Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 ― Good Afternoon, Stay Safe
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Ret. Captain Eric Adams Testifies / Kelly Refutes Adams' Sworn Statement
Former Gov. David Paterson Declines To Comment / Retired Chief of Dept. Joseph Esposito To Testify
Police Critic Claims Kelly Said Frisks 'Instill Fear'
By SEAN GARDINER and TAMER EL-GHOBASHY ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The Wall Street Journal' / New York, NY
A Brooklyn state senator testified at a federal trial Monday that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told him the goal of stopping young black and Hispanic men was to "instill fear in them" so they would be less likely to carry guns.
At the trial challenging the constitutionality of the Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy, Eric Adams, who served nearly 22 years in the NYPD, testified that the conversation with Mr. Kelly occurred during a July 2010 meeting in then-Gov. David Paterson's Manhattan office.
Mr. Adams said Mr. Kelly was attempting to persuade the governor to veto a bill barring the police department from maintaining an electronic database with the names and addresses of people stopped but not charged.
During an unrelated event Monday, Mr. Kelly said he "categorically and totally" denies making the comments―and he pointed to the lawmaker's long-running criticism of the NYPD.
The testimony came during the first of three class actions to go to trial challenging stop and frisk. Supporters say the tactic has led to a historic reduction in crime.
Mr. Adams testified that at the meeting―which was also attended by state Sen. Martin Golden and then-Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries―he expressed concerns that young black and Hispanic men were being disproportionately targeted by the NYPD's stop-and-frisk tactic.
In response, Mr. Kelly "stated that they targeted and focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that every time they left home they could be targeted by police," Mr. Adams, who is also a candidate for Brooklyn borough president, said on the stand.
The senator also testified that Mr. Kelly said, "How else are we going to get rid of guns?"
"I was amazed that he was comfortable enough to say that in that setting," Mr. Adams testified. "I was shocked to hear that. I told him that was illegal and that was not what stop and frisk was supposed to be used for."
But Mr. Kelly on Monday denied the state senator's account.
"Anybody knowing Mr. Adams' history with this department and how often he's criticized it, that I would make that type of statement in front of three elected African-American officials, it just defies anyone's logic," he said.
Mr. Jeffries, who is now a congressman, said he recalled that Mr. Kelly was defending stop and frisk with a "deterrence theory" in which he said "he wanted individuals to think hard before carrying a weapon out in public because of the likelihood of being stopped and frisked at any time."
He said he "draws the same conclusions as Sen. Adams" based on his memory of the meeting with Mr. Kelly.
Mr. Golden, however, said he recalled a "very frank conversation" but said the comments Mr. Adams attributed to Mr. Kelly in court were "never made."
Mr. Golden, a retired New York City police officer who describes himself as a supporter of stop and frisk, said Mr. Kelly explained at the meeting that minorities were overwhelmingly stopped by police because many of the highest-crime areas in the city are in predominantly minority neighborhoods. He recalled Mr. Kelly saying that the percentages of minorities stopped "were in line with" the description of violent crime suspects.
"[Mr. Kelly] never indicated he did it to instill fear in anyone," Mr. Golden said.
Mr. Paterson could not be reached through a spokesman.
Mr. Adams attained the rank of captain despite being a longtime critic of the department, mainly through his leadership positions in a group called "100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care." Since his retirement from the NYPD in 2006, Mr. Adams has remained critical of some its practices.
In October 2011, Mr. Adams provided an affidavit attesting to the purported conversation with Mr. Kelly to the Center of Constitutional Rights as part of the organization's successful attempt to gain class-action status for its lawsuit against stop and frisk.
Later that year, as part of the city's defense in this case, Mr. Kelly submitted an affidavit saying, "at that meeting I did not, nor would I ever, state or suggest that the New York City Police Department targets young black and Latino men for stop and frisk activity." He also wrote he said nothing at that meeting "to indicate or imply that such activity is based on anything but reasonable suspicion."
During cross-examination on Monday, city attorney Heidi Grossman asked Mr. Adams if he had read Mr. Kelly's affidavit denying that he made the comments. But Manhattan federal court judge Shira Scheindlin cut off the questioning, saying the city was trying to introduce the testimony of Mr. Kelly through the "back door."
Mr. Kelly isn't testifying at the trial, which is seeking, among other measures, the installation of a court-appointed stop-and-frisk monitor. "If he'd like to come in here," the judge said, referring to Mr. Kelly, "he's welcome in this courtroom."
During his comments Monday, Mr. Kelly said it was a "joint decision" with the law department that he not testify. "We have made many, many people in this department available to testify at the trial," he said.
―Joe Jackson contributed to this article
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Kelly Said Street Stops Targeted Minorities, Senator Testifies
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Times'
During a legislative debate in 2010 over the Police Department's use of stop-and-frisk encounters, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, met with the governor at the time, David A. Paterson, to defend the tactic's importance as a crime-fighting tool.
According to a state senator, Eric Adams, who was at the meeting at the governor's office in Midtown Manhattan, the commissioner said that young black and Hispanic men were the focus of the stops because "he wanted to instill fear in them, every time they leave their home they could be stopped by the police."
Senator Adams, a Brooklyn Democrat who is a former captain in the New York Police Department, recalled the meeting as he testified in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Monday, as a trial over the constitutionality of the department's use of the tactic entered its third week.
Commissioner Kelly, who is not being called to testify, said in remarks to reporters on Monday that Senator Adams's characterization of what he said was "absolutely, categorically untrue." Commissioner Kelly has also filed an affidavit in court, saying, "At that meeting I did not, nor would I ever, state or suggest that the New York City Police Department targets young black and Latino men for stop-and-frisk activity."
It continued: "That has not been nor is it now the policy or practice of the N.Y.P.D."
The disagreement between Mr. Kelly and Senator Adams is nothing new; the senator has long criticized the department for what he says are unlawful street stops. But Mr. Adams usually issues his criticism at one of the various street-side news conferences that he has held over the years ― not in federal court as the only elected official scheduled to testify at the trial.
Given Commissioner Kelly's robust denial, it is unclear how the judge hearing the case, Shira A. Scheindlin, will interpret Senator Adams's recollection of one comment. Still, the senator's testimony served to underscore one of the trial's central constitutional questions: Do the police conduct street stops only when they observe individuals behaving suspiciously, or are the police increasingly stopping people without justification, as a way to discourage criminals from carrying guns in the street?
Supreme Court precedent permits officers to conduct brief investigatory stops if they have "reasonable suspicion" that the individual stopped is engaged in criminality. And Judge Scheindlin suggested on Monday that the Police Department's record of reducing crime was not central to the trial.
"I have always said the effectiveness of the policy is not of interest to this court," she said.
While police officials have emphasized the deterrent value of the stop-and-frisk tactic, deterrence has usually been characterized as a secondary benefit, rather than the reason that the police are engaging in the stops.
Mr. Kelly, in his affidavit, noted that he told Governor Paterson and Senator Adams about "my view that stops serve as a deterrent to criminal activity, which includes the criminal possession of a weapon."
In his affidavit, the commissioner observed, "I said nothing at the meeting to indicate or imply that such activity is based on anything but reasonable suspicion."
The meeting at issue occurred in July 2010, as Governor Paterson was considering whether to sign a bill that would force the Police Department to shut down an electronic database of people who had been the subject of street stops. Commissioner Kelly was trying to persuade Governor Paterson to veto the bill, while Senator Adams, a co-sponsor, spoke in favor of the legislation. The governor eventually signed the bill.
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Sen. Adams Claims Police Commissioner Said Stop-And-Frisk Used To "Instill Fear" In Blacks, Hispanics
By: Lindsey Christ ― Monday, April 1st, 2013; 11:27 p.m. 'NY 1 News' / New York, NY
State Senator Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, testified in the federal stop-and-frisk trial Monday that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly allegedly said that the policy is used to "instill fear" in black and Hispanic youth, but the commissioner called the claim "ludicrous." NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.
Before he was elected to the state Senate in 2006, Eric Adams had been a member of the New York City Police Department for 22 years. But when he was called to testify Monday, it was as a witness against the city in the federal case over whether the NYPD's use of stop-and-frisk is constitutional.
The focus of Adams' testimony was comments he says he heard Police Commissioner Ray Kelly say in 2010.
"I heard him on two different occasions indicate that we're using this policy to instill fear into African American and Hispanic youth, so each time they leave their home, they feel as though they can be stopped by the police," Adams told reporters on Monday.
Police officers are only allowed to stop and frisk individuals when there is reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
Adams testified that he is in favor of the tactic when used properly, but that the comments he says Kelly made were "discriminatory."
"It's against the law to use the stop-and-frisk procedure as a deterrent or to instill fear or to make people believe that they are going to be stopped at anytime by the police," Adams said.
Kelly adamantly denied Adams' claims at an unrelated press conference Monday.
"It just defies anyone's logic. Anyone who is familiar with me and what I say... it's ludicrous," the commissioner said.
Kelly also submitted an affidavit to the court denying the NYPD targets certain groups and saying individuals are never stopped for anything besides reasonable suspicion of a crime. He did acknowledge discussing how stop-and-frisk serves as a crime deterrent.
The judge would not allow Kelly's affidavit to be read into the record, since the commissioner has said he will not testify.
"I think this was an attempt to get me to testify. Make an outrageous statement that I would have to get to court to defend. Well, I'm defending it now," Kelly said.
Joseph Esposito is expected to testify on behalf of the NYPD brass. Until his retirement last week, Esposito was chief of the NYPD.
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Ray Kelly admitted cops target blacks, Hispanics in 'stop-frisk,' state lawmaker testifies
By JESSICA SIMEONE, ERIK KRISS and BRUCE GOLDING ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Post'
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly admitted that police target blacks and Hispanics for the controversial stop-and-frisk program in an effort to keep guns off the streets, a cop-turned-lawmaker testified yesterday.
State Sen. Eric Adams said he twice heard Kelly make the admission, the first time during a 2010 meeting with officials, including then-Gov. David Paterson and then-Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries.
Kelly called Adams' allegations "ludicrous" and "absolutely, categorically untrue" after the Brooklyn Democrat made them while under oath in Manhattan federal court on behalf of plaintiffs challenging stop-and frisk.
"It's interesting. Apparently, only Mr. Adams heard the statement, although other people were present," Kelly told reporters.
"It just defies logic. Anybody knowing Mr. Adams' history with this department and how often he's criticized it, that I would make that type of statement in front of three elected African-American officials."
Adams, a former NYPD captain and co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, testified that the July 2010 meeting came days before Paterson signed a law that bans the NYPD from keeping a database of everyone who has been stopped and frisked.
Adams, who co-sponsored the bill with Jeffries, said he complained that a "disproportionate" number of blacks and Hispanics were being subjected to stop-and-frisk.
According to Adams, Kelly "stated that he targeted or focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that any time they leave their homes they could be targeted by police."
Adams said he was "amazed" and "shocked" by Kelly's alleged remarks, adding, "I told him that was illegal."
He said Kelly responded by asking, "How else are we going to get rid of guns?"
Adams also said Kelly made similar comments during an August 2010 meeting of black elected officials in Brooklyn.
Another participant in the July 2010 meeting, state Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn), backed up the city's top cop, saying of Adams' testimony, "That's not my recollection of that at all."
Jeffries, now a Democratic congressman representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens, said Kelly, "in my view, articulated a deterrence theory to support the NYPD's aggressive stop-and-frisk activity in black and Latino neighborhoods."
"Did he use the word 'target'? I can't say one way or the other. But the whole conversation was taking place in the context of disproportionate stop-and-frisk in black and Latino neighborhoods," Jeffries said.
Paterson didn't respond to a request for comment.
During cross-examination of Adams, city lawyer Heidi Grossman tried to read aloud from a written declaration in which Kelly denied Adam's allegations, but was blocked by the judge, who called it a "back-door" attempt to introduce testimony from Kelly.
Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin then publicly invited Kelly to take the stand, saying: "If he'd like to come here, he's welcome in this courtroom."
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NYPD Commish Ray Kelly said 'stop and frisk' intended to 'instill fear' in blacks and Latinos: State Sen. Eric Adams
"He stated that he targeted and focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that every time that they left their homes they could be targeted by police," Adams testifies.
By Robert Gearty AND Ginger Adams Otis ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Daily News'
Cops targeted blacks and Latinos as part of their "stop-and-frisk" policy to "instill fear in them," NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly admitted in a private meeting with lawmakers, a state Senator testified Monday.
State Sen. Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) testified in Manhattan Federal Court he "was shocked" when Kelly made the surprise statement during a 2010 meeting in then-Gov. David Paterson's Manhattan office.
"He stated that he targeted and focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that every time that they left their homes they could be targeted by police," Adams said under questioning by attorney Jonathan Moore, representing the plaintiffs in a class-action suit on the controversial practice.
"I told him that I believe it was illegal and that that was not what stop-and-frisk was supposed to be used for," Adams said.
He said Kelly's response was, "How else are we going to get rid of guns?"
The commissioner, barred from testifying in the case after city lawyers refused to schedule him for a deposition, said Adams' testimony was a ploy to get him into court.
"I'm telling you it's absolutely and categorically untrue," said Kelly.
And others present in the room said Kelly spoke in general terms about policing high-crime areas, many of which happen to be heavily minority ― a distinction at the heart of the high-profile civil rights case.
"That comment did not come out of his mouth," State Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn) told the Daily News, referring to Adams' testimony that Kelly said cops target certain minorities.
"He said the NYPD was targeting crime in high-crime neighborhoods and that many of these neighborhoods are predominantly minority."
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn) ― then a state Assemblyman ― said Kelly was talking about "a deterrence theory" in support of the aggressive stop-and-frisk activity in neighborhoods of color.
"The problem of deterrence is its completely unconstitutional in the absence of any individualized suspicion of criminal behavior," Jeffries said.
Paterson declined to comment.
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Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Daily News' Editorial:
Foul fiction on frisks
Ray Kelly is slandered on stop-and-frisk by state Sen. Eric Adams
The accusation sworn to in federal court that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly admitted targeting the NYPD's stop, question and frisk program at blacks and Hispanics to instill fear is, beyond a reasonable doubt, a monumental libel.
State Sen. Eric Adams, who happens to be black and a former police captain, leveled the charge in the suit that alleges the program to be unconstitutional. Assessed in the most charitable light, Adams distorted the meaning of Kelly's words to fit Adams' belief that the department is shot through with hostility toward minorities.
The conversation took place in a meeting attended by then-Gov. Paterson, Brooklyn Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, and Brooklyn state Sen. Martin Golden. Adams described Kelly's supposed response after Adams complained that police were disproportionately stopping minorities.
"He stated that he targeted and focused on (blacks and Latinos) because he wanted to instill fear in them that every time that they left their homes they could be targeted by police."
This is beneath credibility for many reasons.
To name one, Adams' testimony conflicts with previous sworn statements in which he did not use the word "fear" and conceded that he was not sure if he had heard Kelly correctly.
To name another, Kelly was having a conversation with three black elected officials, one of them governor, all of whom would have been instantly appalled at such a blatant admission of racially motivated policing.
To name a third, Jeffries, who is black and a fierce opponent of stop, question and frisk, stops short of Adams' characterization, while Golden, who is white and a former cop, remembers Kelly saying that the department is focused on high-crime neighborhoods, which happen to be minority neighborhoods.
Finally, only an exceedingly lesser man than Kelly would harbor the thoughts attributed to him by Adams.
Kelly, of course, vigorously denied a slander that gets to the heart of the dispute over stop, question and frisk.
Police may stop and question individuals when cops have a reasonable suspicion of criminality. They may frisk when they believe a suspect is armed. Most of those stopped by police have been minorities, but cops have conducted the stops in proportion to the representation of minorities among criminal suspects and victims.
Opponents read discrimination into the numbers. Adams surely does. But the NYPD has focused on high-crime areas only because they are high-crime areas. As for instilling fear, although opponents say stop-and-frisk has no effect, there's no doubt that it deters some New Yorkers from carrying weapons.
"How else are we going to get rid of guns?" Kelly is reported to have asked Adams. Exactly.
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Chief: Don't Want to Alienate Communities
NYPD Moves, Subtly and Overtly, To Fine-Tune Stop-and-Frisk Plan
By MARK TOOR ― Monday, April 1st, 2013 'The Chief / Civil Service Leader'
The NYPD issued two clear signals last week that it is recalibrating its controversial stop-and-frisk program, although top department officials denied that anything was changing.
At his promotion ceremony, new Chief of Department Philip Banks III said the policy, which is the subject of an ongoing civil-rights class-action suit in Federal Court, was indeed undergoing revision.
'Effective When Done Right'
"I certainly believe that stop, question and frisk is an effective strategy when it's done correctly," Mr. Banks said March 28. "We certainly, in the Police Department, don't want to have any strategy that certainly alienates us with the communities we do serve. I don't believe that it's a total alienation. We've looked at it, we've implemented some changes that take place into it. I certainly believe we're going to continue to do it."
In the second signal, lawyers for the city in the Federal civil-rights suit said they will introduce an order revising the procedure for recording stop-and-frisk incidents on UF-250 forms. The order, issued March 5 by Chief of Patrol James Hall, requires officers to write a narrative description of the stop in addition to checking off boxes with pre-printed descriptions.
That's a key demand of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. "The NYPD has now apparently recognized the need for one piece of the necessary reform we've been insisting on for years and specifically requested in this case," said Baher Azmy, legal director of CCR. The lawsuit is also requesting that a monitor be appointed to oversee the department's performance on stop-and-frisk.
Unrelated to Trial?
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the order had nothing to do with the trial. It was just the kind of reminder you have to put out "when you are in a big organization with 50,000 people," he said. "...This is an ongoing issue with the department to make sure that officers make entries in their record book."
Asked whether Mr. Banks's statement signaled a change in the way the NYPD is applying stop-and-frisk, police spokesman Paul J. Browne responded simply, "No." But the new Chief of Department had referred to two major complaints by civil-liberties advocates and City Council Members who are calling for an independent Inspector General for the NYPD in the face of resistance by Mayor Bloomberg and Mr. Kelly on the stop-and-frisk issue. The two have refused for more than a year to meet with lawmakers and community leaders to discuss their objections to the program.
Mr. Banks did not deal directly with a third complaint―the subject of the Federal lawsuit now on trial before U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin―that the department applies the policy in a discriminatory fashion. Young black and Hispanic males constitute 87 percent of those stopped, a figure much greater than their proportion of the population. Police respond that the figure is in rough proportion to the descriptions of suspects in violent crimes.
In Sync With Some Critics
Chief Banks's sentiment that stop-and-frisk can be an effective tool when done correctly is consistent with the belief of many of the policy's critics. They want officers to follow the law as laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court: that cops making a stop must be able to articulate a reasonable suspicion that their target just was, is now or is about to be involved in a crime. The other justification is suspicion of gun possession, as indicated by certain movements or a bulge in clothing.
However, many Council Members and community leaders say that officers pressured by quotas are ignoring legal requirements and simply stopping people on the basis of racial or ethnic profiling, which is illegal. They complain that inexperienced, under-supervised officers are often physically and verbally abusive during stops, only 12 percent of which result in either a summons or an arrest.
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick J. Lynch has also criticized the use of stop-and-frisk quotas.
Key Community Liaison
Mr. Banks, whose previous post was Chief of Community Affairs, also addressed the possibility that aggressive implementation of the stop-and-frisk policy drives a wedge between police officers and the communities they serve. The number of stops rose steadily from about 150,000 in 2003 to 685,000 in 2011 before dropping to 533,000 last year amid growing criticism of the way police were executing the program.
Civil-rights advocates say the stops upset innocent young men and their parents, and make them reluctant to share information on crimes with authorities.
The UF-250 field report form for a stop-and-frisk includes 10 indicators of suspicion that an officer can check off: "carrying objects in plain view used in commission of a crime; fits description; actions indicative of casing victim or location; actions indicative of acting as a lookout; suspicious bulge/object (describe); actions indicative of engaging in a drug transaction; furtive movements; actions indicative of engaging in violent crimes; wearing clothes/disguises commonly used in commission of a crime; other reasonable suspicion of criminal activity (specify)."
Mr. Hall's order requiring a narrative description of the stop said, "The circumstances and factors of suspicion must be elaborated on...i.e., if the 'furtive movements' caption is checked off, then a description of that movement must be specified."
'Problematic Justification'
In an order issued in January in another stop-and-frisk suit she is overseeing, Judge Scheindlin said that,
"'Furtive movement' is a problematic basis for a trespass stop, especially when it is offered as a stand-alone justification." If an officer is unable to articulate anything more specific than furtive movement, she said, that's insufficient to justify reasonable suspicion.
Jonathan Moore, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the NYPD order is "really an admission that what they've been doing was wrong."
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Editorial: No Stats for Alienation
By RICHARD STEIER ― Monday, April 1st, 2013 'The Chief / Civil Service Leader'
The most disturbing testimony during the first week of the stop-and-frisk trial in the Manhattan Federal courthouse came from Devin Almonor, who said that when he was 13 years old cops stopped him without justification, handcuffed him and, when he burst into tears, one of them said, "Why are you crying like a little girl?"
The most stunning testimony of week two in the case came when the officers involved took the stand and one of them admitted making that taunt and his supervisor defended the stop by saying Devin had given them probable cause by jaywalking.
Jaywalking! The last time that was part of the conversation on summonsing policy was at the start of Rudy Giuliani's second term, when, in the words of Clyde Haberman, the voice of curmudgeonly common sense at the New York Times, the Mayor "tried to persuade New Yorkers that jaywalking was not a God-given right." The columnist went on to suggest that Mr. Giuliani's crackdown symbolized "a lack of vision," and the initiative died on the vine for fear of endless mockery by the public.
That "lack of vision" too often has shown up in the NYPD's steadily escalating use of stop-and-frisk until a public outcry last year, combined with the lawsuit's being granted class-action status last May by U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin, spurred some much-needed changes. Not least among them was a shift in focus from quantity to quality that seems like the ultimate no-brainer but apparently hadn't been.
And so Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who back in 2000 asserted that Mr. Giuliani's "dubious stop-and-frisk tactics" had drained the "large reservoir of good will" he himself had been able to produce during his first go-round as head of the NYPD, last year defended similar tactics by pointing to the 6,000 fewer cops he had available than when he began his second stint as Commissioner in 2002. His first time in the job, the Mayor had been David Dinkins, who was a big believer in community policing and building better relations; Mayor Bloomberg, on the other hand, is someone who believes far more in statistics than empathy.
There are few cases in which police conduct has been as outrageous as in the incident with Devin, which culminated with his father, a former cop, getting arrested for protesting the manner in which he had been treated. But there have been enough instances of people in minority neighborhoods being stopped repeatedly despite having done nothing to create reasonable suspicion―the legal basis for making stops―that public sentiment has shifted markedly, and the NYPD has been scurrying to adjust its policy in response.
Its new Chief of Department, Philip Banks III, said last week that he himself had been stopped three decades ago along with some friends, although they had done nothing wrong. He described two of the cops who stopped them as thoroughly professional but said the third one fell short of that standard.
In an interview with the Post, he remarked, "I do believe that, when done correctly, stop-and-frisk will achieve the desired results―and those results are [fewer] people being shot. When done incorrectly, you certainly put a divide between the police and the community."
Those are also the sentiments of many program critics. Some veteran cops have said the biggest mistake made by the department was counting stop numbers as a key component of performance evaluations.
On the one hand, ambitious cops looking to get ahead were tempted to pump up their numbers even when using flimsy or non-existent justifications for some of the stops. But asserting authority in unjustifiable circumstances erodes respect for police rather than building it. The shift in emphasis a year ago from quantity to quality was a step toward correcting that problem, and a recent NYPD memo requiring officers to provide specifics as to the "furtive movements" they cite to justify some stops is another.
Using stops as a performance indicator to prod lazier cops to do their jobs was also misguided; as retired Sergeant and unofficial NYPD historian Mike Bosak has noted, they would likely take the easy way out by stopping people who had done nothing wrong and therefore were not a threat to either escalate the confrontation or tie them up with paperwork that would extend their shifts.
The appointment of Mr. Banks is the latest indication that the NYPD has realized that proper enforcement without trampling individuals' rights is an achievable goal for a necessary program.
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Independent Inspector General For the NYPD
Razzle Dazzle
Quinn Reads the Writing On the Stationhouse Wall
By RICHARD STEIER ― Monday, April 1st, 2013 'The Chief / Civil Service Leader'
(Op-Ed / Commentary)
Christine Quinn had to know that ending nine months of neutrality on a City Council bill creating a Police Department Inspector General to steer it to passage and then declare in response to Mayor Bloomberg's veto pledge that she had the votes to override him was bound to virtually kill any chance that Ray Kelly would agree to stay on as Police Commissioner if she's elected Mayor.
And so, unless you believe she didn't expect Mr. Kelly would take it personally―and while both she and her critics have recently used some colorfully derogatory language to describe her, the word sappy has never come up―the inference to be drawn was that she believed she had more to gain than lose in alienating Mr. Kelly and those who see his staying in the job as a symbol of stability when Mr. Bloomberg moves on.
One government veteran, speaking conditioned on anonymity, called it "a weird thing for her to do," even as he said the obvious reason for it was to protect her left flank with an eye on the Democratic mayoral primary Sept. 10.
'She'll Lose the Center'
"Some of her left-wing supporters were getting antsy," he said. "Even so, it was a dumb strategy: although you might gain a couple of votes on the left, you're gonna lose the center. She obviously believes that the right wins Republican primaries and the left wins Democratic primaries. But there's competition on the left, and she could have been all alone in the center."
If his theory was correct, it also suggested Ms. Quinn was a lot more nervous about the primary than recent polls say she should be, including the one from Quinnipiac that showed her with a 23-point lead and right on the doorstep of getting the 40-percent support that would give her the nomination without a runoff. But given that Quinnipiac four years ago had Mr. Bloomberg leading Bill Thompson by nearly 20 points shortly before Election Day and this time around has Ms. Quinn leading opponents including the former City Comptroller by 3 to 1 among black voters, her skepticism would seem to be healthy.
One union official willing to speak his mind if his name was left out of it offered a blunter, less-nuanced explanation for her sudden switch on the NYPD being saddled with an IG: "Because she's the old-time political hack―'whatever you wanna hear, I'll tell you.'
"Besides," he added, "a lot of people have cooled off on Kelly."
He was referring to the growing sentiment against the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program as more became known over the past year about its execution. Some of the more-stunning details have emerged in the past two weeks, during the trial of a Federal lawsuit alleging the program has routinely violated the constitutional rights of minorities.
NYPD Back-Pedaling
Starting shortly before U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin granted class-action status to the suit last spring, the NYPD has been scrambling to remove the more-onerous aspects of the program, even while simultaneously insisting that it was nondiscriminatory and an essential tool in the war against crime, especially in minority neighborhoods. The first step in that effort was scrapping the dubious emphasis on quantity of stops to focus on quality, which sent stops plummeting by nearly 40 percent during the last nine months of 2012 compared to the preceding 15. Less than a month ago, the NYPD issued a memo instructing cops to offer specific justifications for stops that require them to explain what "furtive movement" they observed that gave them the reasonable suspicion needed to confront someone.
Any doubt that the department was furtively offering up its own version of a mea culpa should have been dispelled by the March 28 press conference introducing the new top uniformed officer of the NYPD, Chief of Department Philip Banks III. He offered a defense of stop-and-frisk that was carefully parsed and sounded more like the milder rhetoric of critics of the program than it did what Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Kelly and their editorial board acolytes have been saying. (The Post and the News, not surprisingly, portrayed him as "booster in chief" for the program, ignoring the nuances of his remarks.)
Accent on 'Done Correctly'
"I certainly believe that stop, question and frisk is an effective strategy when it's done correctly," Chief Banks said. "We certainly, in the Police Department, don't want to have any strategy that certainly alienates us with the communities we do serve. I don't believe it's a total alienation. We've looked at it, we've implemented some changes that take place into it."
That's a far cry from the Mayor's dire warnings dating back to last summer about the biblical plagues that would befall the city if stop-and-frisk was relaxed because of pressure from elected officials and judges who knew not what they did.
Those who label Ms. Quinn someone who owes as much of her sensibility to Tammany Hall as to being a gay woman are implicitly paying tribute to her political instincts. And she has probably come to the conclusion that she shouldn't tie her destiny too closely to the Police Commissioner, given the Mayor's wavering support for her candidacy. There's also the distinct possibility that after 12 years in which he's been asked to work miracles with an agency that's down 6,000 cops since he took office, Mr. Kelly, who's a youthful 71, may be looking forward to a new challenge that pays better but is less psychically grueling than his current job.
'Who's the Boss?' Issue
The Council Speaker may also be concerned about how the power scales would balance if she retained him. Two of the more-trenchant truths expressed in jest in the recent Inner Circle Show concerned the two of them. During the reporters' send-up of the Bloomberg administration, Mr. Kelly―played by Tom Kelly, a former chief spokesman for the NYPD―sang, to the tune of "Popeye the Sailorman," "I'm Kelly the New York cop/My tactics are over the top/I'll search every brother/And lock up your mother/I'm Kelly the hard-ass cop!"
When he finished warbling, the "other" Kelly told the cast member playing Mr. Bloomberg, "The city will be in good hands after you leave, Mr. Mayor. I've even assured Christine Quinn that I'll let her stay on as Mayor while I continue being Police Commissioner."
The line was funny in part because of Mr. Kelly's stature, which has led most elected officials to treat him gingerly and earned him a certain amount of deference from Mr. Bloomberg as well. Her union critic said it was questionable than an NYPD Inspector General could exert as much power over a strong Police Commissioner as the Council could right now, noting, "They don't like what Kelly's doing, they have subpoena power. They never had the balls to call him in."
Ms. Quinn is the one Democrat who has said unequivocally that she would retain Mr. Kelly as Police Commissioner. But one City Hall veteran remarked, "If you remember, Michael Bloomberg said that his first choice as Police Commissioner was to keep on Bernard Kerik." He appointed Mr. Kelly to head the effort to convince Mr. Kerik to stay on, and should have been saying a nightly prayer ever since that his professed wish did not come to pass.
A PC of Their Own
New Mayors generally want to choose their own Police Commissioners; it has traditionally been their most-important hire. Rudy Giuliani would have done well to keep Mr. Kelly on when he succeeded David Dinkins as Mayor in 1994, given the inroads the Commissioner had made in reducing crime serving in the job for most of the second half of Mr. Dinkins's tenure. But that was the position above all where Mr. Giuliani wanted a prime say and full credit for what was accomplished, and so he replaced Mr. Kelly with Bill Bratton, who had been running the much-smaller Transit Police Department and before that headed the Boston police force.
The tactics Mr. Bratton brought over from the Transit P.D. produced swift and dramatic results, but he turned out to be insufficiently deferential and basked a bit too much in the spotlight for Mr. Giuliani's taste, holding court for reporters and editors at his table in Elaine's and glomming the cover of Time as the man who had returned New York from what the magazine a few years earlier had dubbed "Dodge City." Mr. Giuliani forced out Mr. Bratton and never gave a thought to recalling Mr. Kelly, instead turning to Howard Safir and his dour personality and then Mr. Kerik, who was good at faking obsequiousness to his boss before the law caught up with him.
Lindsay's Brief Retention
The logic behind the clean break and choosing your own commissioner was best borne out nearly a half-century ago when John Lindsay took office and initially kept on Vincent Broderick, who had been appointed by Mayor Wagner as Police Commissioner seven months before the end of his third term.
The two men would have seemed to be a good match. Mr. Broderick shortly after taking the job, at a time of growing racial tension throughout the nation, had instructed his top commanders that if they were willing to tolerate racial slurs or physical abuse of citizens by those serving under them, "Get out right now."
But Mr. Lindsay, a liberal Republican during an era when that phrase wasn't an oxymoron, went too far when he championed a Civilian Complaint Review Board to examine police misconduct. Mr. Broderick had been a high-ranking Federal prosecutor in his time between working in the NYPD and then returning to lead it, but loyalty to his troops and the conviction that the board would do more harm than good led him to publicly oppose it and urge Mr. Lindsay to "renounce political expediency."
Pushed Him Out
The new Mayor, according to a former city official, responded by withholding funding for the Office of the Police Commissioner, then declining to re-appoint Mr. Broderick. He brought in Howard Leary from Philadelphia, in what proved an unfortunate choice that was made clear during the Knapp Commission hearings that dominated his second term, but Mayors ever since have opted to choose their own man from the outset and live with the consequences.
It appears Ms. Quinn has taken that option herself, with the "political expediency" Commissioner Broderick implored against weighing heavily into the choice. To know whether it was the right move for her, she will have to capture the mayoralty, which she clearly is not convinced is hers for the taking despite the apparent huge lead at this point in the campaign.
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Lhota Turns Up Heat on Quinn for Supporting Police Monitor
By MICHAEL BARBARO ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Times'
For a political acolyte of Rudolph W. Giuliani, a ferocious rhetorical bomb-thrower, Joseph J. Lhota has proved an oddly mild candidate so far, repeatedly holding his fire ― and his tongue ― since declaring his Republican campaign for mayor of New York three months ago.
But on Monday, Mr. Lhota conspicuously changed gears, commandeering the steps of City Hall to deliver a blistering attack on his leading Democratic rival, Christine C. Quinn, for endorsing a new agency that would independently monitor the city's Police Department.
Mr. Lhota denounced Ms. Quinn's plan as "reckless and dangerous," declared that it would "handcuff" the department, and demanded that she immediately withdraw her support for it.
And in a personal twist, he accused Ms. Quinn, the City Council speaker, of abdicating her responsibility to have the Council monitor the police force and instead seeking to offload the task to a new and unnecessary bureaucracy.
In doing so, Mr. Lhota offered a glimpse of the kind of candidacy that friends and aides have long promised: punchy, pointed and deeply committed to a vision of a muscular chief executive at City Hall.
As his Democratic rivals worry about the possible excesses of the Police Department, and talk about listening to the voice of the people, Mr. Lhota has made clear that he does not welcome intrusions onto the mayor's turf.
"I don't believe for one second that the police commissioner needs a second oversight," said Mr. Lhota, a former deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration. "That is the mayor's job. The mayor should question the police commissioner on what he or she does."
A spokesman for Ms. Quinn, Jamie McShane, fired back on Monday afternoon, saying that "Joe Lhota simply does not know what he is talking about."
"The bill that the speaker supports will do nothing, not one thing, to limit the Police Department's ability to do their job," he said, describing the inspector general's role as making recommendations, not policy.
He rejected claims that the Council had failed to aggressively scrutinize the police under Ms. Quinn's watch. Mr. McShane said the Council had played a role in giving new prosecutorial powers to an agency that investigates claims of police abuse, and in changing how the department trains officers to stop and frisk those suspected of a crime.
Mr. Lhota did not specify how the inspector general would endanger New Yorkers, beyond potentially "interfering" with the role of the police commissioner.
Still, with his rebuke of Ms. Quinn, Mr. Lhota is aligning himself with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has angrily dismissed the measure as "disastrous for public safety" and a threat to the mayor's authority.
The debate over the wisdom of an inspector general ― who under the proposed legislation would have broad power to review the Police Department's practices and issue subpoenas ― is quite likely to become a major issue in the mayor's race, crystallizing differences between the Republicans and Democrats over police tactics and effectiveness.
Several of the Democratic candidates for mayor, along with civil rights leaders and City Council members, have called for independent oversight of the Police Department amid growing complaints that it unfairly targets black and Hispanic men for street stops.
A few days ago, three men who served as City Hall's top lawyers in the Democratic administrations of Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins endorsed the inspector general proposal, writing in a letter that "residents in many communities need reassurance that they are being treated fairly and respectfully by the police."
Mr. Lhota objected to that argument on Monday, saying that the department is already monitored by the mayor, five district attorneys, an internal affairs department, the city's Department of Investigation, a state attorney general and federal prosecutors.
"The New York City Police Department," he said, "has more oversight than any police department in the United States of America."
He took pains to praise the department and, when pressed on the fairness of its stop and frisk practice, said that intensified training, not an inspector general, would weed out problems.
Mr. Lhota, whose campaign routinely highlights his connection to Mr. Giuliani's rigid law-and-order policies, said that his real worry was the city's crime rate, which, after two decades of sharp declines, has begun to nudge upward.
Shortly after Mr. Lhota's news conference ended, Ms. Quinn's Council staff sought to use Mr. Lhota's relationship with Mr. Giuliani against him. Her aide distributed a memo to reporters recalling how Mr. Giuliani had embraced the concept of an independent monitor for the police when he ran for mayor in the 1990s. But the memo did not mention that, once Mr. Giuliani became mayor, he forcefully fought a plan by the Council to create such a monitor, even suing to block it.
On a day of subtle political mischievousness, Mr. Lhota seemed eager to exploit the rift between Ms. Quinn and Mr. Bloomberg over the inspector general issue, which aides to the mayor have done little to play down.
Mr. Lhota singled out Mr. Bloomberg for praise and, when asked to evaluate the mayor's approach to stop and frisk, Mr. Lhota replied: "I don't see any deficiency at all ― whatsoever."
Around that time, Howard Wolfson, an influential deputy mayor to Mr. Bloomberg, strolled by Mr. Lhota's news conference. Breaking with a long tradition of mayoral aides blithely brushing past such political events, Mr. Wolfson paused behind a bank of television cameras and decided to listen in.
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Crime & leadership
Lhota slams Quinn's gimmick
By BOB McMANUS ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Post'
(Op-Ed / Commentary)
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's plan to impose an inspector general on the NYPD ― that is, to subordinate one of the world's most professional urban police agencies to the currents of everyday ethnic and cultural politics ― drew some useful criticism yesterday from Joe Lhota, her fellow mayoral candidate.
"Reckless and dangerous" was how Lhota described the scheme ― though craven and opportunistic would also have fit.
Lhota, a Republican, was deputy mayor to Rudy Giuliani. Regarding public safety, he's been there.
Quinn, the conventional-wisdom favorite among the Democrats, says her "No. 1 priority is to keep New York City the safest big city in the country."
So, on the one hand, there is a solid record. On the other, there are . . . words.
But as this particular debate proceeds, it will become clear enough where the credibility resides.
Essentially, it's about one of the NYPD's most effective anti-crime tactics ― what's called "stop and frisk." Cops patrol high-crime areas; when observation and experience suggest to them that an individual is behaving suspiciously ― possibly carrying a gun, for example ― they ask a few questions and, in some cases, perform a search.
To good, if controversial, effect.
What's beyond doubt is this: Cities that employ intrusive tactics like "stop-and-frisk" ― New York and LA, for example ― are relatively safe. Cities that don't ― e.g. Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia ― are war zones.
New York used to be a war zone, too. But that was a long time ago ― itself a critical, if generally understated, element in the debate.
When people are threatened, as 20 years ago they surely were, they embrace aggressive policing. But when the danger seems to have passed, other concerns come to dominate the discussion.
Among them are understandable, if misplaced, ethnic, racial and cultural sensitivities ― which then are absorbed into the agendas of New York's radical activists, its hyperkinetic civil-liberties bar and some strategically placed (and scandalously accommodating) judges.
Central to their argument is this: The overwhelming majority of those caught up in the stop-and-frisk net are black or Hispanic. Disparate impact, anyone?
Well, no: The stops almost exactly mirror the ethnicities of both the perpetrators and the victims of crime. This all too rarely makes it into the discussion ― even though the ratios on their face disprove allegations of selective law enforcement or unreasonable profiling.
Nor, again, can this fact fairly be disputed: The tactic works.
Alas, it's probably doomed.
Quinn's inspector-general proposal is ostensibly a compromise, and, in context, it may well be. But who's to doubt that she seeks to saddle the NYPD with what amounts to a political commissar? The net effect of this would be to dilute the authority of the mayorally appointed police commissioner, to diffuse operational responsibility within the department and ― critically ― to undercut command accountability.
This may be intentional. Or not. Either way, it displays a disturbing lack of understanding of the essential element in the Rudy Guiliani-Mike Bloomberg anti-crime strategy: Individual precinct commanders are held personally to account for the successes ― and failures ― of subordinates. The subordinates thoroughly understand this; they sometimes resent it, but they perform.
Do away with accountability ― or even mildly compromise it ― and the NYPD is headed back to the days when "police work" mostly comprised taking robbery reports and toe-tagging bodies.
Indeed, as Lhota observed yesterday, murder has continued its dramatic two-decade decline over the past couple of years ― even as small but significant increases in other major crime, including rape and assault, occurred.
"This proves just how fragile our successes are," he said, "and how vigilant we must be to keep improving upon them."
There are no guarantees, in other words. Well, maybe one guarantee: In politics, principles are supremely fungible. Quinn last week jettisoned her opposition to mandatory paid sick leave like an extra anchor ― never mind that the bill she now backs will cost jobs and, eventually, depress the city's economy.
And never mind that she knows it. She has said as much.
Just as she also knows that politicizing the Police Department to no legitimate purpose serves only criminals and their apologists.
True enough, Giuliani himself was sympathetic to the notion of an IG, back in 1993. But a lot has happened since then ― and, anyway, if Quinn really thought the office had some utility, she would have said so long before now. She has been council speaker since 2006, after all.
No, Christine Quinn chooses to follow, not to lead.
This is not an attractive quality in a mayoral candidate. Nor a mayor, for that matter.
"I call upon Speaker Quinn to withdraw her support for this [inspector-general] bill," said Lhota yesterday morning.
Sound advice.
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Joe Lhota launches attack against Christine Quinn over NYPD inspector
The former MTA head said Monday City Council Speaker Quinn's support of the monitor was 'reckless and dangerous.' Quinn's camp fired back that Lhota 'does not know what he is talking about.'
By Erin Durkin ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Daily News'
It's on!
For the first time in the mayoral race, Republican frontrunner Joe Lhota bashed the leading Democrat, Christine Quinn, calling her support of a proposed police monitor "reckless and dangerous."
Trying to position himself as the candidate of law and order ― like his old boss, Rudy Giuliani ― Lhota on Monday said he would never "handcuff" the Police Department in such a way or significantly alter the controversial police tactic known as "stop and frisk."
He warned that recent upticks in some categories of crime were a reminder that the city could go back to the old days of high crime and disorder.
"The changes that have been made over the last 20 years are fragile," he said.
He called on Quinn, the City Council speaker, to "withdraw her support for this bill. ... Her actions are reckless and dangerous."
Quinn spokesman Jamie McShane fired back that "Lhota simply does not know what he is talking about ― he is either ignorant about the details or willfully ignoring the facts.
"The bill that the speaker supports will do nothing ― not one thing ― to limit the Police Department's ability to do their job."
McShane added that the proposed inspector general "would simply give recommendations for the mayor and NYPD to review. Even Joe Lhota's mentor, Rudy Giuliani, supported a similar proposal when he was running for mayor."
Lhota's broadside underscored the hazards for Quinn of being the early frontrunner in the race.
For weeks, she has been attacked by one of her chief Democratic rivals, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, for staking centrist positions on police oversight and on mandatory paid sick days for private workers.
But by embracing the proposal to create more police oversight, she has opened herself up to criticism from the political right.
At a City Hall news conference, Lhota said the proposed police inspector general would be a threat because unlike other inspector general positions ― such as the one he dealt with as the head of the MTA ― it would be able to examine Police Department policies, rather than just individual cases of corruption.
Lhota said the Police Department should not alter its stop-and-frisk tactics to reduce the number of stops it conducts ― a position that sets him apart from all the Democrats in the race.
However, he did say that cops should have more training in the tactic.
"The police commissioner has said and I have said that we should not be reducing stop, question and frisk ― but we should be changing our training policies so that the men and women of the Finest know exactly what to do," he said.
Meanwhile the City Council touted the support of three former city corporation counsels for the inspector general bill.
"It is vital to have an external mechanism to review, analyze and provide advice on police practices, policies and procedures," wrote Frederick Schwarz, Victor Kovner, and Peter Zimroth.
Schwarz and Zimroth each served as the top city lawyer when Ed Koch was mayor; Kovner held the same position under Mayor David Dinkins.
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S.B.A. on Outside Inspector General to oversee the NYPD
For The Record
Monday, April 1st, 2013 'The Chief / Civil Service Leader'
(Op-Ed / Commentary)
The Sergeants Benevolent Association fired a shot across City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's bow March 27, running full-page ads in the Daily News and the Post blistering her for backing the creation of an Inspector General to oversee the NYPD.
Union President Ed Mullins stated in the ad, "No one has publicly disagreed with or battled the NYPD more than I have, but the issue related to the appointment of an Inspector General to monitor the department is political pandering at its most reprehensible."
It went on to say, "On numerous occasions Speaker Quinn has stated she would be lucky to retain Ray Kelly as Police Commissioner if elected Mayor, but now believes an Inspector General should oversee Ray Kelly.
"This raises a multitude of questions by anyone who refuses to accept such blatant disingenuousness and ignorance."
On one level, the ad wasn't a surprise. Mr. Mullins is arguably the most-conservative of the municipal labor leaders, which he demonstrated again last year in endorsing Mitt Romney for President despite his blatantly anti-union stances on matters ranging from education to the bail-out of two of Detroit's Big Three automakers. Although Ms. Quinn is the most-moderate of the Democratic candidates for Mayor, it seemed unlikely Mr. Mullins would have backed her unless there was no viable Republican alternative.
But his timing spurred muttering among some members of the coalition of 19 uniformed unions that was just about to begin interviewing mayoral candidates. They had been roiled previously by Uniformed Fire Officers Association President Al Hagan's decision to break away to endorse Ms. Quinn. The idea behind the coalition was to increase the strength of the eventual endorsement, but that became more precarious with Mr. Mullins's announcement. Correction Officers Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook had previously ruled out the early Republican front-runner, Joe Lhota, and it figures to be difficult to find unanimity among the coalition's 17 other unions for any of the other candidates.
Nonetheless, the coalition has taken a full-page ad on the back page of this newspaper stating, "We are determined to elect a Mayor and citywide office holders who recognize the importance of the services we provide and respect the great contributions made to New York by our dedicated and deserving uniformed men and women."
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Suddenly, NYPD doesn't love surveillance anymore
Law enforcement agencies monitor our most basic acts. But try assigning them a watchdog and they resist with fury
By David Sirota ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'Salon Magazine' / San Francisco, CA
(Op-Ed / Commentary)
The Big Brother theory of surveillance goes something like this: pervasive snooping and monitoring shouldn't frighten innocent people, it should only make lawbreakers nervous because they are the only ones with something to hide. Those who subscribe to this theory additionally argue that the widespread awareness of such surveillance creates a permanent preemptive deterrent to such lawbreaking ever happening in the first place.
I don't personally agree that this logic is a convincing justification for the American Police State, and when I hear such arguments, I inevitably find myself confused by the contradiction of police-state proponents proposing to curtail freedom in order to protect it. But whether or not you subscribe to the police-state tautology, you have to admit there is more than a bit of hypocrisy at work when those who forward the Big Brother logic simultaneously insist such logic shouldn't apply to them or the governmental agencies they oversee.
This contradiction is now taking center stage in New York City, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly wage a scorched-earth campaign to prevent the public from being able to monitor its own police force. And in that crusade comes the frightening assumption about how the terms "safety" and "security" are now defined.
To appreciate the rank hypocrisy of Bloomberg and Kelly opposing the creation of an independent police monitor, remember that they are two of the faces of the modern American Police State ― and two of the biggest proponents of 24/7 monitoring of citizens.
That is not an overstatement. Bloomberg and Kelly are the proud autocrats who brag of "hav(ing) my own army in the NYPD" and who used that army to spy on peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors. They are the unapologetic masterminds of a surveillance program aimed at Muslim students. They are the unrepentant overseers of the city's so-called stop-and-frisk policy, which seems to presume guilt, clearly violates civil liberties and disproportionately targets minorities. They are the champions of a Minority Report-esque system to integrate all the city's cameras for ubiquitous real-time surveillance. They are the happy proponents of intensifying a drug war, again disproportionately against people of color. And they are now floating the idea of using drones to surveil the Big Apple.
As a justification for all of this, Bloomberg and Kelly typically cite New York's declining crime rates as ends-justifies-the-means proof that their methods work. In this, they are extrapolating William Bratton's old "broken windows" theory of crime, insinuating that because New Yorkers know they are under such intense and brutal police scrutiny, they are more prone to avoid breaking the law.
Yet, in now opposing the creation of an independent monitor to surveil, analyze and assess lawbreaking by police and municipal agencies after a wave of complaints about alleged crimes, Bloomberg and Kelly are crying foul. Somehow, they argue that their own Big Brother theory about surveillance supposedly stopping current crime and deterring future crime should not apply to municipal officials themselves.
This is where an Orwellian definition of "safety" comes in, for that's at the heart of the Bloomberg/Kelly argument about oversight. Bloomberg insists that following other cities that have successfully created independent monitors "would be disastrous for public safety" in New York City. Likewise, the New York Daily News reports that "Kelly blasted the plan as a threat to public safety," alleging that "another layer of so-called supervision or monitoring can ultimately make this city less safe."
If this pabulum sounds familiar, that's because you've been hearing this tired cliché ad nauseam since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Whether pushed by proponents of the Patriot Act, supporters of warrantless wiretapping, or backers of other laws that reduce governmental accountability, the idea is that any oversight of the state's security apparatus undermines that apparatus' ability to keep us safe because such oversight supposedly causes dangerous second-guessing. In "24″ terms, the theory is that oversight will make Jack Bauer overthink or hesitate during a crisis that requires split-second decisions ― and hence, security will be compromised.
This, indeed, was precisely the argument of the spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police when in 2011 he articulated the Big Brother case against allowing citizens to even record police actions on their own property. Police officers, he said, "need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be." He added that "anything that's going to have a chilling effect on an officer moving ― an apprehension that he's being videotaped and may be made to look bad ― could cost him or some citizen their life."
As I wrote during that controversy, nobody wants to stop police officers from doing their much-needed job. In fact, civil liberties organizations have been pushing for oversight to make sure police are doing all of their job ― including protecting individuals' civil liberties. With police brutality a persistent and intensifying problem, we should want more officers feeling "apprehension" about breaking civil liberties laws, we should hope more of them "give a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences" will be if they trample someone's rights and we should crave an immediate "chilling effect" on such violations.
But, then, that suggests terms like "safety" and "security" are apolitical, which they most certainly are not.
As Bloomberg and Kelly imply, those terms don't seem to apply to those being targeted by police actions, however unwarranted or violent those actions are. They don't seem to apply to the thousands of people of color stopped, frisked, harassed and jailed, nor do they seem to apply to peaceful protesters. Evidently, the Big Brother theory posits that those populations are safety and security threats ― and declares that those populations are not themselves entitled to safety and security from Big Brother itself.
If that sounds right out of Orwell's Eurasia, that's because it is. But as Bloomberg and Kelly most recently prove, it is right out of 21st century America, too.
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Sequester Could Reduce Zadroga Bill Payments
Part of Domestic Cutbacks
By MICHAEL BARASCH ― Monday, April 1st, 2013 'The Chief / Civil Service Leader'
The first September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) awarded over $1 billion in compensation to 2,680 injury claimants. Many first-responders were still being diagnosed with new respiratory illnesses, so we fought for years to reopen the VCF for them, lobbying Congress to act.
In January 2011, President Obama signed the James Zadroga Victim Compensation Fund into law. It is named in honor of our friend and client, Detective Zadroga, who died of pulmonary disease in 2006. The purpose of the Zadroga Fund is to provide medical care and compensation to anyone whose health has deteriorated since 2003, even if they received compensation from the first VCF.
Any first-responder suffering from a respiratory illness is presumed to have sustained his or her illness from exposure to the toxins at the World Trade Center site who got awards from the first VCF or from the subsequent litigation in Federal Court are eligible to receive additional compensation under the new Zadroga Fund if:
• They have been diagnosed with new or worsening illnesses, including respiratory illnesses, or one of the 62 cancers that the National Institute of Health has linked to the toxic exposure;
• They received awards over $125,000 that were unfairly reduced because the VCF wrongfully assumed that they would find another job after retiring. A full disability determination from Social Security will be required;
• They received awards less than $125,000 because they were officially found disabled after they received their VCF award (many prior claimants did not receive full compensation under the first VCF because the full nature of their illnesses and lost income was not known at the time the fund closed in 2003); or,
• They officially retired as a result of PTSD or orthopedic injuries―even though they also sustained respiratory illnesses linked to the toxic WTC dust.
If you fit into any of the four categories above, and especially if you have been diagnosed with a new WTC illness or you were officially found disabled after the first VCF closed in 2003, you have the right to seek additional compensation from the Zadroga Fund. However, you must register with the Zadroga Victim Compensation Fund prior to the Oct. 3, 2013 deadline. If you do not file by the deadline, you will not be able to receive compensation for your new injuries and economic loss.
Reason to Register
In fact, if you received an award at the first VCF for any ailment that has the potential to worsen over time, you should strongly consider registering for the Zadroga Fund in order to protect your right to bring a claim in the future, in the event you need to.
If you have not been diagnosed with any illness, you do not have to do anything now. However, please bear in mind that the deadline for making a claim for a new illness is two years from the date your symptoms begin. Hopefully, if you find yourself in that position, the VCF will still be open.
l urge you to call an attorney who is experienced in this area of the law for a free confidential consultation to discuss your legal rights.
When the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act passed Congress at the end of 2010, the bill's authors carefully made the $4.3-billion fund one of the Federal government's "mandatory" spending programs, shielded from the annual budget-making process and the usual politics involved. The law included two new, dedicated revenue streams dreamed up by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that not only pay for a compensation fund and treatment program, but also spin off some surplus to cut the deficit by $433 million.
Unfortunately, the sequester reduces all domestic programs, including the Zadroga Act. It is far too soon to know the exact amount of the reduction in funding, and rest assured that Senators Gillibrand and Schumer have filed a bill to avert any reduction.
The cuts would also make it more difficult for the 9/11 compensation fund's special master to figure out how to divide payments not knowing how the remaining years of sequestration will play out. All told, the cuts would approach $200 million if sequestration is not altered.
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41 Precinct P.O. Edward McClain
Vid shows cop 'lied'
By DOUGLAS MONTERO ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Post'
The cop who rammed a dirt bike, killing its driver and injuring the passenger, was caught in an apparent lie yesterday after surveillance video viewed in Bronx Criminal Court shows the minivan he says obstructed his view was well past him seconds before impact.
Officer Edward McClain remained adamant during the trial for the dirt bike's passenger, Adalberto Gonzalez, 28, who faces charges of reckless driving and operating a motorcycle without a license in the August incident in Hunts Point.
The video shows McClain's cruiser first knocking Gonzalez off his own bike. Gonzalez then ran one city block and jumped on the back of Eddie Fernandez's bike before McClain rammed them both.
The 41st Precinct cop estimates he was traveling about 30 mph in an attempt to cut off Gonzalez at Randall and Coster streets.
"I pass the minivan, looked to my right saw, no one, [and] the next thing I know, a motorcycle with two people sitting on it ― and I jam on my brakes," he said.
"I jammed on the brakes and I skidded into the bike and the bike skidded into the pole."
Gonzalez's lawyer, who is trying to discredit McClain to get the case tossed out, says the video clearly shows the police cruiser about 30 to 40 feet away from the intersection when the mini-van passes it.
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Stupidity: T.D. # 32 Unidentified Police Officer Quarrels w/ EMT
EMT, cop scuffle in ambulance
By GEORGETT ROBERTS, JESSICA SIMEONE and BOB FREDERICKS ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Post'
An FDNY medic was briefly arrested yesterday for allegedly shoving a cop from the back of an ambulance while a stricken woman was being treated inside, sources said.
Andrew Haley got into a beef with the transit officer when ambulances responded to the subway station at Fourth Avenue and Pacific Street in Boerum Hill at around 8:30 a.m. to aid a 59-year-old woman with chest pains.
Haley was about to give her an electrocardiogram when the unidentified cop asked her for information.
Haley then told the officer to leave and to shut the ambulance door because the unidentified woman's breasts would be exposed during the procedure, the sources said.
When the cop refused, Haley allegedly shoved him and the two got into an argument, with the cop shouting, "Get your hands off me!" and each calling for a supervisor, the sources said.
Cops cuffed Haley and he was taken to Transit District Precinct 32 nearby, while other EMS workers brought the woman to the hospital.
"The EMT was arrested for obstructing governmental administration. That arrest was voided," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said later yesterday.
"Some dispute arose inside the ambulance, the EMT wanted the police officer to leave. The police officer didn't want to leave. So that is the nature of the dispute."
Haley ― who has been commended by the department for his lifesaving heroics at least twice ― was led out of the station house at about 1 p.m. by an FDNY captain. He could not be reached for comment.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Bain
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Bike Group Aims to Buck NYPD Fees
By TED MANN ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The Wall Street Journal' / New York, NY
Organizers of a bike tour that crosses all five boroughs became the first group to challenge New York City's new effort to extract repayment for police expenses caused by large athletic activities, including marathons and other runs.
Bike New York Inc. filed a lawsuit in state court Monday after being told by the city that the upcoming TD Five Boro Bike Tour would incur fees of $967,534 to pay for traffic-control measures by the New York Police Department. The 40-mile tour set for May 5 is expected to draw some 32,000 cyclists.
The nonprofit group contends in court papers that the extra expense, a first in the 36-year history of the ride, would leave it "virtually bankrupt" and force the cancellation of both the tour and free bicycle-education programs financed with proceeds.
Registration for the event, which costs $86 per rider, closed in February―making it too late to tack on an additional charge, the group said.
Canceling this year's tour, the group said, "will lose not only goodwill but also significant sums of money expended to date."
At the center of the lawsuit is a decree by city officials that the bike tour, like other popular activities, is a "non-charitable athletic parade." That marked a subtle change in status under a local law that took effect last year and puts organizers on the hook for the cost of extra police officers, street closures and crowd control.
The new charge first hit one of the city's highest-profile sporting organizations. New York Road Runners, which stages the ING New York City Marathon, said it started paying fees for police service in March 2012.
A spokesman said fees paid to the city totaled "several million dollars" last year, even though the group scrapped the marathon in the wake of superstorm Sandy.
A notice on the Road Runners website attributes a recent increase in race fees, in part, to the new cost of city services for "police support and traffic control."
The marathon and other races have been placed into the same non-charitable category as the bike tour. A city spokeswoman said those decisions are made by police.
Bike New York insists that it functions as a charity. Revenue generated by its five-borough tour helps pay for free bike education and training classes offered across the city.
But a city lawyer rejected that claim and asserted the suit is without merit.
"It is difficult to understand how Bike NY, which runs a purely recreational event for those who pay to participate, can argue that the event's purpose is to raise money for charitable donations," said Gabriel Taussig, chief of the city's administrative law division, in an email.
The bike group's lawsuit challenges where the city draws the line between the charitable and the non-charitable.
The document filed in court on Monday notes that the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, which benefits breast-cancer research, and a bike tour organized by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, among others, are exempt from paying for police resources.
But circumstances can vary. A spokesman for Transportation Alternatives noted that the group's ride is smaller and doesn't require road closures.
Attorneys for Bike New York argue in the court filing that the city erred in its interpretation of local law by placing the tour in the non-charitable category because the race fees finance operations of the organization.
Five other organizations cited in the lawsuit, including Komen and Transportation Alternatives, similarly reap benefits from their annual events yet are still considered charitable by the city.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the NYPD makes "all determinations" about events that require street closures, including whether a parade would be considered charitable or not. A message seeking comment from the NYPD wasn't returned.
An initial hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for April 10 in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Beyond the bike tour, meanwhile, other organizations appear to be adapting to the new costs associated with police services.
A person familiar with the situation said New York Road Runners said race organizers had already altered the routes of some running events, including the Brooklyn Half-Marathon. The changes put more of the routes inside parks to avoid street closures in an attempt to lower the eventual bills from police.
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N.Y.C. Firearm Carry Permit Decline Dramatically
Edited from:
Think you're going to be able to enforce a gun ban?
By Unnamed Author(s) ― Monday, April 1st, 2013; 'Forumosa.Com News' / Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China)
Paul J. Browne, a deputy commissioner and the Police Department's chief spokesman, said the number of "full carry" permits had steadily declined, from 2,876 in 2005, to 2,565 in 2006, 2,415 in 2007, and 2,291 as of the end of October.
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NY State's firearm lobby taking aim at city rules
The argument is that residential pistol permits block marksmen from competing in contests outside of the five boroughs.
By Kenneth Lovett ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Daily News'
ALBANY ― The state's firearms lobby is attempting to shoot down a city gun regulation, arguing that residential pistol permits block marksmen from competing in contests outside of the five boroughs.
A 2001 city rule stated that city residents with residential gun licenses can transport their firearms to and from small arms ranges or shooting clubs.
Under the regulation, however, the only ranges and clubs permissible are those located in the city, but none of them hold regular shooting contests, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Monday by the state Rifle & Pistol Association.
That effectively means, the suit contends, that some 30,000 people with the city licenses are barred from taking part in competitions, thereby violating their Second Amendment rights.
Three licensees have signed on to the suit: Romolo Colantone, Efrain Alvarez and Tony Irizarry.
Colantone wanted to attend a regional shooting competition in Old Bridge, N.J., last May but was told by the NYPD License Division that it was off-limits, according to the suit.
The plaintiffs argue that if they are caught with their guns outside their homes on the way to or from a contest outside the city, they could face criminal charges.
Gabriel Taussig, chief of the city's Administrative Law Division, said there is "no merit to their attack on the city rule regulating where they can transport a licensed firearm intended for home protection."
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Connecticut
Legislators in Connecticut Agree on Broad New Gun Laws
By PETER APPLEBOME ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Times'
(Edited for brevity and law enforcement pertinence)
HARTFORD ― More than three months after the massacre of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., state legislative leaders announced on Monday that they had agreed on what they called the most far-reaching gun-legislation package in the country.
It would require new state-issued eligibility certificates for the purchase of any rifle, shotgun or ammunition; mandate that offenders convicted of any of more than 40 weapons offenses register with the state; require universal background checks for the sale of all firearms; and substantially expand the state's existing ban on assault weapons.
But the package did not include everything that anti-gun forces had asked for. It includes a ban on the future sale of high-capacity magazines with more than 10 bullets. But despite a dramatic plea on Monday from relatives of 11 of the victims killed at Sandy Hook on Dec. 14, legislative leaders did not include a complete ban on their ownership, although they agreed on new requirements requiring their registration. Legislation passed by New York in January included a ban on the ownership of high-capacity magazines that would go into effect next January.
The legislation in Connecticut, however, agreed to after several weeks of negotiations between Democratic and Republican leaders in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly, was hailed by gun-control proponents as a landmark package and an appropriate response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook.
The bill is expected to go to both houses of the General Assembly on Wednesday; passage seemed assured.
Connecticut is one of only a handful of states that already has an assault weapons ban. Immediately after the bill is passed, the weapons on the expanded list could no longer be sold in Connecticut. Existing weapons would have to be registered with the state.
In some cases, the legislation would fill holes in the state's regulations. Under the proposed legislation, all firearm sales, including those at gun shows, would require criminal background checks. Currently, the sale of any pistol or revolver, and the sale of a rifle or shotgun by a licensed dealer, requires a criminal-background check.
The legislation also breaks new ground. Legislators said that the provision that would mandate that weapons offenders be registered was the country's first statewide measure of its kind.
The legislation would also mandate a new state-issued "long-gun eligibility certificate," which would require that applicants take a firearms safety course, be fingerprinted and undergo a national criminal background check before buying any rifle, shotgun or ammunition.
Currently, only seven states and the District of Columbia have any limits on the legal size or use of ammunition magazines. Under the Connecticut legislation, magazines sold in the future would be limited to 10 rounds. Existing large-capacity magazines would have to be registered and could not be loaded with more than 10 bullets except at an individual's home or a shooting range.
Adam Lanza carried 10 magazines that had 30 bullets each into the school.
Officials have said he fired 154 shots in about four minutes.
Michael Schwirtz and Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting.
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Conn. lawmakers unveil bipartisan gun control plan
By SUSAN HAIGH (The Associated Press) ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013; 2:52 a.m. EDT
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) ― With an announcement of sweeping proposals to curb gun violence, Connecticut lawmakers said they are hoping to send a message to Congress and other state legislators across the country: A bipartisan agreement on gun control is possible.
Legislative leaders on Monday revealed proposals spurred by the Dec. 14 Newtown school shooting following weeks of bipartisan, closed-door negotiations. A vote is expected Wednesday in the General Assembly, where Democrats control both chambers, making passage all but assured.
The Connecticut deal includes a ban on new high-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones used in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 children and six educators dead. There are also new registration requirements for existing magazines that carry 10 or more bullets, something of a disappointment for some family members of Newtown victims who wanted an outright ban on the possession of all high-capacity magazines and traveled to the state Capitol on Monday to ask lawmakers for it.
The package also creates what lawmakers said is the nation's first statewide dangerous weapon offender registry, creates a new "ammunition eligibility certificate," imposes immediate universal background checks for all firearms sales, and extends the state's assault weapons ban to 100 new types of firearms and requires that a weapon have only one of several features in order to be banned.
The newly banned weapons could no longer be bought or sold in Connecticut, and those legally owned already would have to be registered with the state, just like the high-capacity magazines.
The bill also addresses mental health and school security measures, including gun restrictions for people who've been committed to mental health facilities and restoration of a state grant for school safety improvements.
After clearing the state legislature, the bill would be sent to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who has helped lead efforts to strengthen the state's gun laws but has not yet signed off on the proposed legislation. Earlier Monday, Malloy voiced support for the Newtown families and their desire to ban the possession of large-capacity magazines.
Adam Lanza fired off 154 shots with a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle within five minutes. He went through six 30-round magazines, though half were not completely empty, and police said he had three other 30-round magazines in addition to one in the rifle.
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Associated Press writers Stephen Kalin, Stephen Singer and Michael Melia contributed to this report.
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U.S.A.
Gun measures may be in jeopardy in Congress
By Philip Rucker and Ed O'Keefe ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The Washington Post' / Washington, DC
Gun-control measures that seemed destined to become law after the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., are in jeopardy amid a fierce lobbying campaign by firearms advocates.
Despite months of negotiations, key senators have been unable to find a workable plan for near-universal background checks on gun purchases ― an idea that polls show nine in 10 Americans support.
Another provision that garnered bipartisan support ― making gun trafficking a federal crime ― could be gutted if Republican lawmakers accept new language being circulated by the National Rifle Association.
The failure of those two measures would be a major setback for the White House and its allies, who have acknowledged that two other proposals ― bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines ― are not politically viable.
President Obama plans to visit a police academy in Colorado on Wednesday to renew an urgency to overhaul the nation's gun laws that has ebbed in the more than 100 days since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Obama and his allies have not been able to leverage nationwide support for the proposals into a will to pass them on Capitol Hill.
And a television ad campaign targeting 13 senators, financed by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) and in its second week on the air, has not swayed enough lawmakers to ensure passage of the background-check measure.
Gun-control proponents are hopeful that senators will soon reach a compromise on background checks even though negotiations are at a standstill. The sides disagree about whether private sales of firearms, such as those between family members or neighbors, would be exempt, as well as how or whether records would be kept.
The NRA voiced support for expanded background checks as recently as 1999. But after the Newtown massacre, it has opposed the idea. NRA officials have argued that the current system is poorly managed and that violators are rarely prosecuted ― and they have instilled fear among some key senators that their votes for background checks would have political consequences.
Now some of the same senators targeted by the Bloomberg ads as potential gun-control supporters are showing greater skepticism about expanding checks. The group facing growing pressure from both sides includes a handful of Democrats who will be up for reelection in 2014 in conservative states with strong traditions of gun ownership: Mark Begich (Alaska), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Max Baucus (Mont.), Kay Hagan (N.C.) and Mark R. Warner (Va.).
Pryor, for instance, responded tersely to Bloomberg's ads, saying last week: "I don't take gun advice from the mayor of New York City. I listen to Arkansans."
Several Republicans have threatened to filibuster the bill, which will require a 60-vote majority to pass. And Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), another Bloomberg target and a Republican who may vote for universal background checks, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that it "is a bridge too far for most of us."
Gun-control supporters have tried in recent days to salvage the legislation.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), one of only seven Senate Democrats with at least an "A" rating from the NRA, has stepped in to try to bridge the divide between senators as well as the interest groups on both sides of the debate, said several aides familiar with the talks.
But, the aides added, there has been virtually no progress since senators left Washington on March 23 for a two-week spring recess. And now, back home, senators are assessing the raw politics of their constituencies to determine which could cost them more in the next election: voting for expanding background checks or doing nothing.
"If there was a secret-ballot vote it would pass overwhelmingly, because from a substantive point of view most of these senators understand that this is the right thing to do," said Matt Bennett, a gun-control advocate and senior vice president at Third Way, a centrist think tank. "What's holding them back is pure politics."
The Republican-led House has put off any consideration of gun-control measures until after the Senate votes. With Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) planning to begin floor debate on guns next week, NRA lobbyists, as well as Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns group, are reviewing legislative language with senators and their staffs.
On Tuesday, the NRA plans to announce a comprehensive plan for school safety, the results of a process begun in the days following the Newtown shootings when the organization seemed on the defensive. Spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the plan will "go beyond armed personnel."
On the separate gun-trafficking measure, the NRA is circulating a proposed revision that critics say would eviscerate the principles agreed to last month by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The committee's bill would criminalize all "straw purchases" at licensed gun dealers. But the NRA's draft language would require law enforcement officials to prove that the straw purchaser had reason to believe the buyer was prohibited from obtaining guns or knew that the buyer intended to commit a crime, according to an analysis of the NRA proposal provided to The Washington Post by the Bloomberg-led mayors group.
Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said the NRA language would create a "ridiculous" standard for law enforcement officials trying to crack down on trafficking.
The NRA rejected that analysis. Arulanandam said gun-control advocates were misrepresenting a "discussion draft of the type that always circulates in the course of the legislative process."
Proponents of stricter measures are becoming increasingly fed up with the Senate's inaction. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a survivor of a mass shooting, said the delays have created "an environment so that cowards can succeed."
"Ninety-one percent of the American people support a universal background check, and we've got members on the House and Senate side that are gutless," she said. "They know in their heart of hearts that it's the absolute right thing to do, but they are more concerned about their reelection."
At the White House on Monday, press secretary Jay Carney said the families of shooting victims "deserve that Congress votes on these measures and not hide behind filibusters."
Gun-control advocates are trying to match the NRA's lobbying firepower. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group that sprung up in the days after the Newtown shootings, has been tweeting to lawmakers and visiting their offices to press their case.
Jennifer Fiore, the group's vice president, recalled that a recent meeting between a mother and an unnamed senior aide to a Senate Republican prompted a sharp, emotional exchange after the staff member repeatedly referred to the recordkeeping provisions in the background-check bill as akin to a national gun registry ― a frequent NRA talking point.
"The mom in this office who listened to him talking about registries versus recordkeeping was so fed up with that kind of talk that she got pretty real with him, and at the end of that process I could tell he was listening to us," Fiore recalled. "Our job is to pop the bubbles that they're living in and remind them who their constituents are."
But the exchange also illuminated for Fiore the extent of the NRA's reach. "They made it into somebody's office before I got there," she said.
Tom Hamburger, Sari Horwitz and Scott Wilson contributed to this report.
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Sequester Cuts at Justice Department Threaten Local Drug Investigations
By Maggie Clark ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'Pew Stateline.Org' / Washington, DC
MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga.―State and local drug enforcement partnerships, heavily reliant on federal grants that have been shrinking for years, were teetering on the brink of extinction even before the recent round of automatic spending cuts known as the sequester. Now the latest cuts are threatening to push them over the cliff.
A prime example is the Ocmulgee drug task force based here in this small town of about 17,000. Supported by the Byrne justice assistance grant program, the regional task force budget makes up just one-ten-thousandth of the $448 million that was distributed to all 50 states through the program last year. But the task force is the only law enforcement entity that investigates drug trafficking in the three counties it serves, which are about 90 miles southeast of Atlanta.
Nationwide, the Byrne grants have been cut about 40 percent since 2009. Faced with yet another year of budget reductions and the looming mandatory 5 percent federal cuts, there's not a lot of optimism that the Ocmulgee task force will survive much longer.
"We're just holding our breath," said Wesley Nunn, the group's commander.
For law enforcement agencies all over the country, the federal budget cut put in place under the sequester could spell disaster. Because of partisan gridlock in Washington, these Byrne grants, which states may use to pay for law enforcement, courts, crime prevention programs, corrections and substance abuse treatment, will be cut by at least 5 percent this year and by an additional 5 percent in each of the next nine years. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has warned that those cuts may even be deeper to keep federal prisons open and FBI agents on the job.
The diminishing funds could mean that in states that heavily rely on task forces, such as Georgia, Montana, Missouri, Iowa and California, known drug traffickers will walk free.
Georgia's task forces feel the pinch
The Ocmulgee task force has just four officers who work about 30 cases at any one time. They routinely seize crack cocaine, methamphetamine and stolen guns from street-level drug dealers and well-connected drug traffickers throughout central Georgia.
These traffickers carry drugs from stash houses in Atlanta and get their merchandise from all over the world. Recently, a wiretap investigation that began based on information from the streets of Milledgeville led investigators to a cocaine trafficking ring run by a Mexican drug cartel.
"This isn't just a group of local officers just driving around arresting people for buying $10 of dope outside the Dairy Queen," said Baldwin County Sheriff Bill Massee, who has loaned two of his deputies to work full time for the task force.
States were originally encouraged by the U.S. Department of Justice to set up these multijurisdictional drug task forces in the 1980s to stem the crack cocaine epidemic, which crossed city and county borders and necessitated more collaboration between agencies. The partnerships were especially popular in rural states, where a local county sheriff might only have one or two deputies to patrol hundreds of miles.
Georgia has long been a major drug distribution point with Atlanta at its hub. The city sits at the intersection of three major interstate highways, making it easy to funnel drugs south to Florida and north to South Carolina. Atlanta investigators have uncovered connections to cocaine and methamphetamine traffickers in Mexico. And prescription drug abuse has gained a foothold in Georgia, thanks to an influx of unscrupulous doctors fleeing Florida's crackdown on pain management clinics, a key source of fraudulent prescriptions.
Georgia still heavily depends on its 19 drug task forces, despite the declining federal support. Except for the one-time infusion of cash the state received from the economic stimulus specifically to buy equipment, the state's Byrne grants are down about 50 percent since 2007.
To the officers patrolling the Ocmulgee region in central Georgia, what's happening with the federal budget really matters. Depending on the severity of the sequester cuts, which have been decried as "dumb" by President Barack Obama, these law enforcement officers could lose their jobs.
"There's no job security (for officers), no health insurance, no guarantees," said Mildred Braxley, a veteran drug investigator and analyst with the Ocmulgee task force.
That's where the effects of sequestration's cuts become real, said Stefanie Lopez-Howard, director of statistical analysis at for the Georgia Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.
"Small task forces are closing over a funding difference of $10,000," said Lopez-Howard. "A 5 percent cut to the state's Byrne (justice assistance grant) for this year is $295,000 and our largest task force, which serves west Atlanta, costs about $300,000. So a 5 percent cut is a whole drug task force shut down."
Nationwide fiscal pain
Other states are facing the same dilemma. In Montana, where the Bakken oil boom has brought a corresponding increase in population and crime, drug cases are up 133 percent in the region, according to state criminal justice data. Local police cannot keep up.
Closing the drug task forces there would result in more property crimes, assaults and domestic violence, Tom Allen, Montana's northwest drug task force commander, wrote in a letter to the state board of crime control.
Already, three Georgia drug task forces have shut down. In southern Georgia, the counties hugging the Florida border between Tallahassee and Jacksonville were forced to disband their joint task force last year. The force had received about $80,000 each year in Byrne grants to pay salaries for investigators. By 2012, that award dwindled to less than $40,000.
"The counties just can't make up the difference," said Clinch County Sheriff Winston Peterson, "and we had to just close down the task force that had been operating for more than 20 years. People lost their jobs, and we just don't have the tools to fight (drug trafficking) any longer."
Shifting priorities
Not everyone is a fan of the task forces, which lack clear oversight in some states. The national ACLU and several members of Congress have accused some of them of racial bias in arrests. In an egregious example of misconduct, a white drug investigator in Tulia, Texas, lied when he testified that he had sold cocaine to more than 40 black residents during a sting. They were then wrongfully jailed. The ACLU secured pardons from Governor Rick Perry for all the accused.
Since the Tulia scandal, Texas has scaled back its use of drug task forces. U.S. Rep. Shelia Jackson-Lee, who represents urban Houston, reintroduces a bill each year to create an oversight authority for drug task forces and penalize states that allow convictions based on the sole testimony of a task force officer. Colorado has also phased out its use of task forces in favor of community corrections and crime prevention programs.
In Georgia, shifting ideas about how best to spend limited criminal justice dollars has led the state to begin assessing the impact of drug task forces. Pending those outcomes, the state could make a move away from the model.
But for the local police and sheriffs here in Milledgeville, the drug task forces are the only thing keeping their heads above water.
"It'll be three or four months before we know for sure how long we can go on before talking about folding," said Sheriff Massee. "But before we let it die, we're going to do whatever we have to."
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Police Sexual Misconduct Called Common but Not Carefully Tracked
By Ted Gest ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Crime & Justice News' / Washington, DC
Stories of cops propositioning, harassing, and sexually assaulting women turn up every week says The American Prospect. "Police sexual misconduct is common, and anyone who maintains it isn't doesn't get it," says retired Seattle police chief Norm Stamper, author of the book Breaking Rank.
Former police officer Tim Maher, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, asked 20 police chiefs in 2008 whether police sexual misconduct was a problem; 18 said yes.
The 13 willing to offer estimates thought an average of 19 percent of cops were involved; that translates to 150,000 officers nationwide. The U.S. Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women funded the International Association of Chiefs of Police to develop a guide for police chiefs, issued in 2011, that encourages policies to prevent police sexual misconduct.
No one keeps data on the number of victims, and the IACP can't track the number of departments that have adopted its recommendations. "We think there's a good-faith effort by police departments out there to be more accountable," says the IACP's John Firman.
Victims fear retaliation. "Women are terrified and won't come forward," says Diane Wetendorf, an author and advocate who has worked with victims.
States need to communicate with each other about cops who have been fired or allowed to quit for sexual misconduct.
That's not happening now-only 34 states contribute to the National Decertification Index, implemented in 2000. "It's just nuts that we haven't come together as a society on this," says Prof. Roger Goldman of Saint Louis University School of Law, who's an expert on police-licensing laws.
To read the original American Prospect article, go to:
http://prospect.org/article/cops-gone-wild
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Traffic Cameras Draw More Scrutiny by States
By EMMARIE HUETTEMAN ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Times'
WASHINGTON ― The sudden flash lit up Christian Sevier's Honda Civic as he drove on New York Avenue here. But it would take a few weeks before the $150 speeding ticket in his mailbox explained what had happened.
He had triggered one of Washington's traffic cameras, an increasingly common enforcement tool that snapped a photo of his car when it recognized he was speeding. A Freedom of Information Act inquiry by AAA revealed that a single speed camera along that busy thoroughfare had brought in more than $11 million in just two years.
Although Mr. Sevier, 30, uses his car only a few times a week, he has received two more tickets since that first infraction.
"I almost see them as a tax on any citizen in Washington, D.C., who has a car," he said.
Traffic cameras have spread to 582 communities nationwide to catch those who speed, run red lights or commit other violations. As their use has spread, lawmakers in states that have allowed cities to make decisions about photo enforcement are starting to get involved.
The Governors Highway Safety Association reports that 29 states have no state laws about speed cameras, though that does not mean there are no speed cameras in those states. In Iowa, for instance, seven cities operate speed cameras and another seven use red light cameras, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research organization financed by auto insurers and associations.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 66 bills related to photo enforcement have been presented nationwide so far in 2013. A few would approve the cameras, citing their safety advantages. Proposals in Arizona, Florida, Iowa and several other states would ban the cameras, joining the 12 states that prohibit speed cameras and the 9 that block red light cameras.
Critics of photo enforcement often paint a picture of government overreach. Though drivers can appeal their tickets, some claim the cameras violate the constitutional right to face their accuser. Others say they are an invasion of privacy.
Many contend that local governments ― as well as the companies that manufacture and maintain the equipment, some in exchange for a percentage of the revenue rather than a flat fee ― are more interested in money than in safety, pointing to studies indicating that the cameras may actually cause accidents.
Resentment has been building in Washington since 2010, when the mayor at the time, Adrian M. Fenty, raised traffic fines as part of his efforts to balance the budget. The fine for driving 11 to 15 miles per hour over the speed limit went up to $125 from $50, for instance.
"He was very clever and assiduous about squeezing out items that weren't technically taxes that he could use for revenue," said Mary M. Cheh, a district councilwoman.
In November, as the City Council held hearings on traffic enforcement, Mayor Vincent C. Gray lowered the fines, saying the changes would make penalties fairer for those with less serious infractions.
Supporters of photo enforcement point to growing evidence suggesting that traffic cameras curb violations and decrease the number of fatal accidents. One recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported a significant decline in red-light running not only at intersections with cameras a year after the police had started ticketing there, but also at nearby intersections without cameras.
When asked about efforts to strike down a Florida law permitting traffic cameras, Melissa Wandall, president of the National Coalition for Safer Roads, said a recent survey showed that 56 percent of Florida communities that responded reported fewer crashes at intersections with cameras.
On a fall evening in 2003, when a driver ran a red light and slammed into the car carrying Ms. Wandall's husband, killing him instantly, she stood at the crash site, nine months pregnant, and vowed to find meaning in the tragedy.
Ms. Wandall, 45, worked with her congressman on the Florida law authorizing red light cameras, which bore her husband's name when the governor signed the legislation, the Mark Wandall Traffic Safety Program, in 2010. A portion of each ticket goes to medical centers.
"The program is doing so many great things that I don't see how they can get rid of them," she said.
Anne T. McCartt, an official at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said that while traffic cameras are a contentious issue, opposition is not as strong as some claim. An institute study of drivers in 14 cities with red light cameras ― including Phoenix, Chicago and Raleigh, N.C. ― found that two-thirds supported their use.
"I think there is a vocal minority in these communities that focus a lot of attention on this issue," Ms. McCartt said.
In Washington, officials plan to add to the district's current 90 traffic cameras. Since it started using speed cameras in 2001, Washington has had a 73 percent decrease in traffic deaths, said Gwendolyn Crump, a police spokeswoman.
And while photo enforcement brings in a lot of money ― $21.2 million in February ― Ms. Cheh said revenue was not the point.
"I know citizens sometimes don't believe this," she said. "I don't want your money. I want you to stop speeding."
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Prosecutors Are at Risk, but Security Is Limited
By JOHN SCHWARTZ ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The New York Times'
The defendant had accosted the prosecutor before, shouting death threats at him on a Washington street. Then one day in court, he caught the eye of the prosecutor, Roger Canaff, and slowly drew his finger across his throat.
Today, Mr. Canaff is out of the prosecutor's role and serving as a legal consultant in New York. But he remembers the fear that went along with the threat from a man he was prosecuting for a misdemeanor charge in what he considered a "relatively minor domestic violence case." He asked his supervisor what to do; the boss told him to report the threat to a homicide detective, which he did. And for whatever reason, the man stopped bothering him. But, Mr. Canaff recalled, "for a little time, it was frightening."
Making people angry is an occupational hazard of being a prosecutor, said Scott Burns, the executive director of the National District Attorneys Association in Alexandria, Va., and it is impossible to know who might follow through with deadly intent.
But the killings of two prosecutors in Kaufman County, Tex., in two months have brought attention to the risk of violence that goes with the position.
Investigators do not yet know who killed the district attorney, Mike McLelland, and his wife, Cynthia, last week, or who killed Mr. McClelland's deputy, Mark E. Hasse, on Jan. 31, but state and federal law enforcement officials are searching for clues and trying to figure out whether the deaths are related ― and related to their work.
The federal government's Bureau of Justice Statistics does not tally violent crimes against prosecutors, but Mr. Burns's organization has been keeping records for a half century. It counts Mr. McLelland, who was 63, as the 13th prosecutor in the country to be killed in that time.
"Each one's a tragedy, though ― knock wood ― it's still very rare," Mr. Burns said. There is a small memorial to fallen prosecutors at the Justice Department's National Advocacy Center in Columbia, S.C.
Other cases have not received such intense national attention. The case of Sean May, a Denver-area prosecutor killed in 2008, is still unsolved, as is the death under mysterious circumstances of Jonathan P. Luna, an assistant United States attorney based in Baltimore whose body was found in a Pennsylvania creek in 2003.
Mr. Burns said, "I don't think it's any question that prosecutors are extremely vulnerable."
While urban offices in places like Dallas County have upgraded security in light of the killings, Mr. Burns said that the options for most prosecutors are few. He noted that there are 40,000 state and local prosecutors in the United States, and many work in small offices with limited resources.
"It's just unrealistic to think that we're going to have security details for prosecutors," he said.
Identifying the truly dangerous people from the many who go through the legal system ― "your own personal threat assessment" ― is difficult, and protecting oneself is even more so. For the most part, Mr. Burns said, "We're trained in the law and persuasion, not firearms."
David Escamilla, the Travis County attorney and president-elect of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, said that in prosecutorial offices across the state, there is, "to a lesser degree, a fear ― knowing this could be us."
He said, "Whenever you're prosecuting someone and you're involved in depriving someone of their liberty, some of the people we're dealing with can focus on the wrong things." Even in his office, which deals mainly with misdemeanors, he said, "We've had threats before," and "we've had to have those talks with people about taking their security more seriously."
William Lee Hon, the Polk County criminal district attorney and the chairman of the Texas prosecutors' organization, said that being aware of risk is essential ― "You worry about it, to a degree" ― but that worrying can go too far. "There's a fine line between being careful and being paranoid," he said. "One will drive you crazy."
Prosecutors develop a "psychological defense mechanism to not constantly dwell on the dangers and the threats that are out there." Fall into that habit of mind, he said, and "it prevents you from going forward and being professional about your job."
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Chicago, Illinois (Garry Francis McCarthy)
March homicides drop dramatically in Chicago
By Don Babwin (The Associated Press) ― Monday, April 1st, 2013; 10:45 p.m. EDT
CHICAGO (AP) ― Almost exactly a year after Chicago's surging homicide rate caught the nation's attention, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy rolled out statistics Monday that showed a dramatic drop in the number of killings. At the same time, they tried to allay safety concerns in the wake of a weekend fight involving more than a dozen young people on the Magnificent Mile.
Emanuel and McCarthy ― appearing together at a news conference and then in separate interviews with The Associated Press ― suggested that an array of police initiatives have helped reduce the number of homicides from 120 for the first three months of 2012 to 70 for the first three months of this year.
"This is a good sign," Emanuel said in a telephone interview, pointing to statistics that show this first quarter tied the same time period of 2009 for the fewest homicides in more than a half-century. "We are clearly having an impact on the homicides."
McCarthy agreed, saying statistics that show a 28 percent drop in the number of homicides in the past six months is more encouraging.
"I feel good about the direction we are going in," he said. "The fact that now we've got a 6-month trend, that's significant."
It is also welcome news for a city that has been mired in gang violence and witness to a number of recent high-profile slayings, including a 15-year-honor student who was gunned down about a mile from President Obama's South Side home in January and a 6-month-old girl who was shot to death last month.
Emanuel and McCarthy also fielded questions about weekend troubles in downtown Chicago, when a group of young women attacked another woman on a train and several young people ― in full view of shoppers and tourists ― jostled passers-by and fought each other on Michigan Avenue. More than two-dozen young people were arrested.
Emanuel said police have increased their presence there, particularly at night and on the weekends, and that he did not believe what happened over the weekend would affect tourism.
"We have a big (police) presence on Michigan Avenue and the moment something happened the police were on it and people got arrested," the mayor told the AP.
Emanuel also voiced his continued support for a police initiative, launched in February after the deadliest January in more than a decade, that has put hundreds of officers, working overtime, on the streets.
In the month it started, there were 14 homicides, the lowest monthly total since 12 in January 1957. March's total was 16, less than a third of the 52 homicides committed in March 2012.
"This is my priority" the mayor said of what is called strategic overtime, which costs the city millions of dollars every month. "It's a priority for the city ... and we are going to make sure we have the resources to achieve the objective."
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Under pressure on weekend crime, Emanuel touts drop in 1st quarter killings
By Jeremy Gorner and John Byrne ― Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 'The Chicago Tribune' / Chicago, IL
After a rough 2012 defending their actions as homicides soared past 500 killings, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and police Superintendent Garry McCarthy had what they billed as good news to share Monday ― violence in the first quarter of 2013 fell sharply from a year earlier.
But the two found themselves somewhat on the defensive after disturbances downtown over the weekend by large groups of teens captured national attention and reignited concerns about mayhem along or near the city's tony Magnificent Mile as warmer weather appears on the horizon.
The latest contrast shows once again how difficult it can be for Emanuel and his team to get ahead of Chicago's seemingly pervasive violence ― an issue of incredible complexities that despite short-term success can quickly be eclipsed by a high-profile murder of a teenage girl or a scary robbery on a popular CTA train line.
Emanuel and McCarthy held the news conference at a Far South Side police station to detail dramatic drops in homicides and shootings for March as well as the first quarter of 2013. Last month, homicides fell to just 16, the lowest total since 1959, from 52 a year earlier, they said. For the first three months of the year, homicides totaled 70, a 42 percent drop from 120 for the same period of 2012.
McCarthy said it was the best first-quarter performance since 70 homicides in 1959. But the Police Department's own records show that Chicago recorded 70 in the first quarter of 2009. A police spokesman later acknowledged that it was only the best first quarter in four years. In 2010 and 2011, only 75 homicides were recorded in each year's first quarter.
Crime experts said it's more appropriate to make comparisons over multiple years and noted that the start of 2012 was so uncharacteristically violent ― perhaps in part because of unseasonably warm weather, particularly in March. They also said that it's inevitable for extremely high homicide numbers one year to go down the following year ― as much as it would be typical for them to go up if they had been well below average.
They also said that weather can greatly affect violence, bringing more gang members outdoors and into potential conflicts with rivals.
James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, said the police walk a tough line when it comes to crime statistics.
"When crime numbers go up, invariably the police take too much blame. And it's really unfair when they're criticized," Fox said. "And then when it goes down, they tend to take a little too much credit too."
Police strategies, he said, have a role, but what cops do on the streets generally doesn't have a great impact on the numbers in a matter of a few months.
For Emanuel and McCarthy, putting a focus on homicide numbers represented a change from last year. When the those figures soared early in 2012, bringing unflattering attention to the city, the two consistently emphasized the drop in overall crime.
Some law enforcement sources have said McCarthy's disbanding of two strike forces not long after he took office in 2011 had contributed to the increase in violence last year. The success of the specialized units relied on swarming the streets, intimidating and harassing gang members, and clamping down on any violence in targeted neighborhoods.
McCarthy moved those officers to beat patrols, hoping they would have more meaningful and positive interactions with the community. He's replaced the strike forces with "area teams," smaller than the old units but deployed by commanders for saturation missions closer to the problem.
While the union representing rank-and-file officers has long criticized department manpower as too low, McCarthy said the city has more cops than any other major city in the country on a per-capita basis. And more recently, he has offered overtime to more than 400 officers to work on their days off to increase visibility in crime-ridden areas. Newly trained officers also started walking foot patrols recently in those same neighborhoods.
Chicago violence has been a perplexing problem for Emanuel and McCarthy.
National news outlets focused on the bloodshed in President Barack Obama's hometown under the stewardship Emanuel, his former chief of staff. The drumbeat reached a crescendo in late January when 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was fatally shot about a mile from Obama's South Side home.
On Monday, Emanuel insisted he knows that the buck stops with him on crime. "All of us are, I'm accountable," he said when announcing the lower homicide numbers. "And it's not about credit. And it's not about anything else but being accountable."
But Emanuel and McCarthy also faced questions about Saturday's disturbances downtown. Eleven teens were arrested after two women were attacked and robbed on the Red Line in the Loop. In a separate incident, 17 teens were arrested after disturbances along the Magnificent Mile.
It raised concerns of a repeat of unprovoked mob attacks that took place over the last two years downtown, leading to fears by businesses of an impact on tourism.
When a reporter suggested the Michigan Avenue incident would hurt Chicago's image nationally, McCarthy was quick to issue a stern response before his boss could answer.
"I want to be clear about something ... that we were there. We were on top of it, and we dispersed it immediately. And I also want to be clear that there were no assaults, robberies or property damage that was reported," McCarthy said.
Later, Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, praised the police response but called on the department to increase its visibility downtown "to prevent these events from occurring in the first place." In a letter to constituents, he promised to try to schedule a meeting this week with McCarthy.
Reilly previously proposed hiring off-duty cops to patrol North Michigan Avenue.
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Mike Bosak
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