Petulant Billionaire NY Mayor Continues To Insist He's Never Wrong; Sues City Council Over Stop-And-Frisk Legislation

from the it's-my-way-or-IT'S-MY-WAY,-dammit! dept

Maybe billionaires are just used to getting their way. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has seen his and Kelly's precious stop-and-frisk program declared unconstitutional by a federal court and face additional curbs via legislation passed by the New York City Council with a veto-proof vote. (Not that it stopped him from threatening those who voted for it… and vetoing them on sheer principle.)

Despite the number of legal attacks on the program, Bloomberg still feels its an unassailable part of modern policing. And as the opposition has continued to mount, Bloomberg's defensive actions and statements have taken on a degree of stubborn petulance. Everyone's wrong but him and his personal army.

At this point, Bloomberg is running short of toys to throw out of his well-appointed crib. However, he still has a few left to hurl at his opponents, and this latest salvo pretty much erases any emaciated notions that Bloomberg cares about New Yorkers more than he cares about being "right."

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg sued the City Council Tuesday in a bid to overturn a law that aims to curb the police department's use of its controversial stop-and-frisk policy.

The council's votes came less than two weeks after a federal judge ruled unconstitutional the department's stop-and-frisk policy, in which officers stop people in high-crime areas suspected of engaging in criminal activity. The policy was thrown out on the grounds that it disproportionately targets minorities.

The council reaffirmed their passage of the measure 10 days ago, along with another bill creating an independent watchdog to monitor the New York Police Department, overriding the mayor's veto, despite his warnings that the legislation would threaten public safety.

For a man who constantly claims his first concern is public safety when defending stop-and-frisk, he sure doesn't seem to care much for them otherwise. Bloomberg gives every appearance that he believes he owns the city he's supposed to be serving -- and that what he says goes, no matter how many people object.

By filing this lawsuit, he's basically attacking the city's own governing body (another set of servants who represent the public) for daring to undercut his decrees. The suit's success rests on an assertion Bloomberg certainly finds appealing -- that state criminal procedure laws trump a city's attempt to undercut his unconstitutional program.

The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, asserted the bill was invalid because it is superseded by the state's criminal procedure law, or CPL, which governs the standards and procedures that police officers must follow.

"The CPL preempts the field of criminal procedure legislation and prevents local legislatures, including the council, from passing local laws in this area," the lawsuit said.

This is a very interesting tactic. Well, "interesting" isn't really the best word. Perhaps "disingenuous" or "hypocritical" or "transparently self-serving" would be better substitutes. Whether or not the mayor's legal argument has any weight remains to be seen but, in plain English, using the mayor's own assertions, this is what he's arguing.

The city council cannot pass local laws that address areas covered by state criminal procedure laws -- and he's using this argument to defend a local program. Stop-and-frisk is not used statewide. It is solely a NYPD program. If that's the case, it could reasonably be argued that the city council does indeed have the power to pass laws affecting purely local police programs, such as stop-and-frisk.

But as the city's counsel states here, Bloomberg can make a pretty strong case otherwise:

Michael Cardozo, the city's top lawyer, said in a statement that the lawsuit was necessary to ensure the council did not overstep its authority.

"Local legislative bodies should not be passing laws affecting the regulation of law enforcement activity in this way," he said. "This is a matter governed by the state legislature."

Cardozo calls the council's bill "regulation of law enforcement activity." Utilizing this broad term, the council would be overstepping its limits.The way the council's legislation is written doesn't specifically target the program itself, but rather the methods deployed for the stops and searches, and even those aren't addressed directly. It's more of a tangential approach that broadens the recourse options for citizens who feel they've been unfairly treated by these tactics.

Bloomberg is likely relying on the inherent vagueness of the council's legislation to work against it in this lawsuit, a vagueness that was likely intentional as the broader wording helped trim down the number of potential loopholes the NYPD could exploit in order to escape filed lawsuits.

If this lawsuit goes Bloomberg's way, it hardly looks like the end of the attacks on stop-and-frisk, but it does perhaps signal the end of its rigorous defense from the mayor's office. Two mayoral candidates have stated their displeasure with the program.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a leading Democratic mayoral candidate:

"Mayor Bloomberg can sue all he wants, but at the end of the day, we will successfully beat back this ill-advised litigation and ensure the prerogative of the city council to reform stop & frisk..."

Bill de Blasio, another Democratic frontrunner stated that "racial profiling is not good policing," adding later that, "we will not continue stop-and-frisk the way Ray Kelly's had it."

Bloomberg's third and final term ends this year but it appears he's going to do everything he can before then to ensure his legacy of unconstitutional stops lives on.

Filed Under: city council, michael bloomberg, nyc, nypd, ray kelly, stop and frisk

Mayor Bloomberg Loves Security Cameras Everywhere... Until His Police Are Ordered To Wear Them

from the gobsmackingly-awful dept

Lawyers representing the city of New York have filed a request for a stay of Judge Scheindlin's decision and court order pending appeal. Scheindlin found components of the NYPD's stop and frisk unconstitutional in her decision and ordered several remedies, including the installation of independent oversight, changes to the UF250 (stop and frisk) form, an overhaul of the stop and frisk program itself and mandatory lapel cameras for police officers.

The six-page filing delivers pretty much the same talking points Bloomberg and Kelly have deployed since day one: stop and frisk lowers the crime rate, minorities will be hurt if it goes away, even the tiniest bit of disruption or oversight will throw 35,000 NYPD officers into complete disarray, etc.

The letter projects a certain confidence that Scheindlin has completely blown this decision. One would think projecting a little contrition would go over better, but experience has shown that Bloomberg (especially) and Kelly aren't much for contrition.

First, defendants have a substantial likelihood of success on appeal. Defendants contend, inter alia, that: (l) the District Court erred in finding violations under the Fourth Amendment; (2) the District Court erred in finding violations in Floyd under the Fourteenth Amendment; and (3) the District Court erred in finding any actionable widespread pattern or practice, deliberate indifference or causation under Monell v, Dep't of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S 658 (1978). Finally, the injunctive relief ordered in Floyd, is not narrowly tailored or clear enough to address found wrongs, particularly as it has no discernible end point or standards.to measure success.

So, that's the opening salvo. From that point on, the arguments for the stay are based on the assumption that the city's appeal will overturn the decision. A portion of the "irreparable harm" stems from the fact that the NYPD will be forced to train its officers not to violate constitutional rights and, if the decision is reversed, retrain them to go back to violating constitutional rights. It would seem that officers, especially long-term ones, would easily lapse back into the old ways, but that's the argument.

[N]ot only will defendants be harmed by having to train on what they believe are errors of law, should defendants later prevail on the appeal, the officers will have to be retrained again, undoubtedly leading to severe and possibly irreparable disruption and confusion among the rank and file. Similar issues arise with regard to changes in monitoring, supervision, discipline and changing the UF250 form, as they are premised on the same errors of law.

Obviously, this is an insurmountable hurdle. With a bit more foresight, the city might realize that these issues with the stop and frisk program aren't just going to go away, even if this decision is overturned. There's something seriously wrong with the way the program is handled, and the NYPD is still going to be facing a lot of litigation in the forseeable future.

Whatever the expenses of retraining (and possibly "re-retraining" back to the old way), they should be easily outweighed by the department paying out fewer settlements to abused citizens. New York spent over $700 million on settlements in the last year alone, which covered suits claiming negligence, police abuse and property damage. It expects that total to rise to over $800 million per year by 2016. If following the orders results in only a 10% drop in settlements, that gives the city between $70-80 million to work with.

Keep that number in mind as we dig into a longer chunk of the city's "irreparable damage" narrative.

[T]he public interest at stake in staying the Remedies Order is no less than the creation of an environment that may stem and reverse the long-standing record of crime reduction in this city, As that crime reduction has been most heavily felt in minority communities, it is those communities that will suffer the most.

Here we have the "minorities will be hurt" argument. More debunking of that one is available here. And to address those who will show up and claim (as Bloomberg himself has) that the NYPD's targeting of minorities tracks with murders by racial makeup, here's why that argument is wrong.

Minorities may commit 88.5% of the murders in New York and stop and frisk, over the past decade, has stopped minorities 88% of the time. That may seem like it's tracking almost perfectly. But stop and frisk doesn't utilize probable cause or reasonable suspicion and does not target only suspected murders. To use this logic to claim minorities are not being unfairly targeted is to claim "88% of murderers" and "88% of the general public" is the same number. It isn't. Stop and frisk targets anybody, but especially "anybodies" who aren't Caucasian, plain and simple. To believe that curbing stop and frisk will "hurt minorities" is to believe that 88% of all minority New Yorkers are murderers.

Finally, the cost to the taxpayers to implement the open-ended and broad-sweeping Remedies Order is against the public interest when the liability foundation for the reforms has not been tested, when body cameras (and their concomitant logistics, like storage, retrieval, etc.) have never been used on as a large a scale as contemplated by the Remedies Order, and when no end date or monetary limit of any kind has been established for the Monitor - and the personnel he is permitted to hire, including experts. Moreover, should the City ultimately prevail on appeal, those scarce public funds will have been expended to no purpose.

Here's where the $700-800 million a year in settlements comes back into play. The cost associated with the Monitor and related personnel is likely minimal as compared to damages paid. But the argument about costs related to cameras is treated like it's an unknowable (but presumably incredibly large) expense.

First of all, the cameras are not being deployed on as large a scale as the filing makes it sound. Scheindlin's orders specify a rather narrow range of officers:

I am ordering the NYPD to institute a pilot project in which bodyworn cameras will be worn for a one-year period by officers on patrol in one precinct per borough -- specifically the precinct with the highest number of stops during 2012.

This means five to seven (Brooklyn and Queens are split into North and South divisions) total precincts will use cameras. There are 34,500 uniformed officers in the NYPD at last count. Using even the friendliest math (five boroughs) brings us to 6,900 officers per borough. There are 77 precincts in New York City, which gives us roughly 90 450 officers per precinct. We'll round up because we can likely assume precincts with the most stops also contain the most officers. We'll give these precincts a generous 120 500 officers. 120 500 officers, 5 boroughs = ~600 ~2,500 officers needing cameras.

A Wall Street Journal article on the subject of police cameras quotes Fort Worth, Texas' investment as $85,000 for 50 cameras and storage, or $1,700 per camera. If we assume every officer gets one and no one shares, we end up with a total investment of $1,020,000 4,250,000*. Compare that to $700-800 million in settlements, or the estimated $70-80 million saved by a 10% reduction in litigation due to officer body cams. That's not a prohibitive expense, especially when other departments utilizing these cameras have seen dramatic dropoffs in both excessive force incidents and citizen complaints.

*[Math: how the f**k does it work? Thanks to Jake and John Fenderson for correcting my mangled math in the comment thread below.]

But all of the city's lousy arguments pale in comparison to this statement, which is breathtakingly audacious considering the on-record statements of both Bloomberg and Chief Kelly.

Finally, implementing a body camera pilot project itself poses significant harm in terms of time, resources and possible impingement on privacy rights of the public.

The "privacy rights of the public?" The city is suddenly concerned about that? From what I can tell, this is a newfound concern that emerged only after Judge Schiendlin ordered cameras to be worn by officers. At no point in the past have either Bloomberg or Kelly ever expressed any concern about the public's privacy.

Here's Chief Kelly, shortly after the Boston Bombing.

“I'm a major proponent of cameras,” Kelly said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “I think the privacy issue has really been taken off the table.”

“The people who complain about it, I would say, are a relatively small number of folks, because the genie is out of the bottle,” Kelly said. “People realize that everywhere you go now, your picture is taken.”

Oh, I see. Privacy is "taken off the table" for citizens if the camera is anywhere else but on the lapel of a cop's uniform. "Everywhere" only means places cops aren't wearing cameras. Now, suddenly, there's a privacy concern because, and only because, a cop might find himself creating some damning footage. Screw Kelly. If privacy's "off the table," it's off the table for EVERYONE.

In 2010, the NYPD had only 500 cameras up-and-running. In its quest to turn New York into the next "Ring of Steel," the department upped that to nearly 3,000 cameras by the end of 2011. Kelly loves cameras. But not on his guys.

Bloomberg is the same. Here's his post-Boston Bombing pull quote.

The Boston bombing is a terrible reminder of why we've made these investments—including camera technology that could help us deter an attack, or investigate and apprehend those involved," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this past week. He added the network now has the ability to "alert police to abnormalities it detects on the street, such as an abandoned package that is left on a corner."

Bloomberg will throw money at cameras, privacy be damned. But he's suddenly worried about privacy and costs if any of the cameras are to be worn by police.

And let's not forget that back in 2007, Bloomberg was so "concerned" about New Yorkers' privacy that he proposed a city wide program to allow citizens to shoot video and photos of perceived criminal acts and immediately upload them to the police department.

If nothing else, I would hope that this request for a stay pending appeal would be greeted with invitations for Bloomberg and Kelly to eat their words on the public's privacy. This is the nastiest, most self-serving hypocrisy the city's dished out yet -- a faux "concern" entirely based on protecting its own.

Filed Under: appeal, civil liberties, michael bloomberg, nyc, privacy, ray kelly, stop and frisk

Mayor Bloomberg Vetoes Veto-Proof Stop And Frisk Bills Because He's Mayor Bloomberg

from the pointless-flexing-of-rapidly-atrophying-political-muscle dept

NY mayor Michael Bloomberg is on his way out, Police Chief Ray Kelly is on the defensive, and stop and frisk is on the ropes, having recently been declared unconstitutional. Kelly and Bloomberg were both very upset by the decision, with Bloomberg himself promising the streets would run red with the blood of slain New Yorkers if the NYPD was unable to routinely violate the Fourth Amendment.

So, there's one major blow to Bloomberg and Kelly's minority harassment stop and frisk program. Of course, that decision is being appealed, which will stave off any return to normal, non-constitution-violating policework for the time being. In the meantime, the NYPD has a more pressing problem.

Two bills recently passed by the New York City Council target stop and frisk as well, by scaling back police powers and installing an Inspector General to ensure the NYPD doesn't violate the public's rights. Bloomberg, of course, threatened to veto these bills and then boldly went ahead and did exactly that, briefly pausing to tell council members that he'd be throwing tons of campaign dollars at anyone who wanted to switch sides. The only problem with Bloomberg's plan was that both bills arrived on his desk with enough "yea" votes to be veto-immune.

Now Bloomberg's angry all over again, assuming he stopped being angry at any point during the last couple of weeks. The council pointed out that stop and frisk unfairly targeted minorities, which it does. 88% of those stopped over the past 10 years have been minorities. Here's a map of last year's 532,911 stop-and-frisks color-coded by race and geolocated by Damien Spleeters. (Guess which race is represented by the color blue. If you can't figure it out, click through to this post from the Village Voice for the answer key. Complicating matters is the fact that red represents whites and orange represents Hispanics.)

The data and the district court have come to the same conclusion: stop and frisk unconstitutionally targets minorities. And yet, Bloomberg's statement on the targeted program echoes Chief Kelly's bizarre defense of stop and frisk from a week ago:

Mr. Bloomberg disagreed, claiming “minority communities across our city” would suffer, the Post reported.

“The City Council adopted legislation that will make it harder for our police officers to protect New Yorkers and continue to drive down crime,” he said.

Just how will the minorities "suffer" from this lack of harassment? Too much freedom of movement? Hands going soft and uncalloused from the lack of contact with nearby surfaces? The disruption of day-to-day routine? Future minority youths being constantly annoyed by their parents' stories about how back in THEIR day, the walk to school was up against the wall BOTH WAYS?

As for "continuing" to drive down crime? Well, while New York's violent crime rate has declined significantly since highs in the late 80s-early 90s, the murder rate -- a statistic both Bloomberg and Kelly have promised will skyrocket if stop and frisk is curtailed -- has remained relatively flat over the last decade. If this program is so successful in getting guns off the street and curtailing violent crime, one would expect steadier trend downward. At best, the program is maintaining the status quo. Murder rates in New York are still above the national average (per 100,000 persons), along with robberies and assaults. Property crime has decreased dramatically but you wouldn't know it from Bloomberg's go-to defense of the program. According to Bloomberg, killing off stop and frisk will kill off thousands of New Yorkers, and whoever takes his position next year will be the new mayor of Murderville, USA, a position currently held by Rahm Emanuel.

One final point: Bloomberg and Kelly are both surveillance fanatics who harbor the desire to turn New York City into London in terms of number of cameras per square foot. Surveillance proponents like these two often make light of the public's concerns, offering up the much abused phrase, "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear."

When it comes to appointing an Inspector General to do a bit of internal surveillance on the NYPD, both the mayor and police chief are vehemently against it. Why? Public servants surely have no "expectation of privacy," especially if the surveilled public doesn't. And certainly the mayor's faultless personal army has nothing to fear from some additional oversight… at least not if it doesn't have anything to hide.

Filed Under: michael bloomberg, nypd, ray kelly, stop and frisk, veto

NYPD Chief Says Ending Stop And Frisk Will 'Hurt Minorities,' Result In A Surge Of Criminal Activity

from the wrong-on-both-counts dept

We've all heard Bloomberg's defense of the NYPD's officially unconstitutional stop and frisk program. Basically, the mayor claims that without being able to harass thousands of minorities a year (88% of whom are never charged, detained or given a summons), the city will immediately fall prey to a crimewave of epic proportions.

In fact, the hint of any sort of regulation or oversight is also greeted by the mayor's proclamations that, if implemented, the streets will run red with the blood of the innocent (also: cops). According to Bloomberg, any additional layer of oversight will so severely impair the decision-making skills of his police force, they'll be unable to respond to a pulled gun with anything other than dying.

So, now we'll have another layer of monitors... You're a police officer. You have to know what orders to follow. If somebody pulls a gun and you WANT TO GET HOME, you don't have time to say, "Well, now wait a second, the commissioner said one thing, the monitor said another and the IG said another." By that time, you're dead.

Fortunately, Bloomberg will be leaving office soon and won't have to bear the burden of a "bunch of people dying" (his words) as a result of this recent court decision. On the other hand, Police Chief Ray Kelly may be around long enough to see his stop and frisk program hampered by oversight and the Constitution, provided he doesn't bolt for the Department of Homeland Security beforehand.

Faced with this still-under-appeal reality, Kelly has been making the rounds to various talk shows, offering his defense of the stop and frisk program. His wording suggests he and Bloomberg have been reading over each other's shoulders.

"The losers in this, if this case is allowed to stand, are people who live in minority communities," he said on CBS' Face the Nation. He noted that 97% of shooting victims are black or Hispanic, reasoned that similar demographics apply if a stop deters a killing and added that there have been more than 7,300 fewer killings in the 11 full years of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's tenure so far than in the 11 years before.

I'd like to hear from some minorities if that's OK with you, Kelly. I'd like to see if they're willing to "trade off" a little bit of theoretical safety for the freedom to walk around without being judged as "furtive" or "suspicious" or "not white." You'll have to forgive me for not taking your word for it.

Kelly states crime stats as if that excuses the violations committed by his officers. It doesn't. Judge Scheindlin refused to consider the lowered crime rates as justification for constitutional violations. We've all heard the phrase, "the end justifies the means," and it's never used in reference to appropriate "means." But Kelly and Bloomberg do this all the time in reference to stop and frisk. "Our crime rate is historically low, therefore we'll do whatever we want to maintain it." Not acceptable.

Once the stats have been presented, it's time to switch to Argument B -- the violent crime spectre.

If stop and frisk were abandoned, "no question about it —violent crime will go up," he said on NBC's Meet the Press.

This is one of stop and frisk defenders' favorite claims, one that plays on irrational fear. Irrational fear is one of the government's biggest allies, whether it's the DHS or a local police force. Claiming bad things will happen keeps bad laws and policies in place. As long as the laws and policies stay on the books and "bad things" fail to happen, officials are constantly "proven" right.

Citing these irrational fears also prevents these laws and policies from being struck down. There are very few government officials willing to roll back anything out of fear that if something bad does happen, the blame will rest squarely on those who removed the so-called safeguard.

Kelly's repetition of this argument is the most self-serving of rhetoric, seeing as it's almost completely failsafe. Should there be an uptick in criminal activity post-stop and frisk, the supporters will point out that they warned this would happen. It doesn't even have to be a large or sustained uptick. All it takes is a couple of random acts of violence to trigger the "I told you so" contingent.

It's a win-win argument, even at this point. As the appeals process rolls on, crime level fluctuations will be watched and deployed by stop and frisk supporters. If crime stays at its present rate or slides lower, it will be held up as evidence that unconstitutional searches work. If it heads up, Kelly, Bloomberg et al will claim the "uncertainty" surrounding the court's decision is impairing police work.

Filed Under: minorities, nypd, ray kelly, stop and frisk, up is down

Annoyed NY Mayor Attacks Court Decision On Stop And Frisk With Condescension And Hyperbole

from the I,-for-one,-hope-the-door-hits-him-in-the-ass-SEVERAL-TIMES-on-his-way-out dept

New York's Mayor Bloomberg and Police Chief Ray Kelly held a press conference to register their dismay at the court decision declaring the city's controversial "stop and frisk" program to be unconstitutional. As is to be expected, the decision will be challenged and, as is also to be expected, the Mayor and police chief wasted little time deploying their talking points in its defense. (Note on the embed: Video quality is terrible but this is only version of the entire press conference. Both the Mayor's Youtube account and NYC.gov website contain only a 12-minute, heavily-edited video of the press conference, one that ONLY shows the prepared statements and removes all of the Mayor's annoyed "interaction" with the press.)

Bloomberg's statement went long on crime reduction statistics (something he says the presiding judge [Shira Scheindlin] ignored) claiming the 8,000 guns seized over the past decade have "saved countless lives of blacks and Hispanics." He also claimed the stop and frisk program (or "stop, question and frisk," as he and Kelly refer to it) has made New York City the "poster child everyone wants to follow."

I have no doubt that there are many law enforcement agencies who view the stop and frisk program as desirable, but this says a lot more about law enforcement's mindset than it does about the program itself. Law enforcement agencies tend to believe Americans have too many rights, as is evidenced by years of rights abuse. Any program that curtails rights and gives officers free rein to stop and frisk citizens would largely believed to be a "good thing."

Kelly's defense of the program wasn't much different. His prepared remarks cited crime statistics and claimed the program was proactive in preventing criminal behavior, again stressing the 8,000 guns taken off the street over the past decade. Bizarrely, Kelly chose to illustrate the importance of the stop and frisk program by relating an anecdote having nothing to do with stop and frisk.

On Saturday a man threw a duffle bag into the trunk of a double-parked car in Washington Heights. When officers approached the man, he ran. That's suspicious behavior. They found $750,000 worth of heroin in the trunk. They arrested the suspects and spared the untold misery that three-quarters of a million dollars worth of drug addiction can cause to families who can least afford it.

Yes, running from the cops is often suspicious behavior, but the problems with stop and frisk is that it's deployed without any form of reasonable suspicion to back up the impromptu pat downs and searches. A big drug bust resulting from observed suspicious behavior isn't nearly the same thing as grabbing a few random minorities and pressing them up against the nearest wall for no apparent reason.

While Kelly's response was a bit more measured, Bloomberg made it clear that he wasn't interested in implementing some of the recommendations the judge made in her decision -- including additional oversight. Bloomberg (and Kelly) have been against third-party monitoring since day one, with the mayor notably arguing that his prized "army" would be less efficient with independent oversight because it introduces "confusion into the command structure."

Bloomberg also cited Scott Greenfield's First Rule of Policing* when criticizing the additional oversight, including the city council's recent bill to appoint an Inspector General over the NYPD.

*Make it home for dinner.

So, now we'll have another layer of monitors... You're a police officer. You have to know what orders to follow. If somebody pulls a gun and you WANT TO GET HOME, you don't have time to say, "Well, now wait a second, the commissioner said one thing, the monitor said another and the IG said another." By that time, you're dead.

In Bloomberg's world, police are unnecessarily constrained by rules and regulations that prevent them from placing self-preservation above all other considerations. It should be noted that many unarmed citizens have been shot for precisely this Rule, like the recent shooting death of an unarmed teen by a police officer who reassured the homeowners' whose yard he cut through in pursuit that the teen was not a threat. The teen continued to be "no threat" until the door of the shed he was hiding in flew open and the First Rule of Policing took over.

Bloomberg went on with his answer/diatribe, directing anger at the assembled press, implicating them in this rhetorical officer's death.

And I'd like to see you go to the funeral and explain to the family why their son or husband or father is not coming home that night.

Bloomberg also addressed the court's order that officers wear body cameras at all times. According to Bloomberg, the idea is unworkable. He vividly imagined the criticism that would fly once these were implemented.

A camera on the lapel or hat of a police officer... He didn't turn the right way. My god, he DELIBERATELY did it. It's a solution that's not a solution...

There is no doubt always-on cameras can be abused by the officers wearing them. Many departments fight this sort of thing because it creates a layer of accountability, something few police departments welcome. If law enforcement agencies had worked harder over the years to maintain a solid reputation for trustworthiness and rooting out abusive officers from within their own ranks, they wouldn't be in the position of having mandatory cameras deployed.

Bloomberg's attitude throughout the press conference varied between confrontational and condescending -- a nanny-statist annoyed that his subjects were restless.

A reporter, who questioned his statement that stop and frisk was only opposed by a "handful" of critics and activists by pointing out that he'd come across "hundreds, if not thousands" of critics, received this reply.

Some of these people come from a culture where police are the enemy. Here, police are friends.

What? The American culture has its fair share of people who believe police are the enemy, or at the very least have a long way to go to be considered "friends." Bloomberg's been in power so long he's forgotten (if he ever knew) that an imbalance of power tends to make those with less much more distrustful of those with more. Cops have a lot of power and under Bloomberg this imbalance has only increased.

Bloomberg went even further with this train of thought, first insulting the public and continuing on to disparage the press (again.)

The public are not experts on policing... But if you want to find someone to put on your TV show that says they don't like this, you can find them.

Bloomberg cut loose with more condescension when fielding a question from Russia Television International about the administration's fervent defense of the unpopular (and unconstitutional program).

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.

And again, when asked if the appeals process would allow stop and frisk to continue until Bloomberg is out of office, his response this time was coupled with his usual scare tactics.

Boy, I hope so. I wouldn't want to be responsible for a lot of people dying.

Yes. Every homicide investigation starts with the mayor being questioned about his involvement.

All in all, the mayor appeared to be completely irritated that his pet program had been questioned (and overruled) by a court decision. In contrast, Chief Kelly's responses were handled much more gracefully. He didn't address many questions (and those he did were swiftly taken over by Mayor Bombast Bloomberg) but those he did he handled well, without resorting to scare tactics, condescension or irritability.

For instance, his response to the appointment of independent oversight was simply to state that the appointee would find what he sees every day: good cops doing a good job. The rest he handled by stating the NYPD deploys a "wide variety" of tactics in areas of high crime or by deferring to the city's legal representative.

It will be some time before the court-ordered changes appear, if they do at all. As stated above, the city will be challenging the ruling and Bloomberg is still hard at work attempting to veto the two bills aimed at stop and frisk that recently passed the city council.

New Yorkers can at least be happy Daddy Bloomberg is on his way out, although the crop of replacement candidates doesn't seem all that promising. Americans, on the other hand, have to be concerned that the man who headed up the stop and frisk program could soon be heading the Department of Homeland Security, a position that will allow dubious tactics to be deployed at a national level.

In any event, it's obvious the court's decisions has pissed off Bloomberg and his "private army" and that can't be a bad thing.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, michael bloomberg, nypd, ray kelly, stop and frisk, unconstitutional

Federal Judge: NYC Stop And Frisk Violates The 4th Amendment

from the yeah,-no-kidding dept

For anyone who might not know already, New York City's infamous stop and frisk program is the completely useless policy of the police department to go around randomly molesting anyone they deem to be suspicious, or more correctly described as brown-skinned. It appears that everyone who isn't a member of the NYPD or the current mayor of New York hates this program as much as I do, including AG Eric Holder and the NY City Council. Still, that didn't keep Chuck Schumer from trying to export this interracial softcore porn policy to the federal level by recommending Police Chief Ray Kelly as the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Kelly's resume, however, may take a bit of a hit.

That's because a federal judge recently declared that the stop and frisk program violated tens of thousands of people's constitutional rights, which is the kind of thing that most folks frown on.

In a decision issued on Monday, the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that police officers have for years been systematically stopping innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Officers often frisked these people, usually young minority men, for weapons or searched their pockets for contraband, like drugs, before letting them go, according to the 195-page decision.

These stop-and-frisk episodes, which soared in number over the last decade as crime continued to decline, demonstrated a widespread disregard for the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, according to the ruling. It also found violations with the 14th Amendment.

Now, it's worth noting that Scheindlin didn't order that the program be stopped immediately or set a time and date for Mayor Bloomberg's lobotomy, which I found disappointing, but instead has appointed an outside legal counsel to oversee the police department and ensure that any random stopping and frisking of citizens is done constitutionally. That means no stops without reasonable suspicion. The problem, however, has been how police officers thus far have fudged their own reports on why they were stopping people.

While the Supreme Court has long recognized the right of police officers to briefly stop and investigate people who are behaving suspiciously, Judge Scheindlin found that the New York police had overstepped that authority. She found that officers were too quick to deem as suspicious behavior that was perfectly innocent, in effect watering down the legal standard required for a stop.

Obviously no outside legal overseer is going to be able to witness any sizable number of these stops, meaning there is a high likelihood that officers will continue to manufacture suspicion that is unfounded. In addition, it's well known that police officers consider themselves members of a fraternal organization, with all of the implications such a membership carries with it. How accurate a picture this outside counsel will get of these stops moving forward is an open question with a likely problematic answer.

That's why, while we should all be pleased that Judge Scheindlin ruled against stop and frisk, I think it would have been far better to scrap it entirely and make police play by the rules that are already prescribed by our constitution.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, crime, discriminatory, michael bloomberg, nyc, nypd, privacy, ray kelly, search, shira scheindlin, stop and frisk

Up Against The Wall, America! Sen. Schumer Touts NYPD Chief Kelly For Next Head Of Homeland Security

from the if-anyone-has-any-reason-why-these-two-should-not-be-joined... dept

Janet Napolitano is leaving her post as the head of the DHS and leaving a vacancy that some (particularly Sen. Chuck Schumer) think would be best filled by Ray "Stop and Frisk" Kelly. (Or, if you prefer, Ray "Privacy Is Off the Table" Kelly.)

This isn't a particularly surprising selection. Schumer's home state is New York and picking Kelly is sort of a no-brainer. As Mike Riggs at Reason points out, the case for Kelly as head of the DHS goes all the way back to 2008, when national security insiders floated the suggestion.

Unfortunately for fans of civil liberties, adding Ray Kelly to the DHS takes a bad thing and makes it worse.

First off, there's the NYPD's infamous stop and frisk program, which has targeted minority youths almost exclusively. Putting Kelly in charge of Homeland Security is just asking for a national rollout of stop and frisk, bringing the fun of being a minority in New York City to citizens around the country. There's no dissuading Kelly (or Commander in Chief of the "seventh largest military in the world," Mayor Bloomberg) of its effectiveness, even if the numbers don't back up their claims.

Kelly also famously announced that "privacy is off the table" as a result of the Boston bombing. Kelly has no qualms about expanding law enforcement surveillance networks, no matter how unpopular it is with the public. He has expressed his admiration for London's network of cameras, which he hopes to emulate in New York City. The NYPD has taken steps towards all-encompassing surveillance aided by (oddly enough) Microsoft. Take that set of ideals and expand it nationwide.

Despite his willingness to invade everyone else's privacy, Kelly's own police force is positively opaque when it comes to transparency. FOIA requests are routinely stonewalled when not being actively battled in courtrooms, much to the dismay of taxpayers' wallets.

The one thing Kelly does feel government/law enforcement/intelligence agencies should be open about is how much spying they're planning on doing. His only reaction to the NSA leaks was dismay at the fact that the NSA didn't just tell Americans they're going to be spied on.

“I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said yesterday, breaking ranks with other US law-enforcement officials. “I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone, it’s going to be recorded and it goes to the government. I think the public can understand that. I see no reason why that program was placed in the secret category.

There's Kelly's version of transparency: telling the public how its privacy is going to be violated. If nothing else, Kelly's theoretical term as the head of the DHS would result in a brave, new world of confrontational transparency -- top-down blasts of invasive programs, delivered in a like-it-or-leave-it tone that leaves no room for debate or discussion.

Beyond this, we also have the NYPD's pitiable record of constitutional violations when it comes to its joint anti-terrorist efforts with the FBI. Plenty of spying, surveillance and privacy violations. Very little in the way of actual terrorists rounded up.

So, here's a guy with a track record that features a combination of wholesale civil liberties violations and an aversion to any form of accountability. Kelly has proven he's willing to alienate constituents in pursuit of an all-encompassing police/surveillance presence. He's also made it clear that he unreservedly buys into the "because terrorism" rhetoric.

Unfortunately for America, every listed argument against Kelly as head of the DHS is a point for him under the current administration. The boundless expansion of Bush's domestic surveillance under Obama has laid the perfect foundation for a man who believes citizens should be seen and heard -- at all times. If the Constitution is holding back a preferred program, there's always the secret court ready to provide secret interpretations of existing laws, thus assuring that everything is properly overseen and above board.

Kelly isn't necessarily a "yes man," but he's a perfect fit for an agency that has steadily trampled on the Constitution since its formation. The "welcomed debate" on privacy vs. security would become little more than a faint memory. Kelly's arrival would signal an end to the discussion no one in Washington really wants to have. There are precious few people who believe the DHS and its accompanying agencies weren't invasive enough, but adding Kelly to the mix should take that number down to zero.

It's Kelly's world. You're all just living in it "persons of interest."

Filed Under: chuck schumer, dhs, homeland security, janet napolitano, mike bloomberg, nypd, ray kelly, stop and frisk

NYC Council Angers Mayor Bloomberg By Passing Two Bills Aimed At Curtailing The NYPD's 'Stop And Frisk' Program

from the a-despot-and-his-enforcers dept

It appears the New York City council would like to see some changes in the NYPD. Two bills were passed recently (known together as the "Community Safety Act") that have put Mayor Bloomberg and Chief of Police Ray Kelly on the defensive.

The first seeks to install independent oversight of the NYPD, something the Dept. of Justice itself recommends. (The DOJ's recommendation is contingent on a judicial decision finding the department's "Stop and Frisk" program unconstitutional.) This, of course, has enraged Mayor Bloomberg, who's definitely not interested in anyone policing his "personal army." (Just in case anyone feels the previous sentence is hyperbolic, here's the mayor's quote, which he delivered during a speech at MIT in 2011.)

“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg's reaction to the DOJ's recommendation echoed his previous audacious statement.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed papers Wednesday saying that if a federal judge ruled the NYPD's practices unconstitutional, then the DOJ would strongly endorse the use of a monitor to oversee changes at the department.

The mayor, however, said that the police department needs a clear line of authority. "No military organization or paramilitary runs where you have confusion in the command structure. You just cannot have that. Lives are on the line," he said in a question-and-answer session with reporters.

Part of the NYPD's problem is Mayor Bloomberg himself. The fact that he regards the police department as both "his" and a "military organization" is indicative of his mindset. Bloomberg wants a military force policing his city and has done everything in his power to bring his own brand of martial law to NYC. For its own good, of course.

With this bill passing with enough votes to override his veto, Bloomberg has gone on the attack (along with Chief Kelly), throwing around statements that give the impression New York City is only a single militarized policeman away from a crippling crimewave. The balance is apparently so delicate that any change will destroy the balance and put millions of New Yorker's in jeopardy.

In separate appearances, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, sought to portray the bills — one aimed at increasing oversight of the Police Department and the other at expanding the ability to sue over racial profiling by officers — as a divisive tool that would undermine the police’s efforts to get guns off the streets and continue to lower the murder rate.

The problem is neither of these statements are true. Stop and frisk doesn't get guns off the street or lower the murder rate. The NYCLU's report on stop and frisk showed the total number of weapons recovered in 2012 increased by a total of 96 guns compared with 2003 (pre-stop and frisk), an increase of 0.02%. And as the NYCLU's Donna Lieberman pointed out, homicide numbers were dropping before the stop and frisk program was introduced and homicide rates have decreased more dramatically in other large cities.

The first threat to Bloomberg's "personal army" doesn't take effect until Jan. 1st, 2014, meaning this decision would be passed on to the next mayor of New York City. Bloomberg can veto this bill (and will) but it has the support needed to override his veto (it passed 40-11; the override threshold is 34 votes).

The second bill takes aim at the "racial profiling" aspects of the stop and frisk program. As has been noted, 87% of those stopped and frisked over the last decade have been black or Latino. This percentage would be enough to indicate profiling, but even more damning evidence came to light during the still-ongoing lawsuit. A secret recording caught a commanding officer stating explicitly the targets of stop and frisk: "I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21."

By expanding the definition of "profiling" to include "age, gender, housing status and sexual orientation" and allowing individuals to sue police in state court for "policies that disproportionately affect people in any protected categories without serving a significant law enforcement goal," the city council hopes to make the first moves towards killing off the stop and frisk program.

As was stated earlier, Bloomberg feels this sort of "interference" would be "harmful" to his "military." His efforts to kill this legislation will include attempts to "turn" a councilperson in order to eliminate the 34th vote needed to override his veto. Even in this, the Mayor took the time to evoke the "victims" of independent oversight and additional NYPD culpability.

He declined to say how he might persuade one council member to switch positions, saying only: “This is a fight to defend your life and your kids’ lives. You can rest assured that I will not give up for one minute.”

If the NYPD resists these reforms as much as their "personal leader" does, it could actually mean a jump in crime numbers. The NYPD may decide to simply do less enforcement or deterrence in order to prove that the meddling bills did indeed "undermine police efforts." And it wouldn't take much to persuade many of these cops to "do less." Like many personal armies, the NYPD is home to plenty of low-level corruption and laziness.

Ten percent of them were malcontents who worked as little as possible. Unless they are being paid overtime, officers seem to avoid writing summonses. Indeed, some police officers need to be weaned of the idea that they are paid to drive around in their patrol cars, eating doughnuts.

And those sentiments came not from critics of the department, but from police commanders and city lawyers.

If the perfect storm comes together, the NYPD could be facing independent oversight and a major disruption in the "stop and frisk" process, if not an actual judicial decision declaring the whole thing unconstitutional. Judging from what we've seen so far, we can expect future reactions from Bloomberg and the NYPD to range from "ugly" to "uglier."

Filed Under: doj, michael bloomberg, nyc, nypd, ray kelly, stop and frisk

NYPD Commissioner Blasts NSA Secret Monitoring For Being Secret

from the half-right dept

In the wake of the NSA scandal leaks, there have been several examples of government officials and law enforcement coming out to state both that the program is necessary and that its existence ought never have been revealed. Those who espouse the latter often indicate that, as a result, Edward Snowden is some measure of a traitor, and in some cases so are members of the press that reported on the revelations. Not all former and current government folks are in that camp, of course, but those that are not typically argue the polar opposite: that the NSA program is either unconstitutional or unnecessary. Those are sentiments I happen to agree with, but there is a refreshingly original third course of thought.

That comes from NYPD police commissioner Ray Kelly, who has managed to blast the secret NSA program...but only for being secret.

“I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said yesterday, breaking ranks with other US law-enforcement officials. “I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone, it’s going to be recorded and it goes to the government. I think the public can understand that. I see no reason why that program was placed in the secret category. Secondly, I think if you listen to Snowden, he indicates that there’s some sort of malfeasance, people . . . sitting around and watching the data. So I think the question is: What sort of oversight is there inside the [National Security Agency] to prevent that abuse, if it’s taking place?”

Now, the easy reaction to this is to write off Kelly's opinion that the majority of Americans would be okay with data surveillance as long as we were well informed about it. After all, stop and frisk is fairly above board, and people still hate it. But the point is an important one with real implications on how democracy is supposed to work versus how it actually does work in America today.

By that I mean whether secretive programs run by the government that impact the majority or all of Americans can be undertaken without the consent of the governed. Step back a moment from Kelly's assertion that the public would be on board with the program if we had known about it all along. Isn't the better point to be taken from his statement that we should at least have been given the opportunity to find out? As a member of a representative democracy, if my fellow Americans were indeed informed and signed off on this program, I have to accept it, whatever my dissenting views. If the government was above board on the checks and balances in the program, they might have a good PR case. But that process was never given a chance to incubate. Instead, broadly worded, vague legislation birthed secretive policies, subject to secretive committees and secretive courts, and it was only by the providence of a humanitarian leaker that the public had any inkling of what was going on. That isn't how the American concept is supposed to function.

And now we'll never know whether Kelly is right or not, because the experiment that could have occurred has been foiled. Any complacency by the public now can be written off as apathy born of anger and mistrust. Any dissent is tainted by the same as a result of the secrecy of the program. The method by which the NSA spy program was both initiated, continued, and finally revealed is almost a perfect counter example to the democratic process. I fear that our founding fathers, those men of the enlightenment so often referenced by the career politicians of the day, would be calling for revolution once more.

Filed Under: nsa, nsa surveillance, nypd, ray kelly, secrecy, transparency

NYPD Chief Ray Kelly And Mayor Bloomberg Still Think Privacy Is A Good Thing -- Just Not YOUR Privacy

from the reaching-hypocritical-mass dept

When NYPD Chief Ray Kelly said "privacy was off the table" following the Boston bombing, we all knew this was a one-way "exchange." It was always going to be average citizens losing out on their privacy. The NYPD would remain unaffected and continue to operate the way it has for years: behind the thin thick blue line of opacity.

Salon's CJ Ciaramella takes a detailed look at the NYPD's track record on Freedom of Information requests. The results are unsurprising. The public entities that demand the most from their constituents are often the most reluctant to give anything back.

The city’s Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who is running for mayor, recently released a report asserting that a third of all Freedom of Information records requests to the police department were ignored. The numbers are no surprise to journalists who cover the department, such as Leonard Levitt, a veteran cops reporter who now writes at NYPD Confidential.

“All I can tell you is that the NYPD does whatever it wants to regarding FOI requests,” Levitt said. “Which means they never turn anything over, at least not to me. The only time they did respond was after I got the NY Civil Liberties Union involved.”

Levitt's case isn't unique. Others have run into the same officious stonewalling and found it often takes a lawsuit (or the threat of one) to shake anything loose. All Levitt was looking for was Ray Kelly's daily calendar. The department cited "security reasons" when rejecting his request. By this logic, protecting Ray Kelly is more important than protecting the President of the United States, whose calendar is public.

What isn't rejected outright is simply ignored. Those making the requests are left to decide whether the requested information is worth the time and expense of a lawsuit. The NYCLU has found itself in court time and time again in attempts to pry info loose from the NYPD's grip.

Ciaramella had his own experience with the NYPD's FOI recalcitrance when he sought access to gun discharge reports that might shed some light on the "hail of gunfire" unleashed by the NYPD in the course of bringing down the Empire State Building shooter.

Back in October 2012, this reporter submitted a public records request for the discharge reports filed by NYPD officers over the previous year.

I filed the public records request on Oct. 1. And then waited. On Jan. 11, I received this response:

In regard to your request, for all weapons discharge reports filled [sic] by officers between January 1, 2012 and September 26, 2012, I must deny access to these records on the basis of Public Officers Law section 87 (2)(g) and 87 (2)(e) as such records/information, if disclosed would reveal criminal investigative techniques or procedures, and or are intra-agency materials. Furthermore, these records are also exempt from disclosure as these records on the basis of Public Officers Law section 87 (2)(e) and Public Officers Law 87 (2)(a) in that such records consist of personell records of a Police Officer and are therefore exempt from disclosure under the provisions of Civil Rights Law section 50-a.

Now, stop and consider this for a second. The NYPD said the public interest of how, when and why its officers use deadly force against the citizens it’s sworn to protect is outweighed by the need to protect the privacy of those same officers. Not only that, the public interest was outweighed by the need to protect its investigative techniques.

This is par for the course and not unique to the NYPD. Police forces all over the nation (and the word, for that matter) are notorious for protecting their own. This insular attitude tends to result in the sort of ridiculous arguments detailed above. Protecting officers from public scrutiny always outweighs the public interest because it's the "home team" making the call.

But this reflexive "cops-first" rejection of Ciaramella's request was particularly brash, seeing as it completely contradicted a previous judicial ruling.

A New York judge ruled two years ago — in response to a NYCLU lawsuit, naturally — that discharge reports are subject to disclosure, do not violate officers’ privacy and do not compromise the department’s investigative techniques.

The NYPD at least tried a different tack with Ciaramella's next discharge report request, denying it because it was insufficiently descriptive of the files requested -- even though it was nearly identical to the previous filing.

This is a systemic problem. FOI requests are ignored, rejected or put on the back burner until someone gets a lawyer involved. If any answer arrives, it's usually months or years down the road and, in many cases, redacted to the point of uselessness.

New York's FOI problem goes all the way to the top. Bloomberg's office has spent significant amounts of time and money battling FOI requests as well.

ProPublica's Sergio Hernandez spent nearly two years trying to obtain emails related to the 2010 appointment of Cathie Black as School Chancellor. (Black was a controversial pick who stepped into the position with no relevant experience after her predecessor suddenly resigned his post.)

When the emails were finally released last week, after a two-year legal battle, they revealed a desperate public relations campaign in which city officials tried to rally support from prominent women — including Oprah Winfrey, Gloria Steinem, Caroline Kennedy, and Bette Midler — to champion Black's appointment. (I'll admit: never in a million years did I expect my work to result in stories containing the sentence, "Ms. Winfrey couldn't be reached for comment.") In the end, the emails were amusing, slightly enlightening, but largely innocuous.

Hernandez points out that much has been made about the last-minute attempt to persuade female celebrities to show their support for the new chancellor, but much less ink has been spilled questioning why the city fought this request for so long, racking up a total of 180 staff hours and costs of over $25,000.

In the very limited defense of the NYPD, all FOI requests are funneled through a single office. This inefficient design can partially be blamed for the extensive delays. But it doesn't excuse the general attitude that citizens need to be an open book while those in charge continue to operate in near opacity. And the inequity keeps getting worse, according to Robert Freeman, executive director of the NY State Commission on Open Government.

“I’ve been here since 1974,” Freeman said. “The track record of the police department, particularly in the last decade, indicates in so many instances a failure to give effect to the spirit and letter of the freedom of information law."

“I look back at various mayoral administrations, and my feeling is that there was more of an intent to comply with the law in the era of Mayor [Ed] Koch than there has been since,” Freeman continued. “My sense has been that the downward slope began in Giuliani’s administration.”

There's little hope of any immediate change. Entities like the two discussed are naturally resistant to transparency and sudden movement. The fact that the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg have formed a mutual admiration society over the years indicates that it will remain "business as usual" until a mayor willing to stand up to the police department (and stand up for his constituents) is elected. The last two office holders have been more than happy to indulge the PD's excesses, all the while further isolating themselves from the demands of transparency laws and the people they're supposed to be serving.

Filed Under: foia, freedom of information, michael bloomberg, nyc, nypd, privacy, ray kelly, stalling