NYC's Transportation Authority Says It's Doesn't Use Facial Recognition Tech; Activists Say 'Prove It' With Public Records Lawsuit

from the as-evidence-of-our-claim,-we-are-withholding-all-documents dept

Like pretty much everyone else, New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is using facial recognition software. Like pretty much everyone else, it doesn't really have any success stories to share.

According to the [MTA] email, the “initial period for the proof of concept testing at the (Robert F. Kennedy Bridge connecting Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens) for facial recognition has been completed and failed with no faces (0%) being detected within acceptable parameters.”

Besides the RFK Bridge, the MTA is testing the technology at the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges, as well as at the Midtown and Hugh L. Carey tunnels.

Unceremoniously ushered to the exit by its failure to recognize faces, the pilot program was shelved until tech catches up to the MTA's surveillance desires.

But does that mean the MTA isn't utilizing the tech elsewhere? That's what New Yorkers wanted to know earlier this year, when a Twitter user noticed the little yellow squares being placed around commuters' faces as they went through the turnstiles.

In a statement given to The Verge, the MTA denied these squares signified anything.

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority has denied suggestions that it’s putting facial recognition cameras in the subway, saying that a trick designed to scare fare-dodgers was misinterpreted. “There is no capability to recognize or identify individuals and absolutely no plan” to do so with NYC subway cameras, says MTA spokesperson Maxwell Young.

It scared more than fare-dodgers. Lots of people who never dodged a fare were possibly being recorded and routed through unproven facial recognition tech. The words from MTA were reassuring but they were only words. And they came from MTA, which had already field-testing facial recognition tech elsewhere.

Beyond that, the monitors used by MTA bore the name of Wisenet, a company that is very proud of its facial recognition tech. Just saying you don't have the capability now doesn't mean you can't silently add it later without having to replace any hardware.

Since MTA has only been straightforward about its facial recognition tech use after being caught using it, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) sent a FOIL request to MTA asking for copies of any of its facial recognition tech documents. So far, MTA has refused to release anything to STOP about its Wisenet hardware and its capabilities.

It forwarded the request to New York City Transit, which has now spent nearly eight months not responding. STOP has now sued, hoping to force NYCT into action. The lawsuit [PDF] asks the court to compel production of these documents ASAP as well as make the government agencies pay STOP's expenses for having to litigate this in the first place.

If the MTA really wants to reassure New Yorkers about its facial recognition plans, it needs to release documents backing up its public statements. If it prefers commuters to continue to not trust it, it can keep doing what it's doing: stonewalling public records requests from privacy activists.

Filed Under: facial recognition, mta, nyc

'Give Til It Hurts,' Says The NYPD To City Residents While Racking Up A Half-Billion In Lawsuit Settlements In Two Years

from the $500-million;-zero-fucks dept

Time to start sending out some customer satisfaction surveys to New York City residents. After all, they're the ones paying for this. (via Boing Boing)

New York City taxpayers spent a whopping $230 million to pay off 6,472 lawsuits settled against the NYPD in the last fiscal year, according to an annual report released Monday by Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office.

The amount reflects settlements made from July 2017 through June 2018, and marks a 32% decrease from the prior year, when the city paid out $335 million for lawsuits against the police department.

This is the work of New York's Finest -- a police department that figures it's the FBI, CIA, and NSA rolled into one. When not bumptiously interloping as the East Coast wing of Team America World Police, the NYPD is busy back home violating rights and blowing off public records requests.

The department is infamous for its suspicionless surveillance of Muslims, its suspicionless searches of hundreds of thousands of young black men, and the occasional homicide.

The NYPD's spokeswoman apparently has only read the parts of the report she likes. Sgt. Jessica McRorie says the 32% reduction in claims shows the NYPD is serious about deterring officer misconduct. But the overall drop in claims is counteracted by the NYPD's 100% increase in police misconduct settlement payments over the past decade.

Roughly $108 million was related to allegations of police misconduct like false arrests and excessive force, more than doubling the $48 million paid out for such issues a decade ago.

No matter what spin is applied, the numbers speak for themselves. Since the middle of 2017, the city has paid out a half-billion dollars in settlements in lawsuits against the NYPD. The spokeswoman's cheery spin on $233 million in settlements as an indication of officers behaving $100 million better than last year doesn't say much about the force in general.

Granted, the amount of settlements will never reach $0, no matter the length of the timeline. But if the NYPD is serious about reducing misconduct and improving its relationship with the public, it can't keep allowing things like this:

[Peter] Valentin, a hard-charging Bronx narcotics detective whose online handle is "PistolPete," has been sued a stunning 28 times since 2006 on allegations of running slash-and-burn raids that left dozens of lives in ruins while resulting in few criminal convictions.

The city has paid out $884,000 to settle cases naming the stocky, 36-year-old detective, but he doesn't seem too concerned.

"I'm not aware of that," he scoffed at a Daily News reporter when told of his claim to shame. "Once it goes to court, I don't follow it."

This 2014 report showed 55 NYPD officers have been sued 10 or more times. If Valentin's shrug of indifference is indicative of the NYPD's collective mindset, lawsuits are no deterrent to misconduct. And neither are NYPD officials, even when they're claiming otherwise when issuing statements or holding press conferences. The same people who defend misconduct by saying it's just "bad apples" are the same people refusing to remove the bad apples from the barrel.

Being a repeat offender is bad news in every part of the criminal justice system except the component that initiates the process. Three strikes laws proliferate, exponentially increasing sentences for criminal violators. Meanwhile, those policing the streets are barely policed at all. Those that do manage to create enough headaches for their departments that they're terminated can usually find steady law enforcement work at another agency.

The message being sent to the public by the NYPD isn't the one its spokesperson is offering. It's actually saying it doesn't care how much of the public's money it has to spend to keep bad cops employed.

Filed Under: lawsuits, new york city, nyc, nypd, settlements, taxpayers

NYC Prosecutors Accidentally Admit They Use Bail To Deprive Presumably-Innocent People Of Their Freedom

from the gov't-getting-sick-of-whatever-justice-actually-remains-in-the-justice-syste dept

New York City's prosecutors just admitted they use the bail system to punish people for being accused of criminal acts. It's not there to serve its intended purpose: to ensure the return of charged individuals to court, where they're presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The bail system isn't supposed to keep people locked up. But that's the way it's been used for years. Prosecutors often ask for excessive bail amounts. Judges often grant them. The argument made for high bail amounts -- which ensure only the most well-to-do can remain free while awaiting trial -- is that arrested people are flight risks and/or more inherently dangerous than all the people the police haven't gotten around to arresting yet.

The stats don't back up the parade of horribles offered by prosecutors at bail hearings. People have done the math. And this excellent article by the Boston Review compiles the damning numbers.

Statistical studies have continually shown that these concerns are exaggerated; the vast majority of people who are arrested and then make bail do not commit violent crimes while their cases are pending. In fact, according to a study by New York City's Criminal Justice Agency, only 3 percent of “at risk” defendants who make bail are even arrested (let alone convicted) for a violent crime while their initial cases are pending. Similarly, a recent study by the Vera Institute of Justice tracked more than fifty people who were released from court in New York City without having to pay their entire bail—only two were rearrested on a new violent felony charge over the following year.

There goes the "public safety" argument. High bails are supposedly needed because presumptively innocent people are inveterate criminals prone to committing crime after crime until their return to court.

And here comes the "public safety" argument, inadvertently highlighting prosecutors' bail-based bullshit. Grassroot groups, led by RFK Human Rights, are posting bail for hundreds of incarcerated suspects. Money has been raised to post bail for "every woman, sixteen- and seventeen- year-old" currently housed in a NYC jail. The parade of horribles is back and it shows the government isn't interested in allowing the bail system to, you know, work.

[W]hat the reaction to the Mass Bailout shows, in stark contrast, is that the DAs use bail money for very different purposes than it was designed for. They request these bails ostensibly to ensure the accused show up to court; yet now that they are actually being posted, the DAs are crying foul and warning that freeing the accused will endanger “public safety.” They are therefore admitting what so many in affected communities already know to be true: that money bail routinely—and illegally—is set too high for poor defendants to afford, solely for the improper purpose of keeping them in jail before trial.

This isn't just bad optics by the DAs. This is also illegal. The sole purpose of bail, according to New York law, is to ensure the return of the accused to court. It cannot be used to lock accused suspects up for "public safety" reasons. But this reaction by city prosecutors makes it clear they believe they can use the system the way the law says they can't. And this reaction -- as bad and as unlawful as it is -- will probably be replicated anywhere bail relief efforts/bail reforms are deployed.

This just drives the point home that one-half of the justice system gives zero fucks about justice, due process, or any other safeguards erected against government power over the years. All they want is to lock people up and keep them locked up, even if they've never received their day in court.

Filed Under: bail, crime, new york city, nyc, prosecutors

New York City Hotels Say Obnoxious $25 'Destination Fee' 'Improves The Customer Experience'

from the that'll-work dept

Taking a page from the telecom and banking sector playbooks, New York City hotels have decided to add a $25 "destination fee" just for the honor of being able to sleep somewhere near the audio visual cacophony that is Times Square. Major hotel chains like Hilton, Marriott and Starwood are all adding the new destination fees, which aren't part of the advertised rate -- and are only added to the final tally at checkout. Said fees mirror other "resort fees" used to jack up advertised rates in other destination locations like Hawaii, the Florida coast, or Las Vegas.

In many instances, the fee is being called an "urban destination charge," and is being applied each day of a customer's stay:

"But this week, a guest booking a room at the Hilton New York was alerted as he finalised payment that a “Daily Mandatory Charge” of $25 would be added to the room rate, covering an “Urban Destination Charge”, “premium” internet access, local and freephone calls, and a total of $25 credit for food and drink in the hotel.

The credit, it turned out, is a one-off figure – though the Urban Destination Charge is due every day of the stay."

If you've paid attention to the problems in the telecom sector, you've probably realized that this is now standard industry procedure. Cable and phone companies alike often make up entirely nonsensical fees (with names like the Internet Cost Recovery fee or Broadcast TV fee) with the express goal of advertising one price, then charging another. To add insult to injury, they'll then crow about how their advertised rate has remained the same from year to year. That's been an obvious case of false advertising for going on a decade, yet legal or regulatory accountability for the misleading charges remains elusive at best.

In telecom, the FCC had made a little noise about cracking down on the misleading surcharges in the form of a "nutrition label" for broadband that would clearly disclose any caveats, but that effort appears to have stalled. In the hotel industry where competition makes such action less pressing, the FTC gave hotels a fairly tepid warning about the practice in 2012, stating that the practice of hidden fees "may be deceptive" and "may violate the law." Hints that a new FTC crackdown on the practice was coming similarly emerged last year, only to apparently disappear back into the swamp of regulatory intent and good intentions.

Just like in the telecom industry, when hotels are asked whether jacking up the advertised rate post sale could be construed as predatory and obnoxious, they'll usually trot out some rubbish about how the practice enhances the "customer experience." Take this bit of prattle from Starwood owners Marriott International, for example:

"The Destination Fee was created as a way to lift the guest experience by providing added value to a hotel stay. Each hotel may offer a combination of hotel services (such as dry-cleaning, pressing or a food & beverage credit); local experience vouchers for free/discounted events and attractions (such as city tours), and/or access to fitness programs (such as yoga or cycling) in nearby studios..."The implementation of the Destination Fee gives us the opportunity to test how a bundle of benefits that our research shows are valuable to guests might enhance the stay."

Of course that's bullshit, since not knowing what the hell you'll actually be paying for your room kind of puts a damper on the entertainment value of the whole affair, and users are usually docked these fees regardless of whether they use amenities or not. The goal again is to falsely advertise a lower rate, full stop. That may be a problem for competitors foolish enough to clearly advertise their real rates, since they superficially could appear to be a worse value. On the flip side, hitting your visitors with obnoxious, hidden fees is a wonderful way to help drive business to the share economy competitors these companies have been whining about for the better part of a decade.

Filed Under: destination fee, fees, ftc, hotels, nyc, sneaky fees, times square

New York City Council Passes Bill Making NYPD's Forfeiture Process More Transparent

from the no-more-hiding-behind-clunky-software dept

For months now, the NYPD has been arguing in court it can't possibly hand over records related to its forfeitures. The problem appears to be the NYPD itself. The department spent millions on new software specifically to track the disposition of seized items. But when faced with a public records suit by the Bronx Defenders, the NYPD claimed the software can't do the one thing it's supposed to do: track the disposition of seized items.

The NYPD provides limited reporting on forfeitures, but the numbers produced have almost zero relation to reality. According to the NYPD, it only forfeited $12,000 in cash in 2015. According to numbers obtained by the Bronx Defenders, the NYPD's forfeiture office had nearly $69 million in cash on hand when queried in 2013 -- something that would take 5,750 years to amass at the rate cited by the NYPD. Not only that, but other documents showed NYPD property clerks were processing thousands of dollars every month, totaling $6 million in forfeiture transactions in 2013 alone. It seems unlikely the NYPD's forfeitures dropped to this impossibly-low level between 2013 and 2015.

But still the NYPD insists it can't make its cradle-to-grave forfeiture-tracking system produce the stats Bronx Defenders are looking for. It needs to figure out its issues soon. The city council is calling the NYPD's bluff.

Every year the NYPD seizes millions of dollars in assets from innocent New Yorkers, who often have to fight a dizzying bureaucracy to get their property back. But today the City Council is poised to pass legislation that would make the practice vastly more transparent.

The bill, which is expected to pass this afternoon, will require the NYPD to release annual reports on how much they seize from New Yorkers during stops and arrests and through the use of civil forfeiture, and account for what happens to the assets after they’re in custody.

"This first-of-its-kind transparency bill will shed light on the reasons why the NYPD has seized someone's property, whether revenue is generated from property seizure, and if an individual has been able to get their property back," said Bronx Councilman Ritchie Torres, the bill's primary sponsor. "The legislation will help ensure that the civil forfeiture process is used legitimately.”

The bill has indeed passed and institutes new reporting requirements for the NYPD.

This bill requires the NYPD to report on an annual basis on data relating to the property and money the department obtains possession of in the course of an arrest. The bill requires the data be broken down to include the amount of money or the property obtained and retained, the reason why the property or money is being held by the department, and whether or not the rightful owners of the property or money have failed to redeem such money or property. Additionally, the bill requires the NYPD to report on any sale or disposition of money or property seized during an arrest that was retained by the Department.

This forces the NYPD to provide information proactively. It can no longer hide behind claims of faulty software or a particularly labyrinthine public records process. It won't force the NYPD to say how the money's being spent, but will at least provide more transparency and accountability. The new data should make it slightly easier to identify abuse and could assist those fighting to reclaim their property. All it needs is the governor's signature to make it official.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, forfeiture, new york, ny city, nyc, nypd, transparency

New York City Sues Verizon For Fiber Optic Bait And Switch

from the a-sucker-born-every-minute dept

For years now, we've highlighted Verizon's tendency to grab all manner of tax breaks and subsidies from a town or city -- in exchange for fiber optic upgrades that are often never delivered. All up and down the eastern seaboard, Verizon was given the keys to the kingdom in franchise and other agreements filled with loopholes that let the telco, time and time again, promise one thing, then deliver another. And because the company enjoys immense lobbying power over regional regulators and state legislatures, Verizon has never really been held accountable for this behavior.

New York City has been a particular point of contention. In 2008, former mayor Mike Bloomberg and Verizon signed (behind closed doors) a new franchise agreement promising "100% coverage" of FiOS across the city by 2014. As some local reporters had warned at the time (and were promptly ignored), the city's deal with Verizon contained all manner of loopholes allowing Verizon to wiggle over, under and around its obligations. And wiggle Verizon did; a 2015 city report found huge gaps in deployment coverage -- particularly in many of the less affluent, outer city boroughs.

New York City had long promised to sue Verizon over its failures, and this week made good on that promise. A lawsuit filed by the city (pdf) says that Verizon only ultimately reached 2.2 million out of the city's 3.3 million residences with FiOS. The city is seeking a declaration that Verizon is in breach of its deployment obligations, as well as an order to complete the project as promised. The contract required that Verizon "pass" nearby apartments and buildings with fiber. But according to the city, Verizon's definition of "pass" meant "getting the fiber line somewhere close to the building, maybe":

"Verizon's current position, as stated in correspondence and meetings with the City, is that fulfilling the "premises passed" obligation does not, with respect to a given premises, necessarily involve running fiber immediately in front of or behind the premises. Rather, Verizon has asserted, it should be deemed to have'þassed" an individual building if it has run fiber to a nearby intersection and could access the building with further deployment of fiber."

This is pretty much the standard MO for Verizon, and any city surprised by it hasn't been paying attention. In addition to the flaky definition of "passed" (long a fluctuating, morphing determination in telecom for just this purpose), Verizon's agreement contained numerous provisions allowing it to buy or wiggle its way out of deployment obligations if certain television adoption metrics weren't met. All told, countless cities have signed contracts just like this one without really reading them. They then turn around in a few years feeling swindled (like Philadelphia just did).

As such, it's not entirely clear how much luck New York City will have in the courts, but Mayor Bill De Blasio's office has apparently had enough of playing deployment patty cake with the company:

"Verizon must face the consequences for breaking the trust of 8.5 million New Yorkers. Verizon promised that every household in the city would have access to its fiber-optic FiOS service by 2014. It's 2017 and we're done waiting. No corporation - no matter how large or powerful - can break a promise to New Yorkers and get away with it."

The problem is Verizon has "gotten away with it" pretty much constantly -- across a wide swath of its territory -- with zero repercussions, for the better part of a generation. In town after town, state after state, the most "punishment" Verizon tends to see is belated, toothless public hearings that serve little purpose other than to let swindled residents vent. That's because while Verizon's known for building networks, its expertise is really legacy turf protection and lobbying, and those campaign contributions go a very, very long way.

Ideally, cities could avoid all of this by actually reading contracts before they sign them (and making negotiations public and transparent, which didn't happen in New York). On a "positive" note, now that Verizon's busy gobbling up failed 90s internet brands in an apparent quest to pivot to slinging ads at Millennials -- it has largely given up on fixed-line broadband entirely, meaning that its bunk FiOS deployment promises are also taking an extended hiatus.

Filed Under: broadband, broken promises, fiber, fiber optic, fios, new york city, nyc
Companies: verizon

NYC Kills Internet Browsing At Free WiFi Kiosks After The City's Homeless Actually Use It

from the better-neither-seen-nor-heard dept

Earlier this year, New York City undertook one of the biggest free city WiFi efforts ever conceived. Under the plan, an outfit by the name of LinkNYC is slated to install some 7,500 WiFi kiosks scattered around the five boroughs that will provide free gigabit WiFi (well, closer to 300 Mbps or so), free phone calls to anywhere in the country (via Vonage), as well as access to a device recharging station, 311, 911, 411 and city services (via an integrated Android tablet). The connectivity and services are supported by a rotating crop of ads displayed on the kiosks themselves.

The only problem? As part of the initiative, the city and LinkNYC attached an Android-powered tablet that lets anyone browse the internet for as long as they wanted. This, as you might expect, has resulted in some people camping out for long periods of time actually using the free service. That includes, unsurprisingly, New York City's ample homeless population. As Motherboard notes in a report, after spending much of August tracking usage of the kiosks, a snapshot view of daily use doesn't make for shiny marketing fodder:

"My small sample of Link users that Saturday afternoon suggests these kiosks are indeed mostly used by the city’s least privileged. Of the 15 people I saw using a Link, only two or three of them would be likely to appear on LinkNYC promotional materials (i.e., one well-dressed woman making a phone call, or one middle aged, casually-dressed tourist waiting for his phone to finish charging).

Again, this shouldn't really be surprising, especially since the city has consistently claimed that one of its goals is to close the digital divide. Since June there has also been a lot of breathless hysteria about the fact that some of the homeless users have been using the tablets to watch porn. In response, LinkNYC began implementing internet filters that, as internet filters tend to do, didn't seem to work.

Responding to public complaints, LinkNYC announced this week that it would be discontinuing tablet browsing functionality at the kiosks:

"...Some users have been monopolizing the Link tablets and using them inappropriately, preventing others from being able to use them while frustrating the residents and businesses around them. The kiosks were never intended for anyone’s extended, personal use and we want to ensure that Links are accessible and a welcome addition to New York City neighborhoods.

The announcement notes that the internet browsing will be disabled, but other services will still work:

"Starting today, we will be removing web browsing on all Link tablets while we work with the City and community to explore potential solutions, like time limits. Other tablet features—free phone calls, maps, device charging, and access to 311 and 911—will continue to work as they did before, and nothing is changing about LinkNYC’s superfast Wi-Fi. As planned, we will continue to improve the Link experience and add new features for people to enjoy while they’re on the go."

While countless news stories suggest that the move was primarily in response to overwhelming porn consumption, there's no real evidence that this was an epidemic of any real scale. While there have certainly been documented instances of public masterbation at the kiosks (this is NYC after all, and occasionally viewing a homeless person's gentials is not a new concept), LinkNYC has suggested that people camping out around the kiosks (sometimes bringing chairs, couches and crates with them) was the larger source of complaints by locals.

The real problem appears to be that the service put the city's homeless population on stark display, making them more difficult for city residents to ignore. On one hand it's understandable that homeless populations camping around the kiosks isn't great "optics" or olfactory ambiance for the city and local business owners, but at the same time it's not clear what one expects to happen when you provide the city's 60,000 homeless residents with free access to technology they otherwise lack access to. LinkNYC says it's working with the city on a solution, and may restore public browsing at a later date with tougher filters and access limitations in place. Given the fact that filters historically don't work, it seems more likely that the free browsing will be gone for good.

Filed Under: homeless, kiosks, new york city, nyc, porn, wifi

New York City Threatens To Sue Verizon For Failure To Meet Fiber Deployment Promises

from the fool-me-twice dept

We've noted for years now how Verizon's modus operandi is to promise uniform fiber deployment to a city or state in exchange for all manner of subsidies and tax breaks, then walk away giggling to itself with the job only partially complete. This story has played out time and time again thanks to city and state contracts struck behind closed doors without public transparency, allowing Verizon to bury numerous loopholes in the contract language. Other times, Verizon can lobby to weaken oversight so that there's simply nobody left to hold Verizon accountable when it decides to laugh off the contract requirements.

In 2008, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg struck a closed-door deal with Verizon delivering all manner of tax breaks and incentives in exchange for what the city thought would be 100% deployment of Verizon's FiOS fiber optic service by 2014. Fast forward to last year, when the new city administration realized that Verizon had absolutely no intention of seriously deploying fiber uniformly across the city. This week, the city released the results of a survey it conducted that found that fiber is unsurprisingly still hard to come by:

"The city recently sampled 52,000 addresses for Fios availability, and found that outer boroughs were more likely to have access than Manhattan. For instance, 90% of Staten Island residents could likely get Fios within seven days, while the same is true for just 19% of people in central Brooklyn and 11% in upper Manhattan. About two-thirds of the more than 300 public-housing developments, which are home to more than 400,000 people, have no access to Fios, the city says.

Meanwhile, a letter from the city to the telco (pdf) complains that Verizon is in violation of at least three parts of the original agreement, failed repeatedly to deliver documentation requested during an audit of Verizon's progress, and cites at least 38,551 addresses where Verizon failed to deliver service despite order requests that are more than a year old.

Verizon, as it is wont to do, tries to spin the narrative on its head by claiming that New York City is being "adversarial":

"It is unfortunate and disappointing that the City is taking an adversarial approach to the only company that has challenged New York City’s cable monopolies,” Mr. McConville said. "The City should be working with Verizon to make choice available to more residents, not discouraging competition.”

Except Cities have every right to be adversarial with a company that has shown repeatedly that it doesn't deliver on its promises. Verizon has tried to claim that grumpy landlords are to blame for its failure to deliver FiOS evenly across the city. And while landlords can play a role in delaying some installations, reporters have subsequently discovered that the excuse just doesn't hold water and Verizon's simply not doing the work.

While it was a contract signed under a previous administration, New York City isn't blameless. Reporters at the time pointed out that the city's contract had ample loopholes and should have been negotiated in the full light of public transparency, but nobody listened. So while New York City says it's mulling a lawsuit against Verizon, that suit may run repeatedly into contract caveats carefully crafted by a company that never had any intention of uniform fiber deployment. The contract reflected this had anybody actually bothered to read it.

The amusing (or annoying) thing is that cities keep making the same deals with the proverbial devil over and over again. Philadelphia recently complained that Verizon failed to meet its obligations there as well. And While Verizon's overall FiOS deployment has been frozen, the city just struck a similar deal with Boston -- with few if any in the press bothering to note the tail of frustration and broken promises trailing miles behind the telco and its lawyers.

Filed Under: fiber, fios, nyc, promises
Companies: verizon

NY Daily News Admits It Got It All Wrong When Declaring Crime Increases Would Follow Stop-And-Frisk Decision

from the nice-to-see dept

When federal judge Shira Scheindlin ordered a number of stop-and-frisk reforms three years ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Chief Ray Kelly both predicted a drop in unconstitutional stops would result in a dramatic rise in criminal activity.

Bloomberg:

We, unlike many countries, want to keep all of our citizens safe, and keep the crime rate down and make sure that they get home and go to court and protect themselves -- unlike other countries in the world.

[...]

I wouldn't want to be responsible for a lot of people dying.

Kelly:

[N]o question about it —violent crime will go up…

The New York Daily News often provided a platform for NYPD officials who were quick to blame any increase in crime on the decline in stops.

“We’re struggling with homicides and shootings,” NYPD Chief of Department James O’Neill said Monday. “As we expect when warm weather comes, we see an increase in certain crimes.”

O’Neill laid out the grim numbers during a press conference at 1 Police Plaza, revealing a 19.5% spike in homicides during the first five months of the year. There were 135 murders through Sunday compared to 113 at the same time last year.

But…

Despite the increase in shootings and homicides, overall crime was down 6.6% through Sunday compared with the same period last year.

More NYPD opinions:

[S]ome officers believe the jump in killings can be linked to the NYPD’s new restrictions on stop-and-frisk.

“It’s because they changed the stop-and-frisk criteria,” one high-ranking police source told The News. “Before I would have said, ‘This guy right here by the way he’s adjusting his pants and moving around I would stop him.’ Now that’s not enough to stop a person so these guys get away with a gun.”

Tempered with reality:

While murders and shootings have increased, overall crime in the city is down by 10%, statistics show.

It's one thing to report on the NYPD's dissatisfaction with the new, court-ordered status quo. It's quite another to make it the publication's official stance. This is exactly what the New York Daily News did after Judge Scheindlin's order was handed down.

By imposing a monitor on the NYPD, she has rushed headlong into commandeering how the department polices the city with, she admitted, no concern about endangering life and limb.

Make no mistake — Scheindlin has put New York directly in harm’s way with a ruling that threatens to push the city back toward the ravages of lawlessness and bloodshed.

Most publications would simply let their bad judgment call recede into the past without comment, even after their assertions have been proven wrong. The NY Daily News should be commended for not only admitting its mistake, but publishing an entire editorial detailing just how wrong it was.

As many readers will know, the Daily News Editorial Board supported the NYPD’s strategy as essential to public safety. We also expressed fear that forcing the department to pull back could seriously harm public safety.

[...]

In other pieces, we predicted a rising body count from an increase in murders.

We are delighted to say that we were wrong.

The NYPD began scaling back stops under Kelly before Scheindlin’s decision and accelerated the trend under Commissioner Bill Bratton. As a result, the number of stops reported by cops fell 97% from a high of 685,700 in 2011 to 22,900 in 2015.

Not only did crime fail to rise, New York hit record lows.

The murder count stood at 536 in 2010 and at 352 last year — and seems sure to drop further this year. There were 1,471 shooting incidents in 2010 (1,773 victims). By 2015, shootings had dropped to 1,130 (1, 339 victims).

The NY Daily News should be praised for this editorial... but not too effusively. There's still quite a bit of hedging in its blown call admission. The Scheindlin decision somehow remains "flawed," despite its largest supposed flaw ("crime will rise!") being nonexistent. The editorial also hands the NYPD almost all of the credit for the continued decrease in crime, even though it was the NYPD itself that claimed that a transformed stop-and-frisk program would result in a new wave of criminal terror sweeping New York.

Regardless, there can be little doubt that the NYPD’s increasing reliance on so-called precision policing — knowing whom to target, when and where — has played a key role.

Maybe. Maybe not. The NY Daily News has no way of determining this. It admits that "explaining crime trends is extraordinarily difficult" while in the same breath (so to speak) hands credit to the NYPD for the continued drop in crime rates.

But it is something rarely seen: a publication that often seems to act as an unofficial mouthpiece for the NYPD admitting it didn't know what it was talking about when it parroted Mayor Bloomberg's and Chief Ray Kelly's hyperbole following the Scheindlin decision.

Filed Under: crime, nyc, stop and frisk
Companies: ny daily news

NYPD Dodges Another Legislative Attempt To Inject Accountability And Transparency Into Its Daily Work

from the the-teflon-army dept

Law enforcement officers are pretty used to being able to stop nearly anyone and demand to know who they are and what they're doing. Sure, there are plenty of laws that say they can't actually do that, but the public is generally underinformed about their rights, and this works in cops' favor. As a recent Appeals Court decision pointed out, citizens are "free to refuse to cooperate with police before a seizure."

Obviously, this perfectly legal act of noncompliance just won't do, and it certainly won't be cops pointing out to citizens the rights they have available to them. New York City legislators thought they could force this transparency on the NYPD.

The bills, known as the Right to Know Act, require officers to identify and explain themselves when they stop people, and to make sure people know when they can refuse to be searched. These are timely, sensible ideas, echoing recommendations made by President Obama’s task force on 21st-century policing. Though the Right to Know Act has been bottled up in the Council for two years, it has broad support among Council members and community organizations, and sponsors say it would pass easily if it ever came to a vote.

It may have "broad support," but it didn't have support where it counts. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton expressed his displeasure with the idea of his officers having to respect the rights of citizens.

Mr. Bratton has denounced the Right to Know Act as an “unprecedented” intrusion into his domain.

As Scott Greenfield points out, Bratton could have dialed back his righteous indignation and applied these changes on his own.

Of course, there is nothing to prevent New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton from telling his cops to do this anyway. But he didn’t. He won’t. It’s not as if he serves at the pleasure of New York’s most progressive mayor ever. But the big issue for Bratton isn’t that the ideas incorporated in the law are so dangerous and counterproductive, but cops just don’t like being told what they have to do.

"Broad support." "Would pass easily." None of this matters. The person in charge of routing pending legislation made this decision for the rest of the legislators who support the bill in its unaltered form.

But there has been no vote. The Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, essentially derailed it this month. She told members that she had quietly struck a compromise with the Police Department to adopt some, but not all, of the act’s reforms administratively. Under the deal, officers who want to search people but have no legal basis to stop them must ask permission and wait to hear “yes” or “no.” They have to explain that a person can refuse to be searched, and give a business card to people who are searched or stopped at a checkpoint or to anyone who asks.

Waiting for the NYPD to "adopt" reforms is like waiting to adopt a child. Days become weeks become months become years. Three years after Judge Shira Scheindlin ordered the NYPD to alter its unconstitutional stop-and-frisk program, officers still weren't fully informed of the new guidelines. The NYPD's "quiet adoption" of the agreement is more in line with dumping it into a foster home run by negligent caretakers.

The government has long depended on the ignorance of the citizens to maintain control. The killing of this legislation -- and Bratton's agreement to make it watered-down internal policy rather than actual law -- is more of the same. The less the public knows about what the police can or cannot demand from them, the more often this ignorance will be exploited by people with power.

Filed Under: bill bratton, nyc, nypd, right to know, transparency