NYPD Officers Are Again Whining About Being Asked To Document Their Biased Policework
from the cry-harder,-cop dept
The New York Police Department is complaining about having to do work again. The New York Post reports officers are unhappy that they're required to do a little bit more paperwork for every stop, regardless of whether the stop results in a citation or arrest.
NYPD cops will soon have to start recording the race, gender and age of every person they pull over during a vehicle stop — even cyclists, The Post has learned.
From Jan. 1, officers will be required to fill out a new form that notes the demographics of the person driving the vehicle or bike, and whether any police action was taken against them, according to an internal order obtained by The Post.
The forms have to be filled out even if no law enforcement action is taken.
This is nothing more than the logical next step for a department that has repeatedly shown it engages in biased policing. Years of lawsuits over its stop-and-frisk program resulted in a court-ordered mandate to collect demographic information on stop-and-frisk encounters. The NYPD complained about the extra work when this was ordered in 2013. Then it spent the next half-decade refusing to comply with it.
Another mandate followed, demanding the collection of information on all stops, which would seemingly include any stop, even those not conducted on foot. The NYPD wasn't any happier with the new mandate and one of its unions claimed that recording demographic information would result in fewer stops and less policing.
That attitude remains unchanged three years later. The NYPD has been given another mandate and officers are once again claiming they're just not going to do it. Their rationale for failing to comply with direct orders? People might find out NYPD officers are engaged in biased policing.
But an NYPD officer with more than two decades on the job said it is just a “recipe for disaster.”
“As an officer, I’m definitely going to think twice about pulling anyone over. That’s the first thing they’re going to look at how many black and Hispanic people you pulled over,” the cop said.
The officer added that some cops were already hesitant to stop people — and the additional paperwork would just deter them even more.
The PR spin by the NYPD implies something different than the opinions offered by the rank-and-file:
“We are complying with the requirements of Local Law 45 of 2021,” an NYPD spokesman said.
But it's not a complete rebuttal. It is possible to comply with the requirements while also engaging in fewer stops of drivers and bicyclists. It sets the stage for the NYPD to blame any rise in crime rates on demographic tracking requirements, rather than step up and discipline officers for refusing to comply with the order or do their jobs. Chances are good no officers will be punished for refusing to do either of these things.
And, once again, a police union is there to blame everything on everyone else, rather than suggest officers do their best to comply with the mandate. Here's Police Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch, railing against everyone else who isn't a cop refusing to their job.
“They passed bill after bill to further the anti-police narrative, but did absolutely nothing to help us curb the bloodshed in our neighborhoods,” he said. “The incoming Council needs to refocus their priorities. Instead of new paperwork, we need meaningful support to get violent criminals off the street.”
I'm not sure what the NYPD is incapable of accomplishing with a $10 billion annual budget, but city officials have agreed to a $465 million increase for 2022. That suggests there's at least a half-billion in "meaningful support" headed its way and that the city council isn't just engaging in an anti-cop narrative. This just sounds like cops who don't want the public to be better informed about how this $10 billion/year is being spent.
If cops are afraid of engaging in any policing because of a fear of it being interpreted as biased policing, perhaps they should direct their anger at the decades of biased policing that led to these mandates. The culture of the department could have been changed at any time. Instead it took court orders and new laws to force the NYPD to confront its own racism. Now that it has to, officers are deciding they'd rather not be forced to look in the mirror.
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Filed Under: bias, nypd, police, racism, transparency
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Saying the quiet part out loud has become something of a (second) badge of “honor” for racist cops these days, huh.
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'What do you mean all of us are fired?!'
“The incoming Council needs to refocus their priorities. Instead of new paperwork, we need meaningful support to get violent criminals off the street.”
Another case of being right but not in the way they think they are.
You gotta love the own-goal of the objection too. It's not just whining that they might have to do some work when they're harassing people but arguing that recording who they are stopping is 'anti-police' makes it pretty clear that even they know those statistics would not leave them looking good and that perhaps certain demographics might be a bit over-represented in the numbers.
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Isn't that what racist cops already look for in each other? How many minorities they've managed to inconvenience?
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basically an admission of racist policing
Translation: I decide whom to pull over based solely on that person's skin color. I believe that my behavior will be exposed if I use this system and continue my racist policing practices.
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Re: basically an admission of racist policing
"Translation: I decide whom to pull over based solely on that person's skin color. I believe that my behavior will be exposed if I use this system and continue my racist policing practices."
Random Not-A-Racist-But: "I can't help it if black and latinos are more often criminals than white folks."
Me: "assuming that's true why do you think that is so?"
Random Not-A-Racist-But: "They live in ghettos and they're poor. Criminal life comes naturally to them."
Me: "So why are they poor and live in ghettos?"
Random Not-A-Racist-But: "Because they're too lazy. It's just how they are."
Me: "Uh-huh. So basically you assume they are inherently lesser as a people?"
Random Not-A-Racist-But: "Don't you call me a god damn racist, asshole!!"
The lack of self-awareness of the average racist is staggeringly lacking - and when you hold a mirror up to them rather than reflect they throw a tantrum and try to blame their own shitty values on everyone else.
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'Circular argument? Don't you use those fancy words at me!'
Also Totally-Not-A-Racist-But: "Of course blacks and latinos are more likely to be criminals, just look at how often they're arrested! And of course they're more likely to be arrested, their criminal ways means they need to be carefully watched and any infraction, no matter how seemingly minor, needs to be shut down immediately to head off more serious crimes that they'd surely engage in otherwise what with their criminal inclinations!"
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How does that saying go again?
They fear to come into the light for their deeds are wicked;
huh.
Nothing new, just different shade of lipstick.(@TC callback ;)
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Nothing to see
And now they'll just lie and put down whatever race they want to. The police unions will protect them from consequences as usual.
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'No. Now what are you going to do about it?'
Or just continue to tell the city to get bent as they've been doing so far, I mean it's not like they're facing any consequences for ignoring past legal requirements so why would they expect that to change for ignoring this one?
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Re: 'No. Now what are you going to do about it?'
NYC needs an actual stick here. Maybe the city should make this reporting a performance metric for annual reviews and pay increases.
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Re: Re: 'No. Now what are you going to do about it?'
Sumagi just below pretty much nailed my response to that, if they are forced to write up the forms you can be sure that by a mysterious quirk of fate it will turn out that on paper at least they're interacting with a lot of white people all of a sudden and who is anyone else to say otherwise?
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Re: Nothing to see
They'll do more than that. Here's the mindset: "Oh, so you want us to do more police work, like stop people on the street or in cars? OK, we can handle that. And while we're at it, we'll fill out those forms for you as well."
Then the po-po will simply make up alleged stops whereby "no law enforcement action was taken", but you can bet your last dollar that the race listed on the form for that made-up stop will be "White".
And voila, two problems solved with one stroke. Thus allowing the racists to continue their w̶o̶r̶k̶ harassment of the citizenry unlucky enough to be born non-white.
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Re: Re: Nothing to see
This. Ask any former or current military servicemember how Malicious Compliance works and you'll see where this is headed.
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Just use the PETS system
I'm quite surprised that they haven't come up with a better excuse, er explanation, for why the NYPD doesn't have this data that they have been mandated to collect several times, they have one ready made. They can just say that they put that info in the same system, or one just like the one they use to track all evidence collected during investigations. But, as is the case when asked to give a report on how much the department stole, er, well there is no other word, so stole from the public under the heading "asset forfeiture", that such queries cannot be conducted because they entire multi-million dollar system would simply freeze up. Geeze, this one was easy peasy.
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Or costly data entry
They could also go the way of untested rape kits, that collecting all that "paperwork", organizing, entering the information into a database is just too expensive. Plus, we can't expect cops to accurately record someone's race or sex, they don't know anything. And the people they ask those details of could be unsure themselves, or even lying, claiming to be a minority as part of the grand anti police plot. Plus, there's so many of those completed demographics reports sitting in a closet some where that there is no way they could possibly catch up now.
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Furtive movements
They tried to collect this data. But the forms were an aggressive shade, with a suspicious looking font that experience and knowledge has taught officers that it is strongly associated with gangs, like the NYTimes Journalist. The forms were perforated in the middle, with arrows pointing at the "waistline". Fearing for their lives & the lives of the people around them, all of the forms and their dogs were shot within 48 hours of introducing them to these heroic defenders of freedom. Duh!
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How will they establish what to fill in on that form. It isn't true that you can simply establish the fictional concept that "race" is in the US by just looking at a person. Under the racist "one drop of blood" theory, even somebody with a lily-white skin can be considered "black". For me the only viable way to establish "race" is by asking the person in question. In that case I would answer something completely ridiculous, like "Klingon" or "Ferengi", depending on my mood (realizing that many alien species in Star Trek carry somewhat modified names of South-East Asian peoples, and Farang is actually a Thai word for white people, while Kling or Keling is a SEA term for Indian).
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Re:
I don't think scientific accuracy (as in lineage from Africa established through DNA) is the intent of the question of race (or genetic makeup determining biological sex) but rather what race the officer perceived the person to be based on appearance and whatever other observed circumstances lead the officer to make that determination (from where the stop occurs, to who else is around, to what crime they are investigating).
True, race is a social construct, and not a difference in our humanity. It's a social construct that has been used to determine who has what rights, who can live where, who can marry each other, where someone can get an education, where they can sit, drink water, go swimming, own property, if they can get a loan.
Gender is also a social construct, and also used for control of certain people. These are concepts designed to maintain "respectable" (as in not poor, not sissy Nancy boys; only masculine heterosexual, able-bodied middle class or better) white men's privilege and power. When you understand where these little boxes of classification came from, then much of the current dysfunction in policing (and politics) becomes evident.
So how nice for you that you could probably get away with some cutesy answer to a cop's question of your race like Klingon (so long as you don't appear to be very poor). But for a significant amount of the rest of us, that ain't gonna get us a chuckle, it's going prolong detainment and maybe even result in arrest.
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Re: Re:
"True, race is a social construct, and not a difference in our humanity."
Hmm...not quite. Genetic markers do exist which categorize ethnic background. A few of whom point to environmental adaptation bringing a few characteristic appearance factors to the surface. Its just that none of those differences make any difference in the humanity of the person bearing them, because being better adapted to heat, cold, or UV radiation says nothing about your quality as a person.
The issue is that a lot of people are still stuck in tribalism and all too eager to look down on what they perceive as different. Visible aspects of ethnicity, behavior, culture, sexuality, gender, religion...all of these are will serve well as a ready excuse for the bigot.
Race isn't the social construct. The determination of worth is.
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Re:
I'm sorry if that came across as harsh, you probably were just kidding around. There are some people, mostly white, that try to claim that we are all part of the human race, therefore race is not real and there is no such thing as racism. While there was a time that townspeople could track an interracial bloodline and use it to deny ancestors whatever they didn't want them to have, there are far too many people for even nosiest of busybodies to keep track of.
Besides, I hadn't even thought of the frustration a cop might have in stopping a token white person to prove how not racist he does his job, only to be given a race that will still count as a minority.
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Until you reform the Police Acadamies this won't stop
Once again I will encourage readers to read this Reddit post if they haven't already (I did not write the post, was just very disturbed by it):
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/rxny2u/the_police_will_never_change_in_america_my/
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