Friday, April 12th, 2013 — Good Afternoon, Stay Safe
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DEA Prez Michael Palladino On Raymond Kelly and the Mayoral Race
The candidates and the Ray Kelly question, again
By Azi Paybarah — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘Capital New York’ / New York, NY
Christine Quinn has all but promised to keep Ray Kelly on as police commissioner if she becomes mayor, and her Democratic competitors, even as they have praised Kelly's work, have publicly criticized her for it.
But according to Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, the apparent disagreement between the mayoral candidates over the popular police commissioner isn't actually all that meaningful.
Palladino, who heads a coalition of law enforcement unions that is screening mayoral candidates to determine which one it will support, was in attendance yesterday at Bill Thompson's speech about public safety at John Jay College.
When I asked him about Quinn saying she'd like to keep Kelly, Palladino said, "Well, that one candidate is trying to garner votes on the name of Ray Kelly."
When I asked him whether that was a good or bad thing, he said, "I don't know."
I asked, again, whether the unions would view it as a positive or a negative if a candidate expressed support for Kelly.
Palladino suggested that his coalition isn't hearing that message from any of the candidates that are being screened.
"It's a difficult question to answer because a lot of these candidates … haven't decided if they would keep Ray Kelly or if they wouldn't," said Palladino.
"Chris Quinn, she is the only one on the record saying publicly she would keep him. But if you speak with them privately, these other candidates, they may very well keep him too. But they haven't made that public."
I told Palladino that her main competitors have all suggested, not least by their criticism of Quinn's position, that they would replace Kelly.
"I'm unaware of it," Palladino said.
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Thompson Turns to Bratton
By PERVAIZ SHALLWANI And ANDREW GROSSMAN — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY
Moments after Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Thompson unveiled his anticrime plan on Thursday, his campaign offered up the man best known for serving as former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani's police commissioner.
Bill Bratton, 65 years old, hasn't endorsed a candidate in the race to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but by referring reporters to him, Mr. Thompson's campaign seemed to hint at the type of approach he would take to law enforcement.
During a 20-minute speech on the future of public safety at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Mr. Thompson showed he is trying to walk a middle ground on law enforcement.
On one hand, he is critical of the Bloomberg administration's use of the stop-and-frisk tactic—a source of anger in his base of African-American voters. On the other, he stops short of calling for the abolition of the tactic and praises the mayor's record on crime reduction.
Mr. Thompson, 59, unveiled a six-point plan that he said would extend the work done by Mr. Bloomberg and police Commissioner Raymond Kelly but fix some of the fissures he said they have created between police and minority communities.
"This is not a time to sit back and say enjoy the good news," he said.
If elected, Mr. Thompson said he would increase the city police force by 2,000 officers, flood high-crime areas with veterans instead of rookies and fix "stop and frisk," a tactic in which officers can stop people whom they reasonably suspect of criminal behavior. Mr. Thompson said the tactic has merit but said it has been abused by the current administration.
Afterwards, his campaign suggested reporters speak with Mr. Bratton and Brooklyn U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who both said they have spoken several times with Mr. Thompson about law-enforcement issues.
Mr. Bratton, who served as police commissioner from 1994 to 1996 under Mr. Giuliani, has met with Mr. Thompson and other leading candidates and has expressed interest in returning to his old post.
"[Some of the policy proposals were] something I recommended to him and the other mayoral candidates," Mr. Bratton said. "It's a continuation of Commissioner Kelly's very successful Operation Impact."
Mr. Bratton said his availability to speak about Mr. Thompson's public-safety plan wasn't an endorsement. "I have made is quite clear to all of the candidates when I talk to them that I am willing to talk about my discussions with the many candidates," Mr. Bratton said.
Mr. Thompson said he had turned to other people besides Mr. Bratton for their views on crime. "It has not been a secret that I have spoken to former Commissioner Bratton," he said.
Mr. Jeffries, who represents parts of Brooklyn that have some of the city's highest crime rates and the highest rates of stop-and-frisk, said he hasn't endorsed a mayoral candidate. He said he was supportive of Mr. Thompson's law-enforcement plan. "I think that he has a thoughtful approach with balancing the needs for healthy law enforcement with the rights of civil liberties for law-abiding New York City residents," Mr. Jeffries said.
Michael Palladino, chief of the union that represents NYPD detectives, who was in the audience on Thursday, said he was receptive to Mr. Thompson's ideas. He said he specifically liked the call for additional officers. "It makes sense," said Mr. Palladino, who hasn't endorsed a candidate. "A new administration is going to come in and they are all going to have new ideas."
The address was Mr. Thompson's first significant policy speech and first detailed proposal by any of the serious mayoral candidates about how to tackle crime in the city.
Mr. Thompson said his plan was based on a "simple theory" that the success of stemming crime is based on the targeted deployment of police officers. He said he wants to see officers spend more time talking with people in communities.
Mr. Thompson also expressed his support for an inspector general for the police department, but said he didn't support the current bill making its way through City Council.
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Bill Thompson says NYPD’s Operation Impact should use veteran cops, not rookies
Thompson, during a speech at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, reasoned that veteran cops will be better able to repair community relations in troubled areas
By Jonathan Lemire — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
COMMENT: The problem with this is that veteran police officer know better. They’re not ignorant enough (or stupid) to go running around indiscriminately violating people’s 4th Amendment rights just for a number. Should this happen the numbers of SQF are going to nosedive like a lead balloon. – Mike Bosak
Mayoral hopeful Bill Thompson on Thursday proposed flipping one of Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s signature crime-fighting innovations on its head.
Operation Impact, launched in 2003, floods violent areas with rookie cops to supplement regular manpower and enhance police presence on the streets. Kelly has frequently credited the tactic as playing an important role in furthering the city’s historic drop in crime.
But Thompson, the former City Controller who lost the mayoral race in 2009 to Mayor Bloomberg, instead wants to send veteran officers to those neighborhoods — in part to repair rifts caused by one of the NYPD’s most controversial strategies: the stop, question and sometimes frisk initiative.
“The stop-and-frisk policies have severely damaged that trust,” said Thompson, in what was billed as a major speech on public safety at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Thompson believes that deploying experienced offers — who would perhaps feel less pressure to prove themselves by making questionable arrests to bolster their record — would lead to fewer confrontations with residents.
He called stop-and-frisk “an important tool” for fighting crime but drew on a personal example — the experiences of his stepson, who is African-American — to illustrate the program’s repercussions.
“I worry about him being mugged; I worry about him being shot by a gang member,” said Thompson. “But right now, I also have to worry about him being stopped by the police for no other reason than his age and the color of his skin.”
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, panned Thompson’s suggestion, arguing that Operation Impact is a way of strategically deploying cops who are fresh out of the Police Academy.
“You have, every six months, hundreds — sometimes as many as 1,500 — rookie officers graduating,” Browne said. “That gives us flexibility to assign large numbers of officers to Impact.”
Browne also pointed out that numerous law enforcement experts have cited Operation Impact as a driving force behind the city’s crime reduction.
“The proof is in the pudding of record crime reduction that experts from Zimring at Berkeley to Smith at NYU have attributed to the current impact model,” he said.
“I’m going to rely on those experts and their judgment,” Browne added.
Among the major Democratic mayoral candidates, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio also support reforming the stop-and-frisk tactic, which has spawned ongoing legal action in federal court. City Controller John Liu has called for the elimination of the strategy.
The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Thompson’s proposal to modify Operation Impact.
In Thompson’s vision, rookie cops would be first assigned to cut their teeth in lower-crime neighborhoods. He said he has yet to determine if his plan would give the veteran officers the choice to work in the more violent neighborhoods.
Detectives Benevolent Association President Mike Palladino watched Thompson from a front-row seat Thursday but said afterward that his presence did not indicate that his union would offer the ex-controller an endorsement.
With Rocco Parascandola
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Outside Inspector General for the NYPD
At John Jay, Thompson explains non-support of a police-oversight proposal
By Azi Paybarah — Thursday, April 11th, 2013; 7:39 p.m. ‘Capital New York’ / New York, NY
Hours after a Quinnipiac University poll was released showing a majority of New Yorkers supporting the creation of an inspector general for the New York Police Department, Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Thompson unveiled his public safety platform.
He opposes the inspector general proposal currently before the City Council.
Speaking at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Thompson said he wanted an inspector general "inside the police department." The current bill, he said, would put the inspector general "astride the department, between the commissioner and the mayor."
"In effect, it creates a second police commissioner," and would be "dangerously blurring the clear lines of authority critical to public safety," said Thompson.
Thompson, the only black candidate in the race, also said, "Nobody has to lecture me about the indignity of stop-and-frisk or blacks and Latinos under this administration. I live with it."
Last month at a candidate forum, City Comptroller John Liu said he felt sorry for Thompson's 15-year-old step-son, who is black and therefore statistically much more likely than a white teenager to be stopped and frisked. Liu then asked Thompson to "join me" in calling to end the policy.
Thompson reacted strongly, and said that eliminating stop-and-frisk wasn't the way to protect his step-son.
Both Thompson and Liu had previously expressed support for the current inspector general bill, but both now oppose it. Another Democratic candidate, former councilman Sal Albanese, opposed it when it was introduced. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio support the bill, which is strongly opposed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.
According to Qunnpiac, voters support the idea of an NYPD inspector by 66-25 percent. Among Democrats, the numbers are 72-19 percent, and among blacks, the margin is even greater, 78-13 percent.
Interestingly, voters are split as to whether the new inspector general's office will make the city more safe: 43 percent say it will, and 43 percent say it will make no difference. Among Democrats, those figures are 49-40, and among blacks, it's 51-38.
In response to an audience member's question, Thompson said the inspector general bill "is really in response to stop-and-frisk. And the response to stop-and-frisk doesn't need an I.G. It needs a mayor who is going to accept accountability and responsibility for stopping the way it is being used."
Other initiatives Thompson announced today: a plan to hire more police officers and flood high-crime areas with veteran officers. Currently, under the NYPD's Operation Impact, rookie officers are sent to those hot spots.
Thompson also said he wanted to return to a "community policing" model in which more officers patrol neighborhoods by foot. Thompson said he would also bring police and local residents together in order "to pressure drug dealers out of the drug trade."
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Poll finds support for outside watchdog for NYPD
By JENNIFER PELTZ (The Associated Press) — Thursday, April 11th, 2013; 6:03 p.m. EDT
NEW YORK -- City voters overwhelmingly support a plan to put the New York Police Department under the scrutiny of an outside watchdog, even though they give police good marks overall, according to a poll released Thursday.
Two-thirds of respondents favored the proposal for an NYPD inspector general, while a quarter opposed it in the Quinnipiac University poll. It comes as lawmakers hone the plan for what's expected to be a "yes" vote.
The measure would create a monitor to look at the procedures and policies of the nation's biggest police department. While the legislation is still being drafted, plans so far have envisioned giving the inspector general the power to subpoena documents and witnesses.
Civil rights and minority advocates applaud the plan, spurred by concerns about the department's widespread use of the practice known as stop and frisk and its systematic surveillance of Muslims, as revealed in a series of stories by The Associated Press. The poll shows particularly strong support for the idea among black and Hispanic voters, though a majority of white voters back it as well.
Police officials and Mayor Michael Bloomberg say the force already gets enough oversight from various agencies, internal investigators and court guidelines, though none have the policy-scrutinizing mandate that the inspector general would. The mayor says the monitor could end up interfering with a police department that has worked to drive crime rates down to record lows.
"This is a dumb idea ... and it's dangerous. We're playing with people's lives," he said after an unrelated news conference Thursday.
Bloomberg has said he'll veto the proposal if it passes the City Council. Speaker Christine Quinn has said lawmakers will override a veto if he does.
Communities United for Police Reform, a group pushing the inspector general plan, said in a statement that the poll showed "New Yorkers overwhelmingly do not believe Mayor Bloomberg's empty rhetoric that improving oversight of the NYPD will make the city less safe."
While voters like the inspector general idea and disapprove of stop and frisk by a margin of 51 to 43 percent, they have positive views overall of the department and its leader, according to the poll. Some 60 percent approve of how police are doing their jobs, and 65 percent like how Commissioner Ray Kelly is doing his, the poll showed.
City police stop, question and sometimes pat down hundreds of thousands of people per year who are seen as acting suspiciously but don't necessarily meet the legal bar for arrest. The practice has spurred protests, an ongoing federal lawsuit and City Council proposals to set new rules for the stops. Bloomberg and Kelly say stop and frisk is a valuable and legitimate part of the city's crime-fighting strategy.
The Quinnipiac poll questioned 1,417 New York City voters April 3 to 8. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.
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Officials, activists and politicos wrestle with idea of an NYPD inspector general
By STEPHON JOHNSON — Thursday, April 11th, 2013 ‘The Amsterdam News’ / New York, NY
When the city was mired in crime in the 1970s and 1980s, being from New York was a badge of honor. It said you survived something others couldn’t. But when the city began to turn things around in the 1990s, being from New York meant that you were from the home of MTV, “Seinfeld” and the birthplace of America’s new youth music: hip-hop. Over a decade into the 21st century, those who survived the bad old days don’t recognize the city they once loved, but they appreciate the improvements it’s made.
Under the reign of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s drop in crime has become the stuff of legend in certain circles. The New York Police Department is looked at as the standard-bearer for not only law enforcement in America, but across the globe.
But with the city’s current stop-and-frisk policy, which disproportionately targets Black and Latino males, and the unchecked surveillance of Muslim residents, some have called for an overseer. A watchdog. Someone who can make sure the police are doing their job without violating the constitutional rights of the residents they serve.
Could politicians, at a time when the city is as safe as it’s ever been, muster enough courage to openly challenge the NYPD and its practices? Could politicians rock the boat even when that boat is successful? One mayoral candidate has surprisingly jumped on board after not publicly appearing as a fan on a recommended addition to the city’s law enforcement.
According to a January poll by Quinnipiac University, 50 percent of all New Yorkers disapprove of stop-and-frisk (the practice where police officers can stop and question anyone randomly based on suspicion of wrongdoing) and 46 percent disapprove. Among city Democrats, 59 percent disapprove while 79 percent of Republicans are in favor. Sixty-eight percent of New York’s Black residents disapprove of stop-and-frisk (54 percent of Hispanics disapprove), while 56 percent of whites approve of the practice.
When divided by borough, stop-and-frisk meets its highest rate of disapproval in the Bronx at 63 percent, while there’s a 62 percent approval on Staten Island. Among age groups, the only one with majority approval for stop-and-frisk are residents ages 65 and up. The objection to stop-and-frisk, if one uses the Quinnipiac poll as a barometer, is overwhelmingly young, outer-borough and predominantly Black and Latino.
The Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), in its current form, came to be in 1993 after decades of push and pull between the NYPD and the city. What was once a board that was part police and part civilian is now all civilian. The board was given subpoena power and authority to recommend discipline in cases the board reviews, but without the power to actually do something, the final decision in cases of police misconduct lies in the commissioner’s hands.
Just last year, the CCRB was given expanded rights in its prosecutorial role over police officers accused of misconduct, but Council Speaker Christine Quinn has left one of the seats on CCRB vacant since 2009, when former board member Dennis DeLeon passed away. Despite an expanded budget, the CCRB has been rendered powerless. The NYPD and the city, still have the final say.
But two people from the world of academia have proposed a solution to this problem: an inspector general to oversee the NYPD.
Last fall, Faiza Patel and Andrew Sullivan of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law produced and distributed a proposal for an NYPD inspector general to elected officials, the media and other members of academia. In the 39-page document, Patel and Sullivan advocate for an inspector general who is independent of the NYPD and would be free to determine which reviews to conduct, review the NYPD’s record-keeping practices on intelligence gathering, have access to the same personnel and documents as the NYPD, promote transparency and regularly report to the mayor and the City Council.
But according to NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the role of investigating and overseeing police conduct is already in good hands. In an email, Browne said that there’s not one police department in the country that has as much oversight as the NYPD, and the thought of an inspector general would be “unnecessary and redundant.” He made a list of the groups who are responsible for the checks and balances of the NYPD to prove it.
“Five independently elected district attorneys; each has independent authority to investigate and/or prosecute NYPD officers, subpoena records; and has (2) two United States attorneys appointed by the president, either one of which may investigate and/or prosecute NYPD to its officers; and has (3) an independent Citizens Complaint Review Board—signed into law by former Mayor [David] Dinkins—to investigate police misconduct; (4) the Mayor’s Commission to Combat Police Corruption, and; (5) the department’s own Internal Affairs Bureau and other inspectional entities, which together employ approximately 1,000 department personnel in addressing or preventing police misconduct or inadequacies,” Browne wrote.
Browne also mentioned the NYPD’s Advocate’s Office, which prosecutes internal infractions that “don’t rise to the level of federal or state prosecution. This office is staffed with civilian, former prosecutors and lawyers.”
According to the proposal, all of that isn’t enough because the entities aren’t as independent and objective as they should be to produce results.
“To begin with, purely internal mechanisms like the Internal Affairs Bureau are no substitute for independent review by a neutral and objective outsider … none of the institutions identified by the commissioner [Ray Kelly] have ever monitored department-wide polices for compliance with legal standards,” read the proposal.
Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty & National Security Program, said that the drop in the crime rate doesn’t undermine the need for an inspector general. In her eyes, it increases it.
“Clearly, there are constitutional problems with the NYPD’s surveillance and stop-and-frisk practices,” said Patel. “These have been raised in various lawsuits. But the crime numbers also don’t support the claim that New York City is safer because of stop-and-frisk. While violent crimes fell 29 percent in New York City from 2001 to 2010, other large cities experienced larger declines without relying on stop-and-frisk abuses: 59 percent in Los Angeles, 56 percent in New Orleans, 49 percent in Dallas and 37 percent in Baltimore.”
Earlier this month, the NYPD released data from its stop-and-frisk activities after persistent requests from the New York Civil Liberties Union. The stats, from the year 2011, show that out of the 685,724 people who were stopped or detained under “reasonable suspicion,” almost 90 percent of them were either Black or Latino. Overall, Blacks and Latinos make up 53 percent of the city’s population.
At around the same time of the report’s release, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that the Clean Halls Program violated the constitutional rights of New York City residents. According to Scheindlin, for years the NYPD should have known (or already knew) that its officers had routinely violated constitutional rights through Clean Halls. Scheindlin said that the NYPD failed to properly train officers about when it was legal to make trespass stops in private residents. Scheindlin eventually suspended her ruling while the NYPD and the city made an appeal, but residents are pushing back against NYPD policies.
One of those people fighting against current NYPD policies is Joo-Hyun Kang of Communities United for Police Reform. Kang’s organization has been a staunch advocate for the end of stop-and-frisk and the reconstruction of police action in New York. He’s also a fan of the inspector general idea.
“The NYPD currently lacks strong, independent oversight to protect the rights of New Yorkers from systemic rights abuses—that isn’t provided by CCRB, Internal Affairs Bureau or any other existing entity,” said Kang. “Establishing an inspector general would provide effective oversight with subpoena power and would be an important first step in ensuring New Yorkers have faith that the NYPD is accountable for their actions.”
But Bloomberg argued during his final State of the City Address that stop-and-frisk was a part of the police’s success in bringing down the crime rate.
“While the incarceration rate across America has increased by 6 percent over the past decade here in New York City, we’ve reduced it by 32 percent,” said Bloomberg. “We’ve done it through proactive, targeted policing that prevents crime, and that includes stopping and questioning people who are acting suspiciously or who fit the description of a suspect. I understand that innocent people don’t like to be stopped, but innocent people don’t like to be shot and killed either. Stops take hundreds of guns off the street each year.”
To people like Eugene O’Donnell, a lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former NYPD officer, Bloomberg’s remarks demonstrated the need for an inspector general. O’Donnell said that not only can the mayor and the Police Department not be trusted regarding conduct, but the alleged cost of hiring another overseer would be offset by the decrease in lawsuits.
“The city and its high officials are potentially liable for civil and criminal violations in connection with these activities,” said O’Donnell, who participated in a panel discussion regarding an inspector general last fall. “Because tracking alleged ‘Middle Eastern’-inspired terrorist actors inevitably involves allegations of racial, ethnic and religious profiling—issues that have caused consternation over the course of American history—the department must tread cautiously, deliberately and thoughtfully here on the basis of credible, solid, verifiable evidence and not based on whim, surmise or caprice.
“This is easier said than done,” O’Donnell admitted.
Over the past several months, Democratic mayoral hopefuls have publicly spoken out (some ambiguously) on NYPD conduct when it comes to surveillance of Muslims via counterterrorist operations. Quinn, City Comptroller John Liu, former City Comptroller Bill Thompson and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio have toed the line on Muslim surveillance, but they quickly jumped on stop-and-frisk, which affects a bigger chunk of the city’s population.
Last year, Quinn said she’d continue the strategy of monitoring Muslim groups if she were elected mayor, but she did tell the Wall Street Journal, “It’s crucial to make sure that their voices and concerns are heard, and that’s why the NYPD must continue its efforts to reach out to all communities.”
But Quinn’s tightrope approach has drawn the ire of activists. During a late December protest in Queens’ Jackson Heights neighborhood to protest stop-and-frisk and Muslim surveillance, among the many signs on display at the march, one read: “Christine Quinn can de-fund stop-and-frisk from the NYPD budget ... but when?”
Quinn has been criticized by community organizers for not using her power and authority to force the NYPD to re-examine or reform their more controversial policies. And yet, the council speaker surprised many political leaders by brokering a deal with the City Council that would introduce an NYPD inspector general. She predictably drew the ire of Bloomberg.
“Around the country, inspector generals—as they’re called—inspector general offices exist within police departments to combat corruption and misconduct, and that’s exactly what our Internal Affairs Bureau does,” said Bloomberg. “The FBI’s inspector general is charged with the same responsibility: combating waste and fraud and misconduct in the FBI. But our City Council’s bill would create a new bureaucracy with the power to oversee the policies and strategies—that’s what they say, policies and strategies—adopted by the police commissioner.
“That’s not an inspector general; that’s a policy supervisor, and I don’t think any rational person would say we need two competing police commissioners,” stated Bloomberg.
Republican mayoral candidate and former MTA Chairman Joe Lhota was more direct in his displeasure with Quinn’s recent maneuvers. Lhota has called on her to drop support for an inspector general and declared the concept dangerous to the public safety of New Yorkers.
“We need to do everything we can to un-handcuff the police department to have a laser-like focus and continuation in the reduction in crime and reverse the direction that this is going,” said Lhota.
As for the other candidates, Thompson issued a statement last year declaring that the city needs to be ”vigilant” in protecting New Yorkers from terrorist attacks, but singling out a race or religion “raises eyebrows.”
Liu has stated numerous times over the past 12 months that he would abolish stop-and-frisk altogether if he were elected mayor. During a forum hosted by the Citizens Crime Commission in early December, Liu said that stop-and-frisk stood against core American values.
“Stop-and-frisk is a practice that I do believe has no place in a democratic society,” said Liu. “When you read about 700,000 people being stopped and frisked on the street, and almost all of whom have done absolutely nothing wrong, you don’t expect to read about that in New York City. You expect to read about that in some, maybe, third-world country, or a country that’s ruled by dictatorship.”
When de Blasio gave remarks last year at John Jay, he also said that policing to keep New Yorkers safe is needed, but a relationship needs to be fostered between the NYPD and Muslim New Yorkers.
“The choice is not between a large force focused on fighting crime and combating terrorism versus a force focused on fostering cooperation from within the community and respecting the rights and aspirations of every law-abiding New Yorker,” said de Blasio. At his office at 1 Centre St. in lower Manhattan in March, the public advocate said that the NYPD needed an inspector general and the police had to be checked. He didn’t, however, mention anything about counterterrorism.
“I think we need more consistent and clear oversight,” said de Blasio. “I’ve seen from different vantage points how policing is evaluated in this city. We have a fantastic police department that’s done a lot of good, but this mayor has certainly deferred to the police commissioner to an extraordinary degree. I think the same is true of the City Council.
“The CCRB is different from an inspector general,” continued de Blasio. “It’s been undermined in many ways over the years and has had its power taken away. Internal Affairs is about the narrower question of police conduct as a professional matter. What I’m talking about with the inspector general is philosophy. What’s working, what isn’t and are we responding to community needs. I think an inspector general would have acted on the problem of stop-and-frisk years ago.”
While mayoral candidates have taken their stand, one way or the other, with police conduct, the establishment of a NYPD inspector general would be difficult given the results produced over the past two decades. However, Patel remains hopeful that an organizational change in attitude could happen.
“For an inspector general to be successful, there has to be some acceptance by the police that he or she will actually improve their performance,” said Patel. “I hope that the NYPD leadership will recognize the benefits that an inspector general can bring to the department, as have other police departments such as the LAPD and the L.A. County Sherriff’s office and even the FBI.”
Nonetheless, Deputy Commissioner Browne said the NYPD is fine without an inspector general. If he had one word to describe the concept, what would it be?
“Wasteful,” he said.
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Law Enforcement Technology: NYPD Android App Smart Phones
New Tool for Police Officers: Records at Their Fingertips
By WENDY RUDERMAN — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
As the officers walked up to the entrance of a Harlem housing project, a loose knot of people out front scattered into the damp, dark night and a few lingerers cast cold stares at the officers. One of the officers reached into his pocket and pulled out the newest tool in the Police Department’s crime-fighting arsenal: a smartphone.
Officer Tom Donaldson typed in the building’s street address, and with a few taps of the screen, an astounding array of information bloomed in his palm.
The officers suddenly had access to the names of every resident with an open warrant, arrest record or previous police summons; each apartment with a prior domestic incident report; all residents with orders of protection against them; registered gun owners; and the arrest photographs of every parolee in the building. The officers could even find every video surveillance camera, whether mounted at the corner deli or on housing property, that was directed at the building.
“You can see that in this one 14-story building there are thousands and thousands of records,” Officer Donaldson said while canvassing the Lincoln Houses on Park Avenue during a 6 p.m.-to-2:30 a.m. tour starting on Wednesday night.
“If I see that in the last month, there have been six arrests on the seventh floor for drug trafficking, maybe I want to hang out on the seventh floor for a while,” he said.
The Police Department has distributed about 400 dedicated Android smartphones to its officers, part of a pilot program begun quietly last summer. The phones, which cannot make or receive calls, enable officers on foot patrol, for the first time, to look up a person’s criminal history and verify their identification by quickly gaining access to computerized arrest files, police photographs, and state Department of Motor Vehicles databases.
The technology offers extraordinary levels of detail about an individual, including whether the person has ever been “a passenger in a motor vehicle accident,” a victim of a crime or in one instance, a drug suspect who has been known by the police to hide crack cocaine “in his left sock,” according to Officer Donaldson.
“I tell them, ‘I’m going to see your picture,’ ” the officer said. “They don’t realize we have this technology. They can’t tell me a lie because I know everything.”
The phone application is significantly different from the computers currently installed in roughly 2,500 patrol cars. With the laptops, the Internet connection can be slow and spotty in some of areas of the city, and officers have to log in to separate databases with multiple passwords to retrieve information.
“With one entry point, you can get to a lot of different databases — quickly,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in an interview on Wednesday.
Without the phone, officers who stop a person for a violation, for example, can sometimes get bare-bones information by radioing in a name to a police dispatcher, police said.
“Our dispatcher will tell us if they have a warrant or not but it’s a simple yes or no answer,” said Officer Donaldson, who is assigned to the Housing Bureau. “I don’t know if the guy is wanted for murder or for not paying a parking summons. We rarely know. Now we know.”
The phone is particularly helpful when officers respond to a call of a domestic dispute. It allows officers to know how many times police have been previously summoned to the residence, providing details on those incidents. Typically, officers do not have this information, Commissioner Kelly said.
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said though the new phone technology held “enormous promise to improve policing and public safety,” she had concerns about “whether it will become a vehicle to round up the usual suspects, to harass people” based on information in the police databases.
On a cold, rainy February night, Officer Donaldson said, he along with Capt. Jerry O’Sullivan and another officer, noticed a car, its engine idling, parked on a sidewalk in front of a Harlem housing project. A woman was in the driver’s seat. She had no identification, but said that she had a driver’s license, and gave a name and date of birth.
“There was no license with that name,” Captain O’Sullivan recalled. “We could tell that she wasn’t giving us the right information.”
The officers ran the car’s license plate number through the phone and learned that the registered owner was wanted by the police, suspected of being involved in a scheme targeting men who solicited prostitutes over the Internet to come to their homes. The car owner was suspected of accompanying two women to the victim’s home, where they would rob him at knife point, according to the criminal complaint.
The woman in the car was one of the suspects, the captain said.
“Ordinarily, as a police officer, what would you do if you were out there late at night, in the cold and the rain, and somebody was being evasive with us? We wouldn’t have any answers,” Captain O’Sullivan said. “Here, we had a phone.”
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NYPD Equips Officers With Crime-Fighting Android App
By Adario Strange — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘PC Magazine’
From social media guidelines to the tracking of iOS devices, the tech strategy of the New York City Police Department has made a lot of headlines lately. The latest modern update to the force has the NYPD equipping officers with a special crime-fighting Android app.
Earlier this week, the New York Daily News dropped a few early hints about the NYPD crime-fighting app, but the New York Times actually delivered the details regarding the software that is designed to give officers a wider range of situational awareness when out in the field. According to the report, the app will allow officers to instantly look up the address of a particular building and discover whether or not that building houses parolees, registered gun owners, or find out if a resident has an order of protection against them.
Perhaps most importantly, the app will also allow officers to see which addresses have prior domestic incident reports, a key piece of information that could indicate the nature of a new 911 call to a particular location. The app will also give foot patrol officers the ability to tap into the city's database and verify the identity of a suspect on the spot through Department of Motor Vehicles databases and police department arrest records. Another interesting feature reportedly included in the app is the ability to find any video surveillance cameras in the vicinity of a particular address.
While this app sounds like a huge leap forward for police officers, putting such an easily lost or stolen mobile device in the hands of foot patrol officers could, at some point, end up exposing a wealth of private information that would otherwise be unavailable to anyone without access to an NYPD patrol vehicle.
Another concern, raised by New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman, is the possibility that the app might lead to the abuse of citizens. Lieberman told the paper that she is concerned that the app might "become a vehicle to round up the usual suspects, to harass people."
Nevertheless, the program to distribute the smartphones, which only receive data and do not have the ability to make calls, will roll forward. According to the report, the NYPD has already equipped 400 officers with the special phones through a test program that began last summer.
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Law Enforcement Technology: NYPD Facial Recognition Software
Mezuzah arsonist snagged by an ear thanks to facial recognition technology
Police were able to track down Ruben Ublies just by getting a clear shot of the side of his head. He has been charged with burglary, arson and criminal mischief — all as hate crimes.
By Rocco Parascandola AND Joe Kemp — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
(Edited for brevity and NYPD pertinence)
New technology helped the NYPD get the lobe-down on the hate-filled firebug charged Thursday with torching a dozen mezuzahs in a pair of Brooklyn apartment buildings.
Career criminal Ruben Ubiles was found cowering beneath his girlfriend’s Bedford-Stuyvesant bed by cops who got onto his trail through a clear picture of his ear from a security camera, sources said.
The image was run through the police facial recognition database, which kicked out the suspect’s name based on the side view of his head. Old-fashioned police work then led cops to Ubiles.
“Facial recognition involves distances and proportions on the face, distances between the eyes and the ear, things like that,” said one source.
“We had a good angle on his ear that helped to identify him.”
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NYPD $$ Lawyer Lotto Score $$ / Department Loses $967,534 in Fees
Bike Tour Wins Lawsuit Over City Fees
By J. DAVID GOODMAN — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
In a setback to efforts to defray the policing costs of large athletic events in New York City, a State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan ruled on Thursday that a nonprofit bicycling group would not have to pay nearly $1 million to close roads during its citywide tour next month.
The decision by Justice Margaret A. Chan had been largely expected after hearings on Wednesday in which she appeared unconvinced by the city’s arguments for classifying the annual event, known as the Five Boro Bike Tour, as a non-charitable athletic parade. That determination, she wrote, “is unreasonable and cannot be confirmed.”
In response, the city Law Department said it was weighing “various legal options.” The case was the first challenging the application of rules adopted in 2011 to offset the high cost of closing streets during athletic events in the city. At stake was $967,534 in fees to cover traffic control by the New York Police Department for the May 5 event.
Much of the proceeds from the event — which has an entry fee for its roughly 32,000 spots — go to the nonprofit Bike New York, which organizes the tour and provides bicycling education classes in partnership with the city.
Nothing in the city rules, the judge wrote, speaks to how a public charity is to allocate its money. She said questions raised by the city regarding the charitable designation of Bike New York were for the Internal Revenue Service.
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Staten Island
Cops of the month: NYPD officers recognized for efforts during Hurricane Sandy
By John M. Annese — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The Staten Island Advance’ / Staten Island
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After a historic disaster like Hurricane Sandy, how do you decide whom to single out as "Cop of the Month," when police made an estimated 1,100 rescues here?
If you're the NYPD brass, you don't.
Instead of highlighting a single officer or team of officers, police honored 15 as "cop of the month" for their efforts during the storm, and even so, theirs were just a sampling of the heroics on display that fearsome night.
"The worst of times actually brings out the best of police officers, and not only police officers, but neighbors, community and family," said Assistant Chief Kevin P. Ward, Staten Island's borough commander. "You'll look back on this, even though it was hard, you'll look back on this as a very important part of your career."
Ward honored the officers during a ceremony in the Advance's Grasmere office Thursday morning. "All of the officers doing these rescues waded into the water, it was waist-deep, sometimes chest-high, not knowing what was going to happen next. When you hear stories, they really did risk their lives that night."
Those honored included:
A team from the 123rd Precinct, sergeants Emanuel Schinina, Thomas Rossiter and Thomas Spitzfaden, and officers William Costello, Edward Halligan, Daniel Riccardi and Daniel Condo, who saved several people in Tottenville.
At one point, Rossiter and Halligan were nearly swept to sea as they approached a house on Manhattan Street with a metal Jon boat. Members of the team saved several people on Manhattan Street, including a senior citizen who had recently undergone hear surgery and a 10-year-old girl. They then went on to Yetman Avenue, where they saved 14 more, as well as an off-duty detective, his pregnant wife, their 2-year-old son, and their dog.
They had to form a human chain to pass the detective's family to safety, standing on floating rooftops and debris as they guided them out.
Officer Scott Zeitler, also of the 123rd Precinct, who had just gone off duty earlier that night, and made several rescues around his Midland Beach home. Zeitler used a neighbor's boat to rescue his parents, three children, brother and several neighbors, and helped residents pump water from their homes throughout the day the next afternoon.
Officer Sean Haggerty, of the 122nd Precinct, who also made several off-duty rescues in Ocean Breeze. Haggerty responded from his home with a rowboat, and rescued 15 adults and children from houses along Hylan Boulevard and Seaview Avenue. Power outages meant he worked in total darkness, often wading through contaminated, chest-high waters.
Sgt. Thomas Walsh and Officers Joanna Sobolewska and Annelle Osorio, also of the 122nd Precinct, who made several rescues along Greeley Avenue and Capodanno Boulevard.
Officer Andres Velasquez of the 122nd Precinct, who went into chest-high water to rescue a woman confined to a hospital bed on Cedar Grove Avenue. Velasquez carried the woman to a waiting ambulance, and went back to the flooded streets to make more rescues from homes.
Officers David Okonek and Alexis Castillo of the Staten Island Task Force, who found a rowboat abandoned near Adams Avenue and used it to rescue several families stuck in their homes. They saved an elderly woman who lived alone and couldn't leave her home, and carried out two more couples, taking them to a nearby shelter.
SEPTEMBER HONOREES
On Thursday, the NYPD also honored five officers for the month of September, crediting them for solving a pattern of 10 burglaries across Staten Island and arresting three suspects.
Sgt. Mark Steiner, and Officers Omar Delcid, Michael Ruby, Nicholas Gentile and Jeffrey Stefanski were assigned to the borough's BLAST unit, which was formed this year specifically to tackle burglary patterns.
They identified a group of suspects, started surveilling them, and, on Sept. 26, caught Danielle Barone, 25, and Kimberly Costa, 27, after they allegedly broke into a house on Washington Avenue in Meiers Corners.
The women were still carrying the stolen goods, said Ward, and one was bleeding through her clear rubber glove. Their arrests led to search warrants, which turned up property stolen in previous burglaries, and a third suspect, Michael Tarulli, 28.
All three are being held on $250,000 bail as they await prosecution.
Advance Assistant City Editor James Yates presented $75 gift cards to family members of each of the officers honored Thursday.
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Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’ Editorial:
Convicted killer Kathy Boudin accorded celebrity treatment at NYU Law School
Three killed in 1981 Brinks armored truck robbery by self-style radicals get short shrift
Some crimes are too heinous to be allowed to slip from memory. They include the murders in 1981 of police Sgt. Edward O’Grady, Officer Waverly Brown and armored-truck guard Peter Paige.
The killers were members of the radical Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army, and they counted among their number Kathy Boudin, a 1960s child of privilege-turned-radical-turned terrorist. Remembrance is imperative now because a New York University Law School program has honored Boudin as its Rose Scheinberg Scholar in Residence, a position reserved for “a scholar working on cutting-edge issues of gender, race and class.”
If you are wondering why Boudin is out on the street rather than behind bars, the explanation is that skillful plea bargaining bought her just 22 years in prison rather than the longer stretches still being served by her co-killers.
Exploiting that unjust beneficence, Boudin works as a Columbia University adjunct professor of social work and was deemed fit to enlighten NYU Law about policies that she condemns as the “mass incarceration” of people who are needlessly imprisoned.
By which Boudin means violent felons.
That alone should have disqualified Boudin as an NYU Law honoree, but the Scheinberg program appears not only to take extremist lunacy seriously, but to value it. Worse still was Boudin’s glancing acceptance of responsibility for the three murders and her suggestion that, in a better world, her cohorts would now be free too.
Mistress of ceremonies Prof. Sylvia Law — yes, that’s her name — introduced Boudin as “the product of an extraordinary life.”
Boudin’s son Chesa then delivered an encomium to the mothering skills of a woman who raised him via prison telephone while he lived with her fellow 1960s radical Bernardine Dohrn.
To be noted, Boudin dropped then-14-month-old Chesa with a baby-sitter before serving as getaway driver for a Rockland County armored car holdup that led to the murders of O’Grady, Brown and Paige.
Chesa Boudin said he was separated from his mother “after the tragic Brinks robbery went wrong,” which was a horrid gloss on the truth that Boudin helped persuade O’Grady and Brown to lower defenses before her accomplices shot the officers down.
Boudin harked back by saying she had finally accepted responsibility for the killings after a conversation with a witness enlightened her as to the impact of the bloody events. She said she wrote letters of apology, although she never sent them.
Final ly, Boudin said she wanted her still-imprisoned accomplices in murder, David Gilbert (who is Chesa’s father), Judy Clarke and Sekou Odinga, “to be here with us” and that she was “thinking of them.”
Awful. The only people deserving of thought by all who were at the podium and in Boudin’s apparently admiring audience were the three men she had a hand in murdering and the nine children she helped leave fatherless.
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Bloomberg and Cuomo spat over Senate gun control bill
Cuomo criticized the bill or failing to ban assault rifles and containing a loophole that will allow gun sales between individuals without background checks. But Bloomberg pointed out that Cuomo compromised on Albany gun legislation by not mandating the microstamping process to make guns and ammo trackable.
By Jennifer Fermino — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
Mayor Bloomberg was happy with the Senate’s gun bill compromise — but not with Gov. Cuomo.
Bloomberg, who has poured his personal fortune into the gun control battle, praised Senate legislators for reaching a consensus.
“Given the political reality, it is amazing that we are as far along,” he said.
Cuomo criticized the bill on Wednesday for failing to ban assault rifles and containing a loophole that will allow gun sales between individuals to be done without background checks.
Cuomo called the bill “better than nothing — but only better than nothing.”
In a direct swipe at Cuomo, Bloomberg pointed out that Cuomo compromised on Albany gun legislation by not insisting it mandate microstamping — a process that leaves unique markings on shell casings to make guns and ammo more trackable.
The fear was that the provision — loathed by gunmakers — would sink the bill’s chances in Albany.
“He [Cuomo] made the decision that the votes were not there for that [microstamping], so he passed what he could get done,” Bloomberg said.
“You don’t sit there and say nothing is better than something.”
He also praised Cuomo’s legislation as a “bill that helped New York.”
A Cuomo administration official sniffed, “The substance of the compromise speaks for itself. There are no universal background checks, no assault weapons ban and no ban on high-capacity magazines.”
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Westchester
Burke shakes up Mount Vernon police to fix 'mess'
By Will David — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The Journal News’ / White Plains, NY
MOUNT VERNON — In an attempt to get the 214-member embattled police force operating efficiently, acting police Commissioner Richard Burke said he has begun to reshuffle members of the department.
“It’s a mess,” Burke told The Journal News/lohud.com. “The big picture is we are trying to fix this place.”
Burke said he recently transferred Deputy Chief James Dumser, who worked during the day, to nighttime duty to oversee the department and inspect police on the streets.
“He is going to be outside making sure the people are properly supervised,” Burke said.
Lt. Detective Vincent Manzione, who was second in command in the Detective Division, was assigned to write a law enforcement grant to get funds for the department, Burke said.
Sgt. Daniel Fischer was assigned to the Detective Division.
Burke said there are eight open homicide cases from the past 12 months, and he made the Manzione-Fischer switch because he thinks it is his best chance at beginning to solve those slayings.
Burke also plans to restart a small Major Case Unit that was discontinued in the Detective Division.
The city recently re-instituted a plan with state police, under Operation Impact, Burke said.
Under that plan, state police will periodically patrol the city streets with Mount Vernon police, Burke said.
The commissioner has said his primary function is to “break the cycle of violence in the city.”
Burke also said the department received a donated computer server Thursday from Blue Book Building and Construction Network that it sorely needed.
The city could not afford to purchase the $5,000 piece of equipment to back up the police computer system, Burke said.
Mayor Ernest Davis and Burke admit that the department leadership has not been stable, the force is plagued by badge drain, morale is low and there are disciplinary problems.
Davis recently fired Commissioner Carl Bell and appointed Burke as a deputy police commissioner.
Burke is acting commissioner until Davis names a permanent replacement.
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New York State
Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’ Editorial:
Politicians drone on about use of unmanned aircraft by police
Two state legislators want cops to get warrants for aerial operations
From the White House to the Central Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon to the Justice Department to Congress, policymakers are wrestling with the burgeoning use of unmanned drones for defense or law enforcement purposes.
Concerns over the use of drones to kill terrorists abroad are heatedly debated, to the point that they generated a senatorial filibuster and an Obama administration promise that they will not be used for targeted killings on American soil.
The homeland issues are nonetheless complex. For example, Mayor Bloomberg predicted that dronelike video technology will inevitably chip away at privacy. Police and other law enforcement authorities are sure to gravitate toward drones as tools for surveillance or simply for keeping an eye out for criminal activity.
And — this just had to happen — two New York legislators have marched to this intersection between high-tech capabilities and the United States Constitution.
Brooklyn Democratic Assemblyman Nick Perry and Long Island Republican state Sen. Carl Marcellino have introduced a bill that would bar cops from tracking suspects with unmanned aircraft unless (a) they obtained a warrant in advance or (b) were dealing with an emergency, such as a kidnapping or terrorist attack.
Did Perry or Marcellino take testimony from experts at public hearings? Did they consult the NYPD or other authorities? Did they determine whether cops now use drones or plan to? Did they study what legal limits might already apply?
No, of course not.
Asked about the proposed legislation, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said:
“We hope it doesn’t interfere with the customary application of police aviation resources — namely rescue, search for suspects and evidence on the ground, situational awareness of natural and other disasters, traffic patterns, parades, etc., as well as providing fire battalion chiefs with aerial platforms from which to observe larger fires.”
This is what passes for the legislative process in Albany: Posture first, ask questions later.
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U.S.A.
Senators Agree to Start Debate on Gun Safety Measures
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
WASHINGTON — Pressed by shooting victims and relatives of Americans slain in gun violence, the Senate on Thursday voted to begin an emotionally and politically charged debate on gun safety proposals as advocates of new laws overcame a Republican filibuster threat.
The strong majority in favor of considering legislation that would expand background checks and increase the penalties for illegal gun sales reflected the power of a lobbying campaign by parents of students killed in Newtown, Conn., and by others who persuaded reluctant lawmakers to back them in an initial fight that looked lost just last week. The vote was 68 to 31.
“It’s remarkable,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut whose nascent Senate career has been devoted to gun safety. “You can’t turn a corner in the Capitol this week without meeting a family of a gun violence victim. It’s hard to say no to these families.”
But the victory could be short-lived. The vote in no way guaranteed passage of the gun measure; some Republicans and Democrats who voted for this initial step made clear they are not committed to supporting any final measure, even if they agreed to allow the debate.
“I am not sure I could have the courage to do what they did,” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, who met with family members of the Newtown victims on Wednesday. “It really does have an impact.” Mr. Burr voted to debate the bill, but said he was unlikely to go further. “Is there anything I’ve seen so far that would move me to vote for new gun laws?” he said. “No.”
The coming weeks and even months will test both the resolve and the stamina of the families, who are both the best advocates for their cause and, in many ways, least equipped for its struggle.
“Every day is hard for me,” said Mark Barden, the father of Daniel, who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “Making lunch for my kids is hard for me. Sleeping is hard. Waking up is hard. That being said, I just feel I need to be doing this.”
The bill will again need 60 votes to end the debate after consideration of contentious amendments offered by both supporters and opponents of new laws. Opponents of the measure could also try to filibuster individual amendments.
Should the bill reach the stage where it could pass with a simple majority, it would still face a challenge. Though Democrats control 55 seats, many from conservative states who face re-election campaigns next year have indicated that they do not intend to vote for the bill, meaning Republican votes could be required to put it over the top.
Twenty-nine Republicans opposed bringing the measure to the floor, along with two Democrats. Sixteen Republicans joined 50 Democrats and two independents in voting to proceed to consideration of the legislation. The two Democrats who voted against measure are both up for re-election in tough states in 2014: Senators Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.
Next week, the Senate is expected to begin reviewing the bill in earnest by voting on an amendment offered by Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia and Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, that would expand background checks to cover unlicensed dealers at gun shows as well as all online sales. It would also maintain record-keeping provisions that law enforcement officials find essential in tracking guns used in crimes.
This amendment would replace the background check provision of the original legislation, which would also create harsher penalties for the so-called straw purchasing of guns, in which people buy guns for others who are not able to legally. Subsequent amendments, dealing with mental health, a ban on assault weapons and other issues, are expected in the days ahead before a vote on the overall measure.
The omnipresence of the families this week, encouraged by President Obama, and former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, appeared to stretch even toward the House, where the journey will be even more difficult should the Senate pass legislation.
Speaker John A. Boehner, for instance, who earlier in the week reacted icily to the idea of new gun legislation, referred to the advocates Thursday after the Senate vote. “Listen, our hearts and prayers go out to the families of these victims,” Mr. Boehner told reporters. “And I fully expect that the House will act in some way, shape or form. “
Alternating between moments of intense privacy — they wept openly in the offices of senators but would not say whom they met with — and their desire to promote their cause, family members inhabited a strange world of boom mikes and cameras and procedural votes. Senators laughed and visited on the floor, as they sat in the gallery hovering above them, listening to the clerk call each vote.
Shortly after the Senate vote, Mr. Obama spoke on the phone with Newtown family members to thank them for their advocacy efforts, saying “it wouldn’t have been possible without them,” said his spokesman, Jay Carney.
History has shown that family members of those killed in natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other tragedies have been able to affect public policy, most recently those of people killed on Sept. 11, as well as people suffering illness in the aftermath.
“I think that it will make a difference,” said Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York. “It worked when we had the 9/11 legislation on the floor of the Senate. We had the first responders, the survivors, come to Washington, talk to senators, talk to House members, tell their personal stories, tell about the horrible disease that they were fighting and that they had nowhere to turn.
A sense of the oncoming debate could be seen Wednesday and Thursday as senators from both parties took to the floor to make their case for and against new gun laws.
Mr. Murphy, a freshman who in other circumstances would draw scant notice, spent hours both days on the floor with large poster-size photos of the children killed in Newtown in December. He talked about their lives, too, saying that one had an interest in the piano and another a proclivity for sharing a tiny bed with a sibling.
Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, served as the voice of the opposition, reading letters from gun owners who fear infringement on their constitutional rights, among them a pair of first-time gun owners. “Protecting our rights, the few the government has left us, is of utmost importance to us,” Mr. Lee said, quoting from a letter.
Mr. Barden, the father of the child killed in Connecticut, said he expected to return frequently to the Capitol as the debate plays out. “It’s not just about our kids,” he said. “It’s about our society that needs to continue to evolve and continue to mature. And it’s certainly not just about firearms.”
Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting.
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Growth of suburbs in pro-gun states changing the political calculus in Congress
By Philip Rucker and Paul Kane — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The Washington Post’ / Washington, DC
Pennsylvania, Georgia and Virginia have long been bastions of gun-rights supporters, with vast rural areas and strong hunting traditions. But in recent days, lawmakers from those states have demonstrated a new willingness to back stricter firearms regulations, setting the stage for what could be the first major gun-control legislation to pass Congress in two decades.
The shift underscores a new reality of gun politics in America: The rapid growth of suburbs in historically gun-friendly states is forcing politicians to cater to the more centrist and pragmatic views of voters in subdivisions and cul-de-sacs as well as to constituents in shrinking rural hamlets where gun ownership is more of a way of life.
In Pennsylvania, for example, all 14 Republicans representing the state in Congress are solidly pro-gun and have “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association. Yet the state’s conservative Republican senator is the co-architect of a new compromise to expand background checks for firearms purchases, and a handful of GOP House members from the state’s suburban areas are poised to back the measure.
The central role played in recent days by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) has brought attention to how the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs have become the state’s political centers of gravity. Similar shifts can be seen in other states with fast-growing suburbs, including Georgia, Virginia, Arizona and Colorado.
The phenomenon will be on wider display next week when the debate in Congress begins. The gun legislation cleared its first major hurdle Thursday when the Senate voted 68 to 31 to proceed with debate. Sixteen Republicans joined 52 Democrats in supporting initial debate, overcoming the threat of a filibuster by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other Republicans.
Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) estimated that his constituency is 65 percent suburban — and those voters, he said, are looking for “very practical, middle-ground solutions” from their elected officials.
“There is a respect for the Second Amendment,” Kaine said. “But we definitely understand, too, that there are balances.” Suburbanites, he said, believe that gun rights should be “tempered by social responsibility.”
Unlike every other debate that has unfolded recently in a bitterly divided Washington, the gun debate is much more about geography than party. The dividing lines are not between Democrats and Republicans, but between rural lawmakers and those who must cater to urban and suburban constituencies.
This explains why Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the gun-control group financed by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), has been airing television ads in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Las Vegas and such Ohio metropolitan areas as Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, sensing opportunities to sway Republican senators.
The rural-suburban divide was evident in the role played in recent weeks by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a gun-rights backer. Democrats looking for a Republican partner to broker a bipartisan deal on background checks first turned to Coburn, a staunch conservative with a penchant to reach for compromise. Coburn spent weeks negotiating with Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), but the talks stalled as the Oklahoman faced intense lobbying pressure from gun advocates in his heavily rural state.
Democrats then turned to Toomey, whose political survival depends largely on winning over suburban voters in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas.
The geographic divisions are playing out among Democrats, as well. Two of the Senate votes on Thursday against proceeding with debate on the gun-control legislation came from Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Democrats whose home states remain largely rural.
In the end, the compromise plan on background checks drafted by Toomey, Manchin and Schumer fits the centrist nature of the suburbs, where polls show voters to be mixed on gun-control issues. The plan would expand background-check requirements on gun purchases. But in not covering many sales between private individuals, the measure stops far short of the stricter controls sought by President Obama and gun-control advocates.
“On the one hand, this compromise was enormously bold and took real political courage,” said Matt Bennett, a gun-control proponent and senior vice president at Third Way, a centrist think tank. “But on the other hand, it was very sensible and smart politics because it really meets the moment that we’re in, which calls for that kind of flexibility and compromise.”
Even so, the demographic shifts are creating complicated political equations for many lawmakers, particularly senators, who must balance the need to represent their states’ suburbs while also factoring in a pro-gun voter base that might be smaller in number but more energized. The NRA, with about 5 million members, remains a potent grass-roots force, even in states with fast-growing suburbs.
“An intense minority trumps an apathetic majority,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster. “On no issue is that more true than on gun issues.”
Consider Georgia, where a growing number of voters live in the suburbs sprouting up around Atlanta.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) acknowledged that the constituents calling his offices in his once overwhelmingly pro-gun state are split.
“I’ve probably heard from as many pro-Second Amendment folks as well as the same number of folks who’d like some sort of measures put in place to control,” Chambliss said, noting that he has not decided whether to vote for the background-checks compromise.
Toomey said reaction in Pennsylvania to his Wednesday announcement of the compromise has been mixed. He said he plans to spend the next few weeks explaining the intricacies of his proposal to voters back home, as well as to his colleagues in Washington.
“The more people learn about what this bill actually does — how it does it, how reasonable it is, the fact that it doesn’t undermine any law-abiding citizen’s Second Amendment rights — I think support will grow,” Toomey said.
The most likely Republicans to lead a bipartisan push on gun legislation, especially in the House, appear to be those representing suburban districts.
The three-county ring of suburbs around Philadelphia has long been one of the central battlegrounds for control of the House. Once solid turf for centrist Republicans, voters there have backed Democrats for president in the past six elections — but have split their votes in congressional races.
To win back the House in 2014, Democrats have targeted those seats, as well as dozens of other similarly suburban districts, with a recruiting effort focused on finding non-ideological “problem solvers.”
One such Republican incumbent being targeted by Democrats is Rep. Patrick Meehan (Pa.), a former prosecutor who easily won reelection last year in the Philadelphia suburbs. In February, he stood alongside Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) at a news conference backing a bipartisan proposal to make gun trafficking a federal crime and penalize “straw purchases” in which guns end up with other owners.
“People at home are sort of looking for Congress to be a little more proactive in dealing with the nation’s issues and challenges,” Meehan said. “So to the extent that we aren’t responsive to issues of the moment, there’s a growing sense of frustration.”
Ed O’Keefe and Aaron C. Davis contributed to this report.
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Spate of New Gun Laws Shows Power of One-Party Control
By Ted Gest — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Crime & Justice News’ / Washington, DC
South Dakotans can now carry concealed pistols while riding their snowmobiles. And Arkansas and North Dakota residents are now free to bring their guns to church, as long as their pastors approve.
A dozen other states also have eliminated some gun restrictions this year. Four states have gone in the opposite direction, tightening their gun laws in the wake of the mass shooting last December in Newtown, Conn.
Stateline says the speedy passage of gun laws in the states reflects the fact that in many of them, one party dominates the political landscape.
Following the 2012 elections, a single party now controls both the governor's mansion and the legislature in 37 states-sometimes with a nearly unbeatable "supermajority."
The result has been a torrent of new laws related not only to guns but other issues ranging from abortion to taxes. The action in the states stands in stark contrast to the situation in Washington, where split party control has slowed gun-related legislation-and all other legislation-to a crawl.
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Drones and Law Enforcement in America: The Unmanned Police Surveillance State
By Greg Guma — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The Center for Research on Globalization’ / Montreal, Canada
The US is at the dawn of “a new era in police surveillance,” the Associated Press revealed casually last week. In a Chicago-based story about the growing use of drones and other sophisticated, unmanned aircraft for aerial surveillance, it noted that the Congressional Research Service considers their future use “bound only by human ingenuity.”The story focused on one Illinois legislator who has proposed a limit on how far law enforcement agencies can go.
But bills have been introduced in almost 40 states, and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee has two model ordinances to assist communities in the emerging movement against domestic surveillance drones. This isn’t science fiction, although the threat of an emerging Surveillance State does figure in my forthcoming novel, Dons of Time.
As I learned while researching, drones already fly pretty freely in US airspace. Law enforcement groups use them for search and rescue operations, for security along the border (mainly the one with Mexico so far), for weather research and scientific data collection. In fact, last year Congress authorized the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to open the nation’s airspace to widespread drone flights by 2015.
The FAA estimates that more than 7,000 civilian drones could be surfing the sky by 2020.
As Bill of Rights Defense Committee Executive Director Shahid Buttar explains, “Because the legal landscape governing drones is essentially barren, law enforcement agencies around the country are currently making policy to suit their interests. But we live in a constitutional Republic, meaning that We the People hold the opportunity — and responsibility — to petition our local representatives for legal protections that Congress is too timid to provide.”
In Seattle, the police department purchased two drones through a federal grant, but opted not to use them after protests in February. A bill barring Virginia law enforcement from using drones for two years passed the General Assembly months ago, but awaits a response from the governor. The National Conference of State Legislatures has heard about more than 70 bills in around 40 states that address the use of drones.
The Defense Committee’s legislative models are designed to satisfy diverse interests. One creates a drone-free zone, while another establishes strict requirements limiting their use by law enforcement agencies and other public officials. The model regulating drone use (rather than outlawing it) allows them to be used with a judicially issued warrant or for limited non-law enforcement purposes like fire detection, hazardous material response, search & rescue, and natural disasters.
Beyond constitutional concerns, proposed legislation also addresses some safety issues. According to Buttar, many of the drones currently available to law enforcement have limited flying time, can’t be flown in bad weather, must be flown in sight of an operator, and can only be used during daylight hours, “making them ill-suited to search and rescue missions and best suited for pervasive surveillance.”
On the other hand, AP points to some of the attractions driving the rush to drone use. Unmanned aircraft vary widely in size and capability. They can be as small as a bird or look like a children’s remote-controlled toy, and yet can be equipped with high-powered cameras, microphones, heat sensors, facial recognition technology or license plate readers. Similar technology has been used by the US military and CIA to track down Al-Qaida operatives abroad.
Law enforcement likes drones because they’re relatively cheap; they reportedly keep down the price by cutting fuel and maintenance costs, as well as reducing manpower. Look at it this way: A police helicopter can cost from $500,000 to $3 million, and about $400 an hour to fly. It can be “affordable” snooping for those with the means of surveillance.
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With Police in Schools, More Children in Court
By ERIK ECKHOLM — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
HOUSTON — As school districts across the country consider placing more police officers in schools, youth advocates and judges are raising alarm about what they have seen in the schools where officers are already stationed: a surge in criminal charges against children for misbehavior that many believe is better handled in the principal’s office.
Since the early 1990s, thousands of districts, often with federal subsidies, have paid local police agencies to provide armed “school resource officers” for high schools, middle schools and sometimes even elementary schools. Hundreds of additional districts, including those in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, have created police forces of their own, employing thousands of sworn officers.
Last week, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, a task force of the National Rifle Association recommended placing police officers or other armed guards in every school. The White House has proposed an increase in police officers based in schools.
The effectiveness of using police officers in schools to deter crime or the remote threat of armed intruders is unclear. The new N.R.A. report cites the example of a Mississippi assistant principal who in 1997 got a gun from his truck and disarmed a student who had killed two classmates, and another in California in which a school resource officer in 2001 wounded and arrested a student who had opened fire with a shotgun.
Yet the most striking impact of school police officers so far, critics say, has been a surge in arrests or misdemeanor charges for essentially nonviolent behavior — including scuffles, truancy and cursing at teachers — that sends children into the criminal courts.
“There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety,” said Denise C. Gottfredson, a criminologist at the University of Maryland who is an expert in school violence. “And it increases the number of minor behavior problems that are referred to the police, pushing kids into the criminal system.”
Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students are arrested or given criminal citations at schools each year. A large share are sent to court for relatively minor offenses, with black and Hispanic students and those with disabilities disproportionately affected, according to recent reports from civil rights groups, including the Advancement Project, in Washington, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York.
Such criminal charges may be most prevalent in Texas, where police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets each year, said Deborah Fowler, the deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a legal advocacy center in Austin. The students seldom get legal aid, she noted, and they may face hundreds of dollars in fines, community service and, in some cases, a lasting record that could affect applications for jobs or the military.
In February, Texas Appleseed and the Brazos County chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. filed a complaint with the federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Black students in the school district in Bryan, they noted, receive criminal misdemeanor citations at four times the rate of white students.
Featured in the complaint is De’Angelo Rollins, who was 12 and had just started at a Bryan middle school in 2010 when he and another boy scuffled and were given citations. After repeated court appearances, De’Angelo pleaded no contest, paid a fine of $69 and was sentenced to 20 hours of community service and four months’ probation.
“They said this will stay on his record unless we go back when he is 17 and get it expunged,” said his mother, Marjorie Holmon.
Federal officials have not yet acted, but the district says it is revising guidelines for citations. “Allegations of inequitable treatment of students is something the district takes very seriously,” said Sandra Farris, a spokeswoman for the Bryan schools.
While schools may bring in police officers to provide security, the officers often end up handling discipline and handing out charges of disorderly conduct or assault, said Michael Nash, the presiding judge of juvenile court in Los Angeles and the president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
“You have to differentiate the security issue and the discipline issue,” he said. “Once the kids get involved in the court system, it’s a slippery slope downhill.”
Mo Canady, the executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, defended placing police officers in schools, provided that they are properly trained. He said that the negative impacts had been exaggerated, and that when the right people were selected and schooled in adolescent psychology and mediation, both schools and communities benefited.
“The good officers recognize the difference between a scuffle and a true assault,” Mr. Canady said.
But the line is not always clear. In New York, a lawsuit against the Police Department’s School Safety Division describes several instances in which officers handcuffed and arrested children for noncriminal behavior.
Many districts are clamoring for police officers. “There’s definitely a massive trend toward increasing school resource officers, so much so that departments are having trouble buying guns and supplies,” said Michael Dorn, director of Safe Havens International, in Macon, Ga., a safety consultant to schools.
One district in Florida, Mr. Dorn said, is looking to add 130 officers, mainly to patrol its grade schools. McKinney, Tex., north of Dallas, recently placed officers in its five middle schools.
Many judges say school police officers are too quick to make arrests or write tickets.
“We are criminalizing our children for nonviolent offenses,” Wallace B. Jefferson, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, said in a speech to the Legislature in March.
School officers in Texas are authorized to issue Class C misdemeanor citations, which require students to appear before a justice of the peace or in municipal court, with public records.
The process can leave a bitter taste. Joshua, a ninth grader who lives south of Houston, got into a brief fight on a school bus in November after another boy, a security video showed, hit him first. The principal called in the school’s resident sheriff, who wrote them both up for disorderly conduct.
“I thought it was stupid,” Joshua said of the ticket and his need to miss school for two court appearances. His guardian found a free lawyer from the Earl Carl Institute, a legal aid group at Texas Southern University, and the case was eventually dismissed.
Sarah R. Guidry, the executive director of the institute, said that when students appeared in court with a lawyer, charges for minor offenses were often dismissed. But she said the courts tended to be “plea mills,” with students pleading guilty in the hope that, once they paid a fine and spent hours cleaning parks, the charges would be expunged. If students fail to show up and cases are unresolved, they may be named in arrest warrants when they turn 17.
In parts of Texas, the outcry from legal advocates is starting to make a difference. Jimmy L. Dotson, the chief of Houston’s 186-member school district force, is one of several police leaders working to redefine the role of campus officers.
Perhaps the sharpest change has come to E. L. Furr High School, which serves mainly low-income Hispanic children on the city’s east side. Bertie Simmons, 79, came out of retirement 11 years ago to try to turn around a school so blighted by gang violence that it dared not hold assemblies.
“The kids hated the school police,” said Ms. Simmons, the principal. They arrested two or three students a day and issued tickets to many more.
Ms. Simmons searched for officers who would work with the students and build trust. She found them in Danny Avalos and Craig Davis, former municipal police officers who grew up in rough neighborhoods, and after years of effort, the campus is peaceful and arrests and tickets are rare. Discipline is usually enforced by a principal’s court with student juries, not summonses to the criminal courts.
“Writing tickets is easy,” Officer Avalos said. “We do it the hard way, talking with the kids and coaching them.”
With new guidelines and training, ticketing within the Houston schools was reduced by 60 percent in one year. Citations for “disruption of classes,” for example, fell to 124 between September and February, from 927 in the same period last year.
“Our role is not to be disciplinarians,” Chief Dotson said in an interview. “Our purpose is to push these kids into college, not into the criminal justice system.”
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Arizona / ‘Sheriff Joe Arpaio’
Sheriff Arpaio: Explosive device 1 of many threats
By Unnamed Author(s) (The Associated Press) — Friday, April 12th, 2013; 11:17 a.m. EDT
PHOENIX (AP) -- Authorities are investigating what was reported to be an explosive device addressed to Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America" known for his strict treatment of jail inmates and cracking down on illegal immigration.
The device intercepted in Flagstaff late Thursday was in a package addressed to Arpaio at his downtown Phoenix office, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
It appeared suspicious, so it was X-rayed and the device was detected. A bomb squad team neutralized the explosive, the statement said.
Postal Inspector Patricia Armstrong said investigators were examining debris from the package. "We don't know if it was an actual device of some sort," she said.
Armstrong said authorities were alerted by a "very astute" carrier who observed "something suspicious" about the package when the carrier emptied a collection box in the Flagstaff area.
Flagstaff is about 140 miles north of Phoenix.
Armstrong didn't elaborate, but Tom Mangan, a spokesman in Phoenix for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said initial reports indicated that the package was a box that may have been damaged in transit and leaked gunpowder.
Arpaio said the mailing of an explosive device addressed to him comes with his line of work. He cited the recent killings of a West Virginia sheriff, Colorado's corrections director and two prosecutors in Texas.
"That's the nature of the business," he said. "I'm getting many threats. This isn't the first time."
Following the killing of a West Virginia sheriff last week, Arpaio said elected law enforcement officials across the nation seem to be targeted.
Numerous threats against Arpaio, a hero to many conservatives on immigration, prompted the need for a security detail for the lawman also known for dressing jail inmates in pink underwear and making them sleep in tents in the heat of the Arizona desert.
A campaign to recall Arpaio began just weeks after he started his sixth term in January.
Critics contend Arpaio should be ousted because his office failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sex-crimes cases, allegedly racially profiled Latinos in its trademark immigration patrols and has cost the county $25 million in legal settlements over treatment in county jails.
Arpaio has denied that his deputies racially profiled Latinos in traffic patrols targeting illegal immigration. His office has moved to clear up the sex-crime cases and moved to prevent the problem from happening again, he said.
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Immigration Enforcement / Illegal Aliens
Has SW Border Security Improved, After $106 Billion Spent in 5 Years?
By Ted Gest — Friday, April 12th, 2013 ‘The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Crime & Justice News’ / Washington, DC
The United States has spent more than $106 billion on securing and militarizing its Southwest border over the last five years. The Arizona Republic explores what the country has gained from its investment in a 650-mile iron curtain and the doubling of the number of Border Patrol agents, to 18,500.
They have erected scores of surveillance towers and planted thousands of hidden sensors. They have added an armada of drones, aircraft, canine teams, horse patrols, checkpoints and vehicle patrols that range up to 60 miles from the actual border to arrest migrants and catch drug smugglers. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the border is more secure now ever.
As the U.S. Senate begins work on a bill to overhaul immigration laws, skeptics - particularly Arizona Republicans - say any changes must be predicated on making the border still more secure, and on finding a definitive measure for when it is secure enough.
But beyond the statistics, a border picture emerges that suggests the costs of securing the border already have been extraordinarily high, not just in dollars, but in lives.
It suggests that all of this security has done little to stanch the flow of millions of pounds of drugs north - or of 250,000 guns a year and billions of dollars south.
And it suggests, as those who have studied this issue closely maintain, that locking down the entire border would be prohibitively expensive and still fail to halt drug smuggling.
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Mike Bosak
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