

 

He was released on $25,000 bail and ordered by Magistrate Judge Marilyn Go to surrender his passport and to not leave the New York-New Jersey area. He was also stripped of his guns.

 

Inserra, who has been a PA cop for five years, refused to comment as he left the courthouse with a union representative Tuesday.

 

He later sped away in a pickup truck when he saw reporters outside his home.

 

“I’ve known him his whole life. I used to baby-sit him. I don’t believe it,” Inserra’s neighbor, Chris Degati, said of the charges. “He’s a great guy.”

 

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Cop plays punk ‘crock’

By MITCHEL MADDUX — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’

 

 

A Port Authority cop who claimed he was hurt on the job and collected disability payments was charged with faking the injury — when the feds caught him rocking out with his Brooklyn punk band, officials said yesterday.

 

“Cousin Sleaze” frontman Christopher Inserra, 31, claimed he injured his biceps while transporting an injured colleague in June 2010.

 

Inserra was out on leave with full pay until March of 2012, collecting his salary and $31,486 in short-term disability payments from insurance company AFLAC.

 

But while he was supposed to be recovering, he managed to tour the country performing selections from his band’s “Sick Maniacs” album.

 

Investigators saw photos and videos — captured on YouTube — of him flailing about onstage as part of his thrash band, according to the US Attorney’s Office.

 

Inserra can be seen “repeatedly jumping up and down and flailing both of his arms in a back-and-forth fashion,” noted investigator John McDermott.

 

He faces up to 20 years in prison and a $200,000 fine if convicted.

 

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New York State

 

Ex-trooper to be sentenced in prostitution scandal

By Unnamed Author(s) (The Associated Press)  —  Wednesday, March 27th, 2013; 8:00 a.m. EDT

 

 

Buffalo — A former state trooper who was fired for organizing off-duty parties featuring prostitutes is scheduled to be sentenced in a Western New York court.

 

Titus Taggart pleaded guilty in December to promoting prostitution. The plea came eight months after the 18-year veteran was suspended by the state police as they investigated allegations that he threw off-duty parties with prostitutes.

 

The 42-year-old Taggart was fired by the state police in June. He had been assigned to the Thruway detail in Buffalo. Two other troopers assigned to the Thruway detail in Western New York were also suspended during the investigation.

 

Prosecutors say Taggart's off-duty party organizing included bringing prostitutes across the border from Canada.

 

He's scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in Buffalo. Taggart is the son of retired state police Col. Arthur Taggart.

 

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U.S.A.

 

Justices, Citing Ban on Unreasonable Searches, Limit Use of Drug-Sniffing Dogs

By ADAM LIPTAK — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’

 

 

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday limited the ability of the police to use drug-sniffing dogs outside homes.

 

The case concerned Franky, a chocolate Labrador retriever who detected the smell of marijuana outside a Florida house used by Joelis Jardines. Based on Franky’s signal, the police obtained a warrant to search the house, and they found a marijuana-growing operation inside.

 

Mr. Jardines moved to suppress the evidence, saying that using Franky to sniff around his residence was an unreasonable search barred by the Fourth Amendment. The Florida Supreme Court agreed, and so did a majority of the United States Supreme Court.

 

The 5-to-4 decision in the case, Florida v. Jardines, No. 11-564, featured an unusual alignment of justices. Justice Antonin Scalia, a member of the court’s conservative wing, wrote the majority decision. He was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, a frequent ally, along with three of the court’s more liberal members, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

 

Justice Scalia said the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, is particularly concerned with the home and its immediate surroundings. Allowing a dog on a six-foot leash to roam outside a residence, he said, was “an unlicensed physical intrusion” that was different in kind from visits from, say, salesmen, Girl Scouts or trick-or-treaters.

 

“To find a visitor knocking on the door is routine (even if sometimes unwelcome),” Justice Scalia wrote. “To spot that same visitor exploring the front porch with a metal detector, or marching his bloodhound into the garden before saying hello and asking permission, would inspire most of us to — well, call the police.”

 

Justice Scalia grounded his opinion in property rights. In a concurrence, Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, said she would also have relied on a second rationale. “I would just as happily have decided it,” she said of the case, “by looking to Jardines’s privacy interests.”

 

In dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer, said neither rationale was sufficient to convert a visit by a man and a dog into a search.

 

“A reasonable person understands that odors emanating from a house may be detected from locations that are open to the public,” Justice Alito wrote, “and a reasonable person will not count on the strength of those odors remaining within the range that, while detectable by a dog, cannot be smelled by a human.”

 

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High court rules against drug-sniffing dog search    (Corrected Article)
The Supreme Court says owner's rights were violated by a drug-sniffing dog on the doorstep

By David Jackson and Richard Wolf — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘USA Today’

 

 

A drug-sniffing dog at your doorstep is a step too far, the Supreme Court has decided.

 

While the high court had ruled last month that a Florida police officer's use of a drug-sniffing dog to search a truck during a routine a traffic stop was OK, it drew the line Tuesday at the entrance to a private home.

 

Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said a dog sniffing at a house where police suspect drugs are being grown constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and the circumstances did not justify the officers' entry to the home.

 

"This right would be of little practical value if the state's agents could stand in a home's porch or side garden and trawl for evidence with impunity," Scalia wrote in a majority opinion. "The right to retreat would be significantly diminished if the police could enter a man's property to observe his repose from just outside the front window."

 

Writing in dissent, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that dogs have long been used for law enforcement purposes, and that the homeowner in this case did not have a reasonable expectation of total privacy.

 

Wrote Alito: "A reasonable person understands that odors emanating from a house may be detected from locations that are open to the public, and a reasonable person will not count on the strength of those odors remaining within the range that, while detectable by a dog, cannot be smelled by a human."

 

The ruling scrambled the court's normal ideological divisions.

 

Fellow conservative Clarence Thomas signed onto Scalia's opinion against the search, as did three members of the more liberal bloc: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

 

The dissenters included three of the more conservative court members -- Alito, Anthony Kennedy, and Chief Justice John Roberts -- as well as liberal member Stephen Breyer.

 

A pair of cases from Florida argued last year hinged on the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches -- a protection the high court held in high esteem during its last term, when it ruled unanimously that police should have obtained a warrant before placing a GPS device on a drug suspect's car.

 

In another dog-sniffing case decided last month, the court ruled in favor of police who used a canine during a traffic stop.

 

Tuesday's ruling stemmed from a 2006 incident in which Miami-Dade police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration set up surveillance on a house after being tipped to a possible marijuana growing operation. An officer went up to the house with a dog named Franky, who quickly detected the odor of pot. The sniff was used to obtain a search warrant from a judge.

 

Attorneys for occupant Joelis Jardines, who was arrested and charged with marijuana trafficking, challenged the search as unlawful. A trial judge agreed, and threw out the evidence; the Florida Supreme Court later sided with the trial judge.

 

During a Supreme Court hearing held on Halloween, justices raised questions about the drug sniffing at a private home, as opposed to a traffic stop.

 

The justices seemed amenable to the use of the dogs in general, without quarreling about their training and certification. But when the issue arrived on their doorstep, their reaction changed; dogs sniffing at the door, they reasoned, were far more intrusive than trick-or-treaters.

 

Justices Scalia and Kennedy had appeared to align with the court's four more liberal members against the actions of Franky, the police dog who detected marijuana in a Miami grow house only after spending several minutes sniffing around the front door.

 

Justice Kagan called that "a lengthy and obtrusive process." Justice Ginsburg said it could lead to random searches of "any home, anywhere."

 

Although modern technology didn't exist when the Founders wrote the Bill of Rights, dogs certainly did -- and they have been used reliably by police for a number of causes, including the search for victims of Superstorm Sandy, which occurred just days before oral arguments.

 

"Scotland Yard used dogs to track Jack the Ripper," said Gregory Garre, who represented Florida law enforcement.

 

"These dogs are quite reliable," agreed Joseph Palmore, representing the U.S. Justice Department, which sided with the state.

 

But Glen Gifford, an assistant public defender representing one of the defendants, begged to differ. "Dogs make mistakes," he said. "Dogs err."

 

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DEA targets FedEx, UPS in online-pharmacy probe
U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, weighs in on issue, asks DEA to work with the industry.

By Amy Pavuk — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The Orlando Sentinel’ / Orlando, FL

 

 

In its ongoing effort to crack down on the nation's prescription-drug epidemic, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has gone after doctors, pharmacists, pharmacy chains, wholesale drug suppliers — and now FedEx and UPS.

 

Even though the DEA will not confirm it is engaged in the probe, both companies have disclosed in corporate filings that they are targets of a federal investigation related to packages shipped from online pharmacies.

 

Based on the allegations, it appears federal officials are suggesting the shipping companies take responsibility for the prescription drugs inside packages they are transporting.

 

FedEx officials have called the California-based probe "absurd and deeply disturbing" and a threat to customers' privacy.

 

"We are a transportation company — we are not law enforcement, we are not doctors and we are not pharmacists," FedEx spokesman Patrick Fitzgerald said in a prepared statement.

 

Though the probe has been unfolding quietly for several years, the investigation is now gaining headlines and attention from politicians, including Winter Park U.S. Rep. John Mica.

 

In a letter sent to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart and Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month, Mica asked the leaders to recognize "the difficulty and unfairness of requiring those carriers to assume responsibility for the legality and validity of the contents of the millions of sealed packages that they pick up and deliver ever day."

 

Mica — who reports FedEx as one of his top campaign contributors — told the Orlando Sentinel that, although he is "concerned by prescription drugs" and their distribution, it would be inefficient and ineffective for federal authorities to turn UPS and FedEx into deputy enforcers of drug policy.

 

"You can't stop commerce; you can't open every package," Mica said. "I'm only asking them [the DEA and DOJ] for a reasonable approach."

 

Mica did not offer a specific solution but said he hoped the two sides come to "some sort of accommodation."

 

When contacted by the Orlando Sentinel for comment, a DEA spokesman, Special Agent Mike Rothermund, said he would not "confirm or deny if there's an investigation."

 

The U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco did not return calls for comment.

 

Federal law prohibits purchase of controlled substances — which include drugs such as Vicodin, Xanax and Adderall — without a valid prescription from a doctor. There must be a real doctor-patient relationship, so prescriptions written by "cyber doctors" who rely on online questionnaires are not legitimate under the law.

 

FedEx officials say they have had a long history of cooperating with federal law-enforcement agencies.

 

"We have no interest in violating the privacy of our customers by opening and inspecting their packages in an attempt to determine the legality of the contents. We stand ready and willing to support and assist law enforcement," Fitzgerald stated. "We cannot, however, do their jobs for them."

 

The company said it asked the DEA for a list of online pharmacies suspected of illegal activity so it could stop shipping from those businesses. But the DEA has refused to provide FedEx such a list, Fitzgerald's statement said.

 

A UPS spokesman said he could not comment on the investigation.

 

But in a February corporate filing, UPS said it is cooperating with the investigation and is "exploring the possibility of resolving this matter, which could include our undertaking further enhancements to our compliance program and a payment."

 

FedEx officials say that, rather than working with the industry to implement solutions, the Department of Justice is focusing its attention and money on the potential prosecution of delivery companies.

 

"This is unwarranted by law and a dangerous distraction at a time when the purported illegal activity by these pharmacies continues," Fitzgerald wrote in a statement.

 

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Secret Service

 

Obama appoints first female head of Secret Service
Longtime agent Julia Pierson has been agency's chief of staff since 2008.

By Aamer Madhani and Kevin Johnson — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘USA Today’

 

 

WASHINGTON — President Obama named Julia Pierson, a longtime U.S. Secret Service agent, on Tuesday as the first female director of the agency, a pick that could mark a cultural shift for an agency that's reputation was tarnished by last year's prostitution scandal.

 

The selection of Pierson, 53, who has been the service's chief of staff for more than four years, was lauded by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as "historic." Obama called Pierson an agent who has "consistently exemplified the spirit and dedication the men and women of the service demonstrate every day."

 

"Julia is eminently qualified to lead the agency that not only safeguards Americans at major events and secures our financial system, but also protects our leaders and our first families, including my own," Obama said in a statement. "Julia has had an exemplary career, and I know these experiences will guide her as she takes on this new challenge to lead the impressive men and women of this important agency."

 

Pierson's appointment comes nearly a year after the agency — charged with protecting the president and top administration officials and visiting dignitaries — was rocked by a prostitution scandal. Several agents, who traveled to Cartagena, Colombia, to do advance work for Obama's visit last April, brought prostitutes back to their hotel rooms. Twelve agents were either disciplined or forced out of the agency as a result of the scandal.

 

"During the Colombia prostitution scandal, the Secret Service lost the trust of many Americans, and failed to live up to the high expectations placed on it." said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. "Ms. Pierson has a lot of work ahead of her to create a culture that respects the important job the agency is tasked with. I hope she succeeds in restoring lost credibility in the Secret Service."

 

With the pick, Obama is trying to send a clear message to the Secret Service rank-and-file, said Jeffrey Robinson, the co-author of Standing Next to History: An Agent's Life Inside the Secret Service.

 

"The boys will be boys excuse will never work again--not as long as she is there," Robinson said. "All that crap that went down in Cartagena, that won't ever happen again."

 

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent that worked with Pierson, said the new director is "tough but not overwhelming" and is well-respected in the agency. He added that Pierson will be a good pick to help the agency move past Cartagena.

 

"The men and women of the service…are looking to leave this behind them," said former Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino. "This is going to be a page turner for the Secret Service. I think she's a great pick—she is reform minded and she's seen it, not just done it."

 

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan announced his retirement last month after a nearly three-decade career and seven years as head of the agency.

 

In testimony before Congress last year, Sullivan apologized for the conduct of Secret Service personnel in Colombia.

 

Pierson was appointed to the position of chief of staff on Aug. 3, 2008. Prior to her appointment, she served as the Secret Service's assistant director of the Office of Human Resources and Training, a position she held since June 2006.

 

She is a native of Orlando and began her career with the agency in 1983 as a special agent assigned to the Miami Field Office, after having served three years as a police officer in Orlando.

 

Arnette Heintze, a retired Secret Service agent who worked extensively with Pierson, said the career agent has "solid credentials that nobody can question.''

 

As for the first woman director of the agency, Heintze said, the "service is more than ready.''

 

Heintze said he first worked with Pierson in the mid-1980s on a wave of identity-theft cases involving Nigerian nationals that spread across the United States. Later, they worked on the protective detail for President George H.W. Bush.

 

"I knew her as a solid criminal investigator, with a good reputation as a street agent,'' said Heintze, who served as special agent in charge in Chicago before his retirement in 2003.

 

"No one can question that she has the experience and understanding of the job as a special agent," Heintze said. "She's got all the credentials, and now she's got the backing of the president.''

 

As the chief of staff, Heintze said, there is "no question'' that Pierson would have "weighed in'' on the review into agents accused of consorting with prostitutes while on detail in Cartagena, Colombia.

 

"I think her appointment will go over well,'' he said.

 

Rosanne Manghisi, executive director of the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives, described Pierson's appointment as "a great opportunity.''

 

"We are really excited for her,'' Manghisi said. "We like to see women in high-ranking jobs, but we also like to see the right woman.''

 

Manghisi said she didn't view Pierson's selection as necessarily linked to last year's sex scandal involving the agency.

 

"There are always incidents that occur under different commands,'' she said. "I would think that she was just the best qualified for the job.''

 

Former Secret Service Director John McGaw, who headed the agency from 1992 to 1993, said recent incidents involving the Secret Service, including last year's Cartagena scandal, "opened the door for change.''

 

"This probably should have happened a long time ago,'' he said.

 

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Attempt at Circumventing the 2nd Amendment  / Gun Control

 

Momentum on Gun Policy Changes Fading Fast as Washington Takes a Break

By Ted Gest — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Crime & Justice News’ / Washington, DC

 

 

Has Washington waited too long to act on gun policy? Politico asks that question, noting that more than 100 days after the Newtown massacre, no bill has passed either house of Congress, which now is on a two-week spring break. The increasingly sour mood of gun control proponents highlights the stakes in reaping even a slim victory from Congress this spring. President Obama may still get a bill, but not like the one he envisioned in December. There won't be new bans on assault weapons or high-capacity ammunition magazines.

 

Universal background checks have moved from an assumed yes to a wish list item for gun control advocates. Even a new gun trafficking law - the smallest and weakest of the issues - is not a sure thing to pass the Senate. National Urban League President Marc Morial acknowledged that it takes massacres like Newtown to drive gun control momentum. "Too much of our history has been in reacting to crisis, but sometimes that is what it takes," he said.

 

Richard Feldman, a former National Rifle Association lobbyist, said Obama's mistake was seeking gun control reforms that are too broad. Time was wasted, Feldman said, with the debate over assault weapons and magazine size, that could have been spent pushing for an immediate vote. "If you're all over the board, you're as strong as your weakest link. Drop your weakest link. Put your best foot forward. I'd always rather go back to Congress as a winner and ask for more later," he said.

 

To read the entire Politico article, go to:

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/did-washington-wait-too-long-on-gun-control-89359.html

 

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ATF

 

Inspector general letter raises concerns about ATF's storefront sting in Milwaukee

By John Diedrich — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’ / Milwaukee, WI

 

 

The Justice Department's inspector general said a flawed undercover sting in Milwaukee appears to raise "significant management issues relating to the oversight and management" of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to a letter sent to congressional leaders.

 

Inspector General Michael Horowitz, whose office does independent investigations, wrote that problems revealed in the Milwaukee operation by a Journal Sentinel investigation are of particular concern given the agency's failures in its Operation Fast and Furious.

 

In that operation, agents in Arizona encouraged the sale of more than 2,000 firearms to gun traffickers but lost track of many of the weapons. Many ended up at crime scenes in Mexico and at the scene where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed. The inspector general's report on Fast and Furious was sharply critical of the ATF and the U.S. attorney's office, finding "a significant lack of oversight" by both agencies.

 

Horowitz's letter is the strongest connection between the failures of Fast and Furious and the operation in Milwaukee last year, which was beset by a series of foul-ups and failures, including agents having their guns stolen, the undercover storefront being burglarized and sensitive law enforcement documents being carelessly handled, the Journal Sentinel found. An ATF machine gun, stolen from an agent's vehicle, remains unrecovered.

 

Horowitz wrote the letter to U.S. Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who had asked Horowitz to conduct an independent investigation of the Milwaukee operation.

 

The ATF has completed its investigation of the Milwaukee operation and forwarded it to the Justice Department. Horowitz told the congressmen he will decide whether to conduct his own investigation after reviewing the ATF's report.

 

In his letter, Horowitz wrote that he has been closely following the Milwaukee operation since it was first reported by the Journal Sentinel and recently had a meeting with ATF officials about it.

 

Horowitz noted one recommendation in his report on Operation Fast and Furious was for the ATF to re-evaluate and strengthen its internal review to ensure that matters involving "sensitive circumstances," "special requirements" and "otherwise illegal activity" are sufficiently evaluated.

 

"The Milwaukee operation appears to highlight the importance of this and other recommendations from our report," Horowitz wrote in the March 22 letter, which was obtained Tuesday by the Journal Sentinel.

 

Several members of Congress, from both parties, have demanded answers about the operation from the ATF and Attorney General Eric Holder. So far, the agency has not responded but is expected to once the Department of Justice reviews the matter.

 

ATF officials have acknowledged mistakes were made but stand by the technique of using undercover storefronts, which they have used in cities around the country.

 

This month, Scott Sweetow, special agent in charge of the agency's St. Paul Field Division, said procedural and administrative mistakes were made in the Milwaukee operation, but he also defended it. He said undercover storefronts will continue to be used by the ATF but changes would be made. He did not say what would change. The St. Paul Field Division covers Milwaukee-based agents. Sweetow took over in January.

 

Last week, ATF spokesman Mike Campbell said of the Milwaukee operation: "We are human and do make mistakes at times and that is when you need good oversight. That is when we go back and see what lessons need to be learned."

 

Campbell said every aspect of the Milwaukee operation was reviewed, including the selection of the location in the Riverwest area. People who live near the store said they were disturbed the government would draw gun-carrying felons and drug dealers into their neighborhood.

 

Campbell said storefronts have been effectively used in other cities for years, not necessarily to build major investigations, but to go after guns and drugs at the street level.

 

"It is one of the investigative strategies we use," he said.

 

The operation resulted in charges against about 30 people, most on minor drug and gun counts. Some of the defendants face long prison terms, largely because of previous criminal history.

 

A federal prosecutor in Milwaukee took the unusual step of criticizing the operation at a sentencing this month, saying it was not the best use of resources. He also said he wished more criminals with violent histories had been caught in the sting.

 

The operation was plagued by problems including an ATF agent's guns being stolen and the sting storefront, which went by the name Fearless Distributing, being burglarized of merchandise that the agency reported was worth nearly $40,000. ATF agents recommended charges against at least three of the wrong people, and the counts against those defendants were quickly dropped.

 

The agents also left behind a sensitive ATF operation plan at the store after they cleared out. It listed undercover officers' names, cellphones and vehicle information along with signals used by law enforcement during arrests of suspects.

 

David Salkin, who unknowingly rented to the ATF for its undercover operation, said the agency owes him about $15,000 because of damage to the building, unpaid utility bills and lost rent. The agency has contended the amount is much smaller.

 

When Salkin asked the agency to pay him, ATF attorney Patricia Cangemi warned him to stop: "If you continue to contact the Agents after being so advised your contacts may be construed as harassment under the law. Threats or harassment of a Federal Agent is of grave concern."

 

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Chicago, Illinois       (Garry Francis McCarthy)

Cops on foot patrol join ‘strategic saturation’ crime-fighting plan

BY JON SEIDEL — Tuesday, March 26th, 2013 ‘The Chicago Sun-Times’ / Chicago, IL

 

 

Supt. Garry McCarthy is confident it will be an important part of the department’s new “strategic saturation” crime-fighting approach. And he showed reporters a photo of some gang graffiti officers found that suggests the gangs agree.

 

“F--- the foot police,” it read.

 

“Apparently they’re having some sort of impact on gang members there,” McCarthy told reporters.

 

While officers in a vehicle can get around more quickly, McCarthy said, it’s easier for an officer on foot to engage with the community.

 

 

It began last week, he said, when officers on foot joined mobile units nightly in one of the 20 zones targeted in a department analysis of violent crime in Chicago. Twenty-four officers are assigned to that zone, but he said just 16 are working each evening.

 

The officers recently graduated from the police academy and completed a 12-week field training course. McCarthy said the foot patrols will expand as new officers complete that training.

 

“In the coming months you are going to see more assigned foot patrols phased into all the zones,” he said.

 

The implementation of the program, in which CPD is paying overtime to up to about 400 officers for nightly patrols in the 20 zones, coincided with a historically low tally of 14 murders in February. So far in March, there have been 12 murders. During the same period in March 2012, there were 40. All crime is down 35 percent in the targeted zones while officers are on patrol, McCarthy said Monday.

 

The officers patrolling the zones in vehicles continue to work for overtime pay, McCarthy said, but the foot-patrol officers do not.

 

“Those are straight-time officers,” McCarthy said.

 

He also said it gives the department a “scenario where we can start scaling back on the overtime and using straight-time officers.”

 

About the strategic saturation approach, McCarthy cautions: “This is not the cure for violent crime.”

 

The targeted zones were identified through a three-year and one-year analysis of violent crime in Chicago. And while the zones make up 3 percent of the city’s geography, he said, they’re responsible for about 20 percent of the violence over the last three years.

 

McCarthy has said the saturation approach frees commanders to send regularly scheduled beat officers to other areas in their districts that require attention.

 

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Tennessee

 

Tennessee losing war on meth
Police push for tougher laws as state becomes No. 1 in use of illegal drug

By Brian Haas — Tuesday, March 26th, 2013 ‘The Tennessean’ / Nashville, TN

 

 

The meth users are winning, police say.

 

They’ve beaten new restrictions on how much pseudoephedrine — a main ingredient in methamphetamine — they’re allowed to buy, despite a computer system designed to stop bulk sales. A bill in the legislature that would have made pseudoephedrine a prescription-only drug was killed yet again for another year. And funding to clean up meth labs across the state is set to run out at the end of this year.

 

“We’re in trouble in Tennessee, absolutely,” said Williamson County Sheriff Jeff Long, a member of the Tennessee Public Safety Coalition, which has lobbied for stricter meth laws.

 

“The figures now show that, according to the first three months of this year, Tennessee is No. 1 in the nation (for meth use),” Long said.

 

A key defeat for law enforcement came in a legislative hearing last week when a bill to make pseudoephedrine prescription-only was killed until 2014.

 

State Rep. Tony Shipley, chairman of the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee, said there was not enough support for the measure, particularly because the law could have made it more inconvenient for law-abiding citizens.

 

“It’s pretty much done. It just doesn’t have a place to go; there’s just not any interest amongst the members,” said Shipley, a Kingsport Republican. “We may never get to a full prescription, because I don’t think a full prescription is necessary. I don’t think 85 percent of Tennesseans are abusing this.”

 

That defeat has law enforcement regrouping to cope with the reality of what Tennessee is facing. Not only is the meth problem growing, it’s also spreading.

 

“This used to be a regional problem, it started in the upper east and southeast and now has moved across the state, unfortunately,” Long said. “Shelby County’s No. 2 now, who used to not report any labs.”

 

 

Limits do little

 

Since 2005, Tennessee has gradually made it harder to buy large quantities of pseudoephedrine. Today, a consumer can purchase up to 3.6 grams at a time and up to 9 grams per month — about 120 pills per purchase or 300 pills per month, assuming a typical 30 mg dose of pseudoephedrine.

 

The consumer’s driver’s license information is put into a computer at the time of sale, which is supposed to block purchases if the buyer exceeds either of those limits.

 

That new computer system, called NPLEx, was put into place last year. The plan was reluctantly supported by law enforcement, who saw that the system had failed to stem meth in other states.

 

As predicted, it failed to make a dent in 2012. A state audit released in January concluded, “Methamphetamine lab incidents since the implementation of NPLEx in January 2012 have not decreased substantially and remain at high levels.”

 

Tommy Farmer, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s Methamphetamine and Pharmaceutical Task Force, said meth users are adept at circumventing limits on pseudoephedrine sales through a practice known as “smurfing.” Smurfing entails recruiting multiple buyers to purchase the legal limit of pseudoephedrine for the meth cook to use.

 

Smurfers who don’t want to be caught often use a fake driver’s licenses to hide their identities.

 

“They’re going in and recruiting homeless, they’re recruiting unwitting elderly, they’re recruiting college kids,” Farmer said.

 

“We’ve got a whole new cottage industry of smurfers.”

 

Smurfers are usually paid $30 to $100.

 

A 2011 sting operation in Nashville netted nearly 40 suspected smurfers.

 

 

Scripts effective

 

Meth investigators here and in other states have lobbied to make pseudoephedrine prescription only. Today, only two states, Oregon and Mississippi, require a prescription for all pseudoephedrine purchases. Missouri passed a law last year allowing each jurisdiction to determine whether to require a prescription for pseudoephedrine.

 

Results in those states have been successful, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released in January.

 

“The implementation of prescription-only laws by Oregon and Mississippi was followed by declines in lab incidents,” the audit says. “Law enforcement officials in Oregon and Mississippi attribute this reduction in large part to the prescription-only approach.”

 

Making those changes can be difficult. Pharmaceutical and consumer health groups have lobbied heavily to defeat prescription-only measures, arguing that they place an undue burden on consumers who might suffer from allergies. Shipley, the Kingsport legislator, said that the legislature takes those concerns seriously.

 

“The bottom line is it’s a careful balance between the rights of the citizens to have access to use and what is a responsible quantity to allow on the street,” he said.

 

Long said the prescription-only defeat in the legislature will hurt law enforcement’s attempts to curb the drug abuse.

 

“We’re sadly disappointed because we know that is a way to combat the methamphetamine production,” Long said. “The states that have passed the law have reduced their labs by 80 percent or more.”

 

As an alternative, Shipley has filed a bill that would further limit quantities of pseudoephedrine that can be sold to consumers to 7.2 grams per month or about 240 pills. The bill remains alive and moving through legislative committees.

 

 

Toxic mess

 

Even bigger problems loom ahead as meth cleanup funding — about $750,000 in state money — is set to run out at the end of this year. Funding has been a problem the past few years after the federal government zeroed-out most meth cleanup money, leaving states left to fend for themselves.

 

The process of making meth leaves a potentially explosive toxic waste behind that requires specialized cleanup.

 

“So at the end of this year there won’t be any money for cleanups, training, buying the equipment or any of that,” Long said. “It will be a local problem that every locale will have to worry about, cleaning up their own meth labs.”

 

But Long said that their fight isn’t over. They plan to continue to lobby for prescription-only laws, even if they have to adopt a city-by-city approach like Missouri’s.

 

“What other crime in Tennessee would cost the state of Tennessee and the citizens $1.6 billion and not be addressed?” he said. “We will be back in January again.”

 

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New Orleans, Louisiana

 

Chief Serpas cites major progress on NOPD reforms, others dubious

By John Simerman — Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 ‘The Times-Picayune’ / New Orleans, LA

 

 

In his legal battle to get out from under a costly federal consent decree governing reforms across the New Orleans Police Department, Mayor Mitch Landrieu has argued that much of the changes the feds want already are in place, and that he is committed to doing the rest with or without a decree.

 

What's unclear is whether those changes have reached cops on the street.

 

The U.S. Department of Justice claims that any changes so far amount to window-dressing. Without court oversight, none of the reforms that NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas has recently touted will be cemented, the feds argue.

 

"The New Orleans Police Department has been a troubled agency for decades, and these troubles continue," Justice Department lawyers argued in a recent court filing. "None of the City's efforts to reform NOPD on its own have been successful."

 

The city's legal fight has less to do with worries over the policy implications of the reform pact than it does with politics and broader budget concerns. Landrieu claims that he was blindsided by the potential cost of a separate deal to fix the city's troubled jail facility. That bill, on top of the NOPD reform costs, could force stiff cuts in city services or personnel, or a politically damaging tax hike.

 

Still, the mayor, who invited the feds to help "remake a crumbling police department" when he first took office, has made the claim that the troubled police force is making progress.

 

Which begs the question: Just how far has the city come, in three years under Serpas, in fixing what is widely considered one of the most dysfunctional law enforcement agencies in the nation?

 

According to the city, far enough to trust that it will follow through. Serpas, in a recent interview, pointed to a raft of policy reforms, infrastructure improvements and officer training initiatives that he says have started to bear fruit.

 

Many of them, he said, overlap with the demands of the consent decree, a roadmap for broad, court-ordered reforms aimed at bringing the agency up to constitutional snuff.

 

Serpas argues that the constitutional lapses alleged by the feds remain unproven.

 

Still, in a status report through the end of 2012, Serpas claims the department has completed 60 of the 147 "action items" dictated in the consent decree, and that 80 more are in progress.

 

Another four of the action items are pending, the report said. On three of them, the city now disagrees with the fixes dictated in the consent decree, according to the report.

 

The city, through a mayoral spokesman, declined a request to itemize which of the consent decree mandates are done, which are not, and which the city doesn't think need doing.

 

"There's a lot of things we were doing anyway that ended up in the consent decree because they were just good things to do. There are some things that don't end up in the consent decree that are really good things to do," Serpas said.

 

"The consent decree didn't tell us that you ought to have a truthfulness policy that says you can't lie to your boss and keep your job. We didn't need nobody to tell us we needed to do that. We did it. The consent decree didn't tell us we needed to audit our property room and find out where all the money was."

 

According to Serpas, the department has arrested 52 officers since he took office and fired nine more for lying.

 

With bad cops weeded out, disciplinary actions against officers are down, the report claims, from 132 in 2010 to 205 in 2011 - Serpas' first full year in office -- to 121 last year. The number of complaints brought against officers, both from citizens and fellow cops, also has gone down, Serpas claims.

 

Among the changes the department says it has implemented are an overhaul of the police off-duty paid detail system, vastly increased officer training, tougher hiring standards and tighter safeguards against misconduct by officers.

 

The department has bought new technology aimed at bringing it into the modern era, with improved crime-mapping and data analysis.

 

A big advantage of the consent decree, Serpas said, is money. The $7 million that the City Council's approved this year to fund the agreement, Serpas said, will go in part toward hiring an additional 100 officers to a force that he says has lost 300 cops since he first arrived, and for new equipment.

 

According to the city, $766,000 has been spent so far, the majority of it -- $601,000 -- on Tasers.

 

The status report, which also marks progress on the consent decree, chronicles how far the NOPD has come on Serpas' 65-point reform plan, which he put out shortly after taking office in 2010.

 

 

Among the improvements claimed in the report, the NOPD has:

 

• Caught up with a backlog of 833 rape exam kits that were sitting idle, leading to one indictment and nine arrests.

 

• Reengineered" and expanded the homicide unit, doubling its size.

 

• Added firearms examiners to test ballistics, helping to clear a backlog in untested weapons.

 

• Bought crime analysis software that helps better deploy officers and offers more accuracy and transparency on neighborhood crime reports.

 

• Placed interpreters on call to help solve a language problem between cops and suspects or witnesses - a mandate of the consent decree.

 

• Introduced "direct sting audits" of officers to ensure lawful police work.

 

• Taken police officer use-of-force investigations out of the homicide division, and into a new, specialized team under internal affairs.

 

• Increased officer training, from 23 hours to 40 hours per year. The consent decree would increase that still further, to 64.

 

 

In addition, Serpas noted the opening of a new 7th District station, with construction underway for a new 5th District station, along with a new crime lab soon to come online and other improvements.

 

"That's great stuff that you gotta have. We're building infrastructure out, finally," he said. "All the things that really are infrastructure-related to make us the best police department we can be, to meet the designs of the Department of Justice and our own designs - it's all coming together."

 

While touting his own changes, Serpas doesn't sound so opposed to the ones mandated by the consent decree, though he recognizes Landrieu's broader budgetary concerns.

 

"I think everybody wants to make sure there's no sliding back," Serpas said. "What a consent decree does is, it provides for a framework that doesn't allow it to change by the difference in administration. And that's fine. I'm very happy about that. I absolutely think the consent decree in the long run is what the department is going to need."

 

The Landrieu administration apparently thinks differently, at least in its legal filings.

 

The success of the mayor's legal gambit to snuff out the consent decree remains uncertain. U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan is expected to rule soon on the city's bid to undo it.

 

That would be a mistake, said Ursula Price, director of community relations for Independent Police Monitor Susan Hutson's office.

 

Price pointed to a pair of reports released this month on the NOPD's stop-and-frisk policy - one by Hutson's office, the other by Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux's office.

 

The former said officer training on racial profiling during police stops remains inadequate, and added that officers need to spell out their reasons for stopping people under the policy. Quatrevaux's report found that it was impossible to track whether officers engaged in racial or other profiling because of flawed record-keeping.

 

Whatever reforms the department is initiating, it's hard to tell whether they're playing out on the street, Price said.

 

"They claimed they've addressed all this in training. Then we dug a little deeper and it turned out training wasn't being globally administered, and it wasn't being paid for," Price said.

 

Hutson's office is getting set to deliver its annual report next week, and Price said it looks like there may be an uptick in violence complaints against officers. Complaints over use of force by officers remain level, Price said.

 

"It looks like there's little change over time," she said.

 

FBI agents embedded in the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau are reviewing officer-involved shootings, but oversight of other aspects of the police reforms are lacking, Price said.

 

"We find it absolutely necessary," Price said of the consent decree. "It's very difficult for police departments to undo these types of problems on their own. And this community needs assurances of independent oversight.

 

"If we don't see some change in resources of local oversight, or federal oversight, I believe we're going to be in the same place we were, if not worse."

 

Civil rights attorney Mary Howell echoed that sentiment, saying it's difficult to take Serpas' word that true reform will happen with or without the feds.

 

"I'm hopeful they are making changes and moving ahead. However, we've had these periods of reform before and they never last," Howell said. "What the consent decree offers is something we've never had: a top-to-bottom restructuring in a way that has a chance of some of these reforms really sticking."

 

The stop-and-frisk reports were instructive, Howell said.

 

"This is 2013 and the report we're getting from the IG's office is (police) are not collecting the data. You can stop the conversation right there and say this is not working."

 

NOPD Capt. Michael Glasser, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, said the changes in the department have forced officers to up their statistics on stops and arrests.

 

"Nothing's really changed significantly. We've had a great deal of policy changes, changes in forms that are used, but nothing in substance," Glasser said.

 

"The consent decree for the most part really shrinks down to one major issue: How does the department interact with the public - primarily the public we consider to be suspicious or criminal. We have no hands-on training with respect to that sort of thing.

 

"What we have here is a lot of low-hanging fruit. It's easy to turn around and say we have a new training bulletin, new form, sit in front of a computer screen. It's easy to do. It changes nothing in terms of how we interact with the public. It doesn't address the primary issues."

 

On Wednesday, Serpas is slated to appear before the City Council's public safety committee to respond to the criticism over the stop-and-frisk policy, among other issues.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Immigration Enforcement  /  Illegal Aliens

 

Legislatures Consider Limits on Prisoner Deportations Through Secure Communities

By Daniel C. Vock — Tuesday, March 26th, 2013 ‘Pew's Stateline.Org’ / Washington, DC

 

 

As Congress considers major revisions to federal immigration laws, legislators in a few states are trying to block the federal government’s power to deport immigrants who land in their jails.

 

The efforts to pass so-called Trust Acts are essentially the polar opposite of laws passed in Arizona and elsewhere to encourage illegal immigrants to leave their states.  Sponsors want to put the brakes on a wide-reaching federal program, called Secure Communities, that asks state and local police to detain illegal immigrants after an arrest until federal immigration officials can pick them up. Critics of Secure Communities argue that the program leads to the deportation of some people who pose little threat to the public.

 

The public push to pass Trust Acts started in several state capitols this month. At a rally on Beacon Hill, Massachusetts, immigration advocates noted they already signed up 34 cosponsors in the legislature who back the effort. In Sacramento, activists showed up with their dogs to protest a woman detained by federal authorities after neighbors complained to police that her dog barked too loudly. And Connecticut legislators held their first hearing on the Trust Act there.

 

Proponents hope their bills can scale back deportations in their own states, while influencing the national debate over immigration, too. The Obama administration backs Secure Communities, as it set record highs for the number of immigrants deported per year.

 

“One of the biggest barriers to moving forward with immigration reform is the contradiction of continuing to deport the people today who would otherwise become citizens tomorrow,” said B. Loewe, a spokesman for the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, which is pushing the laws.

 

“If we can pass enough of these, it would force the federal government’s hand to say ‘we can’t depend on the states to do our job,’” said State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, a Democrat who is sponsoring legislation in the Connecticut House.

 

Opponents of these bills say the legislation interferes with police departments’ ability to keep their residents safe.  “The Trust Act and all of its clones are creatures of political leaders, not law enforcement agencies,” said Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports tighter controls on immigration.

 

 

Secure Communities

 

Deportations

(States with more than 2,000 deportations)

 

1.California - 92,033

2.Texas - 57,981

3.Arizona - 24,802

4.Florida - 15,112

5.Georgia - 8,238

6.North Carolina - 7,204

7.Virginia - 5,430

8.Tennessee - 2,899

9.Utah - 2,657

10.South Carolina - 2,643

11.Nevada - 2,642

12.Illinois - 2,341

13.New York - 2,236

14.Oklahoma - 2,048

 

 

Criminal histories

(Percentage of people deported who had criminal histories from states with more than 2,000 deportations)

 

1.Texas - 85.1%

2.Tennessee - 84.6%

3.South Carolina - 83.9%

4.Illinois - 82.1%

5.Utah - 81.6%

6.Virginia - 80.5%

7.Arizona - 79.4%

8.California - 75.9%

9.Georgia - 75.0%

10.Oklahoma - 73.6%

11.North Carolina - 67.9%

12.Florida - 63.2%

13.New York - 62.4%

14.Nevada - 60.0%

 

Source: U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Data from October 2008 through January 2013.

 

 

The federal government launched Secure Communities in 2008, and it is now used in every state. The program allows Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to review the records of suspects in the custody of local and state police for immigration violations at the same time that the FBI examines their criminal histories.

 

If ICE officers find a prisoner who they think is in the United States illegally, the federal agents can ask local police to keep the prisoner in custody for up to two days. The federal government has used the program to deport more than a quarter of a million people since 2008, or about 7,000 people a month last year.

 

The state legislation to curb Secure Communities would primarily prevent local police from turning over less-dangerous immigrants to federal authorities. The latest push comes after the federal government told states last year that they could not opt out of the program. The governors of Illinois, Massachusetts and New York had tried to keep their states from participating.

 

One of the biggest disagreements over Secure Communities centers on how well it targets criminals convicted of or charged with serious crimes. The Obama administration says the program is one of the most effective ways to go after illegal immigrants who are dangerous.

 

“Even though some aliens may be arrested on minor criminal charges, they may also have more serious criminal backgrounds,” said Dani Bennett, ICE spokeswoman. Many prisoners who were released by police, despite ICE requests to keep them in custody, then went on to commit more serious crimes, she said. “Law enforcement agencies that honor  ICE detainers ultimately help protect public safety.”

 

The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reviewed hundreds of Secure Communities cases and found that ICE followed its policies in 97 percent of them.

 

The Obama administration recently tweaked the program to reduce the number of people ICE pursues after arrests for traffic offenses and other petty crimes.

 

But advocates for immigrants argue that Secure Communities still is often used to deport people who have only minor infractions on their record. Roughly 28 percent of people deported under the program since it began in 2008 were convicted of “aggravated felonies” or had two felonies on their record. But 77 percent had some sort of criminal history.

 

 

California Veto

 

The conflict over Secure Communities has been most visible in California, formerly home to more than a third of all the immigrants who have been deported through Secure Communities. Last year, lawmakers sent a Trust Act to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown to sign.

 

The proposal would have allowed local police to comply with ICE requests to keep prisoners in custody only if the prisoners had been charged with “serious or violent felonies.” But the governor vetoed the measure because the definition of serious crimes didn’t include abusing children, trafficking drugs, selling guns and other significant offenses.

 

“The significant flaws in this bill can be fixed, and I will work with the legislature to see that the bill is corrected forthwith,” the governor wrote in his September veto measure.

 

Evan Westrup, a spokesman for Brown, said that work is under way. “Our office continues to work closely with the legislature to address the concerns the governor raised in his veto message last year,” Westrup wrote in an email.

 

But Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano , chief sponsor of the Trust Act, is still pushing legislation that is very similar to the measure Brown vetoed, said Carlos Alcala, Ammiano’s spokesman. The governor’s staff, Alcala said, still has not shared their suggestions for changes.

 

 

Connecticut Builds on Prison Program

 

The vetoed California bill is still being used as a blueprint by legislators in Connecticut, Florida and Massachusetts.

 

In Connecticut, the law would put in place a common statewide policy similar to the one the state prison system adopted nearly a year ago.

 

The Department of Correction began individual reviews of cases where ICE had asked for holds on prisoners before they were released. The number of prisoners the state handed over to immigration authorities dropped by two thirds, from about 30 people a month to about 10, said Travis Silva, a Yale law student who worked on the court case that prompted the new policy.

 

The agency bases its decisions on how dangerous the prisoner appeared to be. Many of the people it let go had no serious criminal offenses on their records. In some cases, the only run-in with immigration officials was missing a court date two decades ago, Silva said.

 

But after the state began its screening policy, ICE asked for the department to turn over fewer immigrants, too, as if federal officials were tailoring their requests to meet the state’s new policy, Silva said.

 

Holder-Winfield, sponsor of the Connecticut measure, said the case of Josemaria Islas illustrated the need for a statewide policy on Secure Communities. Federal immigration authorities took Islas into custody as he was being released from jail by a judge, because judicial marshals who work for the court system did not have the same policy as the prison system.

 

Holder-Winfield said the varying policies also made immigrants more suspicious of police generally. “I grew up in a community as a black person in the United States, where we had fear of the police. I know what that means. It means the communities become less safe,” he said. “We don’t need that, whether it be in my black community or in their Mexican community or Jamaican community.”

 

At the New Haven-based immigrant rights group Junta, legal analyst Ana Maria Rivera Forastieri said she hopes the proposal will pass in Connecticut  and that other states will approve similar laws. “We’re not the only state that is pursuing legislation like the Trust Act,” she said. “We believe this legislation will save a lot of lives and a lot of families.”

 

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                                                          Mike Bosak