NYPD, Health Department Decide Public Shouldn't Know How Many New Yorkers Are Killed By Cops Every Year

from the undercounting-to-better-serve-the-only-public-that-matters:-police-officers dept

The NYPD has never been the most honest -- or the most transparent -- law enforcement agency. It enjoys the secrecy it has. And it really enjoys the secrecy it grants itself. And it seems to enjoy hiding as much as it can from the public at all times.

Trying to live up to its self-imposed reputation as "New York's Finest" must be exhausting. So much bad news to bury so often. The city has asked for stats from the department but it's not getting honest answers. New York's cops kill far fewer people per capita than almost any other major city in the United States. But they kill far more people than the NYPD is willing to admit, even when directed to share this data with the city's Health Department.

[Former health commissioner] Dr. [Mary] Bassett’s team identified 105 people killed by the police or police activity during the period from 2010 to 2015, more than double the 46 the agency had publicly reported for those years. Of the unreported deaths, 13 were bystanders hit by police bullets or pedestrians killed from vehicle accidents during police activity.

Dr. Bassett passed this information on to Mayor Bill de Blasio shortly after protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer began taking off across the country. There was more bad news appended to the email sent to the Mayor. Not only were there more killings than the NYPD reported, but the numbers seemed to show biased responses by officers.

The team also found deep racial disparities in the deaths. For example, six black New Yorkers and five Hispanic residents who died as a result of encounters with the police during this period were unarmed; no unarmed whites were killed.

Unfortunately, the full report -- containing the official under-counting noted by Dr. Bassett -- was buried by incoming Police Commissioner Demot Shea, who decided this collaboration wasn't worth continuing. Neither does the current head of the Health Department, Oxiris Barbot, who has yet to publish Bassett's findings.

It doesn't look as though the Mayor will be much help in bringing this information to the public or ensuring the NYPD does a better job counting deaths related to police interactions. The NYPD has apparently decided certain people aren't worthy of the "officer-involved killing" label. This includes people who were killed by vehicles while being chased into traffic by officers and others whose paperwork was incomplete when their bodies arrived at the medical examiner.

While Mayor de Blasio promised to rein in the NYPD after several years of being catered to by Mayor Blue Lives Matter himself, Mike Bloomberg, he has done little to curtail the worst aspects of the department after officers and union officials very publicly expressed their displeasure at his supposed lack of support. It appears de Blasio needs the support of cops more than he needs the support of the public.

Going forward, things aren't going to improve. The NYPD will decide how many deaths its officers are involved in and only officially approved numbers will be released. No outside assistance will be accepted and no impartial reflection of the true cost of aggressive policing will make its way into the public's hands.

Filed Under: health department, new york, nypd, police brutality, police killings, transparency

Federal Court Says ICE Can No Longer Enter New York Courthouses Just To Arrest Alleged Undocumented Immigrants

from the why-isn't-ICE-abolished-yet? dept

Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York isn't one to suffer the federal government's many fools. Five years ago, Rakoff resigned from the DOJ's rigged forensics committee -- one supposedly formed to tell the DOJ what it was doing wrong when analyzing and testifying about forensic evidence. Rakoff received a personal call from the DOJ's Deputy Attorney General who told him the Commission would not be examining the handling of pre-trial evidence. In other words, the Commission could not make any recommendations about disclosures about means and methodology used by forensic investigators to defendants prior to trial. Rakoff resigned, calling out the government for its "trial by ambush" practices.

More recently, Judge Rakoff demanded to know why every single one of the DEA's 179 reverse sting operations targeted minorities. The stings involve the DEA telling targets a shipment of drugs is coming in and how to intercept it. There are no real drugs arriving and the DEA swoops in to arrest people for attempting to make off with nonexistent drugs. It then uses the imaginary amount of drugs to recommend prison sentences. Somehow, the fake amount always clears the bar needed to demand a mandatory minimum 15-year sentence.

Judge Rakoff is back and he's still angry. He's been handling litigation over ICE's nasty practice of camping out at courthouses to arrest people for immigration violations. ICE figures this is a great place to find people because they're compelled to show up. Immigration agents aren't just picking up accused criminals. They're also hauling off witnesses and crime victims. (h/t Courthouse News Service)

The lawsuit was filed by the New York State Attorney General, who sought an injunction blocking ICE agents from trolling state courthouses for undocumented immigrants. ICE has been blocked, and Judge Rakoff wastes no time excoriating the agency for its actions. From the opening of the decision [PDF]:

Recent events confirm the need for freely and fully functioning state courts, not least in the State of New York. But it is one thing for the state courts to try to deal with the impediments brought on by a pandemic, and quite another for them to have to grapple with disruptions and intimidations artificially imposed by an agency of the federal government in violation of long-standing privileges and fundamental principles of federalism and of separation of powers.

The ruling points out ICE never used to be this way. But Trump's Executive Order, released shortly after he was elected, gave ICE the idea its earlier reluctance to look completely evil was going to limit its ability to aggressively pursue the foreign baddies the US president clearly wanted removed. Arrests at New York state courthouses leapt from 28 in 2016 to 161 in 2017. In 2019, the total was 173 arrests.

The judge says ICE has been completely disruptive to the judicial process.

Plaintiffs have also submitted substantial evidence indicating that these arrests, in addition to their impact on litigants, undermined the orderly functioning of New York courts themselves. Because ICE arrested aliens as they were entering court for scheduled proceedings, the agency forced courts to adjourn proceedings at the last minute, wasting scarce judicial time and resources. Similar results occurred when ICE failed to produce a criminal defendant for a scheduled conference. Even worse were those occasions when ICE conducted an arrest in the courthouse itself, resulting in “complete chaos," as well as physical damage, Finally, ICE further undermined the interests of justice by arresting and deporting criminal defendants who were appearing in court in connection with their own cases, thereby ensuring that these defendants never faced justice for their crimes.

After discussing the Executive Order and previous laws governing ICE enforcement activities, Judge Rakoff says there's nothing in any of it that suggests it's lawful to interrupt court proceedings to perform arrests for civil violations, much less prevent crime victims and witnesses from participating in the justice system.

[F]or all the reasons previously explained, courthouse civil arrests are not lawful, because they contravene the common-law privilege, which the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] is best read to incorporate, that protects courts and litigants against these intimidating and disrupting intrusions. Regardless of what ICE may have believed, then, the Executive Order in fact did not compel the agency to undertake its vast broadening of the scope of courthouse arrests. To the contrary, by its use of the term “lawful,” it effectively forbade such unlawful intrusions.

These arrests are illegal, Judge Rakoff says. And ICE has offered nothing in defense of its increased presence in state courtrooms that says otherwise.

[ICE] has effectively offered no rationale other than its misguided reliance on the Executive Order for its consequential decision to expand its agents’ authority to conduct courthouse arrests. Although the Directive itself makes conclusory references to the “reduce[d] safety risks” of conducting arrests in a place where people are screened for firearms, and the “unwillingness of jurisdictions to cooperate with ICE in the transfer of custody of aliens from their prisons and jails,” the record contains no explanation of how the agency balanced any such benefits against the harms of the policy discussed above.

ICE is now frozen -- blocked from entering New York courtrooms to grab potential detainees. Rakoff says the policy -- as enacted by ICE since 2017 -- is illegal. It not only prevents ICE from entering courtrooms to effect arrests but also prevents ICE from detaining people traveling to state courthouses as parties or witnesses to civil lawsuits. ICE will probably appeal this because it seems to believe inflicting misery is part of its directive, but, for now, it will have to limit itself to raiding dozens of other places to grab people suspected of civil violations.

Filed Under: courthouses, deportation, ice, immigration, jed rakoff, new york, undocumented

New York Legislators Dump Law That Allowed PDs To Withhold Officers' Disciplinary Records

from the it's-a-shame-it-took-another-killing-by-cops-to-make-this-happen dept

More than 40 years after a law went on the books in New York allowing cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to have their disciplinary records hidden from the public, the NYPD suddenly decided to start following the law.

For years, the NYPD gave journalists access to "Personnel Orders," which detailed the outcomes of closed internal investigations. They were posted on a clipboard in the NYPD's public information office, making them as public as any record can be. In 2016, the NYPD suddenly decided it was no longer going to share these with the public, citing (I'm not even kidding) a need to "save paper."

Another, less laughable explanation was later given by Deputy Chief Ed Mullen. The NYPD spokesman said someone in the PD's legal bureau had re-read the 1976 law and realized the NYPD had no obligation to turn over this info to the public. So it stopped. (On the other hand, the NYPD is indebted to the public to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements every year, so maybe it would have made sense to let this four-decade oversight continue.)

The NYPD seized the moment four decades too late, further shielding its officers from accountability. This decision to stop being even slightly open about officer discipline followed a few high profile killings of citizens by officers -- most notably Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a police officer during an arrest.

For almost a half-decade, city legislators have been trying to get the law -- known simply as "50-a" -- repealed. Some state officials, including Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, have suggested they're up for some limited reform, but neither of these two have expressed support for a repeal of the law.

It looks as though both officials will get the repeal they never really wanted. And if they want to thank anyone for this outcome, they can thank all the bad cops in America, starting with Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

The Democrat-led Legislature approved the long-stalled reform of the statute — which is routinely used to keep the public from learning about police misconduct and disciplinary actions taken against officers — in response to protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black Minnesota man who was killed when a white police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

[...]

The bill passed along party lines in the Senate, 40-22, with all Republicans voting against the measure. The Assembly approved the measure 101-43 Tuesday evening, also along party lines.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has already promised to sign the bill, which will erase 50-a from the books. That hasn't made the state's police unions very happy. Pat Lynch -- president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association -- claims the release of records will endanger the lives of cops, even with personal information (address, phone numbers, etc.) redacted.

Then there's this bizarre statement, which suggests a bunch of cops feel informing the public about misconduct is unfair to the brave men and women committing the misconduct.

A coalition of law enforcement groups said in a statement Monday that releasing records, including complaints, could leave officers facing “unavoidable and irreparable harm to reputation and livelihood.”

Yeah. Like a public permanent record. Imagine being this obtuse about your job and your obligations to the public. Then imagine doing it while your fellow officers release tons of personal info about anyone ever booked into a jail... or extrajudicially killed by an officer. These are your nation's law enforcement reps, ladies and gentleman. And in the face of incremental accountability improvements, they're issuing statements so self-serving that those issuing them are blind to the inherent stupidity of their claims.

Filed Under: disciplinary records, new york, police

NY AG Opens Inquiry After Charter Spectrum Bungles Its Coronavirus Response

from the monopolizing-stupidity dept

By and large, most major ISPs have handled the labor angle of COVID-19 relatively well, with giants like Comcast and AT&T offered hazard pay, and Verizon slowing new broadband, phone, and TV installations altogether.

Charter, which sells broadband, TV, and phone service under the Spectrum brand, has been a different story entirely. The nation's second biggest cable company is now facing an inquiry by New York's Attorney General after several weeks of bad press highlighting how the company wasn't giving its employees hazard pay or adequate protective gear (many got $25 gift cards to closed restaurants instead), wouldn't let many employees work from home even if it was easy, and even forced people to continue to work in buildings where co-workers tested positive for the virus.

With some 250 Charter employees now sick, New York's Attorney General has opened an inquiry into the company's bungled response:

"The company’s stance on working remotely became the subject of internal debate on March 13, when Nick Wheeler, an engineer in Denver, sent an email to hundreds of colleagues and a senior vice president with the subject line “Coronavirus — Why are we still in the office?”

“Coming into the office now is pointlessly reckless,” wrote Mr. Wheeler, who provided a copy of the email to The New York Times. “Charter, like the rest of us, should do what is necessary to help reduce the spread of coronavirus."

While Charter has since buckled on some of its more stubborn policies, it required weeks of employees leaking to any news outlet that would listen about the company's failure to adequately protect them. Employees are still pissed, and still say the company isn't doing enough to protect its workers (and by proxy many of the communities and customers they serve):

"But even in cases where multiple employees have confirmed testing positive for the virus, which has killed more than 175,000 people worldwide, Spectrum’s call centers and storefronts have kept their doors open, serving as potential hotspots for exposure. While Charter has allowed some workers, in certain circumstances, to temporarily work from home, its pandemic response has largely focused sanitizing its workspaces after hours. Employees fear that this is doing too little to shield them from the disease or prevent them from giving it to customers, whose equipment they handle and whose homes they enter daily."

None of this should be surprising given that Charter literally has one of the lowest customer satisfaction ratings of any company in industry in America (think about that accomplishment for a moment). Big ISPs don't handle disasters very well, as evident by the way cable giants routinely hassle wildfire victims over their cable boxes after having just lost everything. They're not flexible, creative, or adaptive companies, because as government-pampered monopolies in regions with no competition or oversight, there's absolutely no incentive to be.

Speaking of no oversight, the FCC hasn't issued so much as a peep about the company's Keystone-cops-esque approach to handling the pandemic. Nor has the agency had a single word to say about the fact that Charter has been kicking struggling customers offline during the crisis, despite very clearly promising not to as part of a highly theatrical, temporary, and entirely voluntary PR stunt heavily hyped by the agency to give the illusion it was actually helping.

Filed Under: covid-19, employees, hazard pay, new york
Companies: charter

NYC Mayor Asks Residents To Snitch On Social Distancing Violators, Gets Dick Pics And Hitler Memes Instead

from the socially-distance-THIS-yo dept

"See something, say something" but for the coronavirus. How could it possibly go wrong?

Everyone put your hands down. Of course we know how it could go wrong. Opening up the lines to callers never works. The DHS knows this, even if it chooses to ignore this. Years of "see something, say something" did nothing more than fill its data stores with reports from curtain twitchers about things their brown neighbors were doing and do-gooding randos calling in everyone they saw walking around with a camera.

The home to the most "every Muslim is a suspect" city in the US should have known better than to open up a snitch line to the public. But officials like Governor Andrew Cuomo have already shown they're unable to fathom the concept of unintended consequences. Cuomo issued a mandate for mask-wearing in public while allowing an anti-mask law to run concurrently, inviting state law enforcement officers to engage in very selective enforcement.

Without a doubt, the state has a COVID problem. But doing dumb shit isn't going to fix it. At best, it's just going to tie up city resources.

Enter NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio. A city in the deep throes of a pandemic needs solid leadership. This isn't it. This is only something that seems sort of useful until someone gives it a few seconds of thought.

On April 18, Mayor De Blasio took decisive action in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus:

If you see someone failing to practice social distancing, rat them out, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged Saturday as part of a new city effort to corral the coronavirus.

“We still know there’s some people who need to get the message. And that means sometimes making sure the enforcement is there to educate people and make clear we’ve got to have social distancing,” Hizzoner said in a video posted to Twitter

To do that, is “simple,” he explained.

Snap a photo of an offending person or crowd, set the location on the image, and text it to 311-692.

I don't know what he expected, but anyone who's had any internet experience knows what the public will do when it's given access to a government hotline (or an internet poll, etc.).

Photos of extended middle fingers, the mayor dropping the Staten Island groundhog and news coverage of him going to the gym have all been texted to a special tip line that de Blasio announced Saturday, according to screenshots posted on Twitter.

Believe it or not, that's the better stuff. The government wanted the public to respond and respond the public did. Emphatically and obscenely.

An NYPD source said that “dick pic” photos of real penises have also been texted to 311, and a caller phoned in a tip that de Blasio was seen performing oral sex on someone “in an alleyway behind a 7-11” early Sunday.

Feeling any safer, New York? If you ask people to become informants, you're going to have to sift through a lot of bullshit. If you ask people to report their neighbors for being in the proximity of other people, you're going to get Hitler references and dick pics. And if you haven't prepared for this inevitable eventuality, you're going to have to cut off your access to the very small amount of genuine tips to clean out all the garbage you didn't realized you'd asked for.

City Hall confirmed Tuesday that the 311 text line was shuttered to clear out a backlog of crank complaints on Sunday.

The solution isn't a new tip line that's going to quickly turn into an IRL 4Chan. The solution is to let existing systems handle the influx and hope for the best. Yes, too many people still use 911 and dispatch lines like all-purpose complaint boxes but asking New Yorkers to snitch on each other for being social was never going to work out well.

People are already feeling the encroachment of the government as the pandemic wears on. Asking residents to be part of the perceived problem is always going to result in little-a anarchy. Government officials never seem to understand most Americans think being a snitch is pretty much un-American. This is something we expect authoritarian nations to do: turn citizens against each other. We don't care for it much in the Land of the Free. There will always be outliers willing to sell the person across the street out to the fuzz, but most Americans would rather let their fingers (or other appendages) fly when the government asks them to be unpaid informants.

Filed Under: 311, bill deblasio, covid-19, new york, nyc, say something, see something, snitch line, social distancing, tipline

New York's Governor Hands Down A Mask Mandate While The State's Anti-Mask Law Remains On The Books

from the house-divided-against-itself-can-still-disproportionately-arrest-young-black-men dept

The spread of the coronavirus throughout the nation is turning some old laws into new ridiculousness. One of the hardest hit areas in the US is New York, which has nearly 30% of the nation's total cases. This has led to lockdown orders and spread deterrent efforts more severe than seen elsewhere in the country.

One of the new mandates handed down by Governor Andrew Cuomo is a mask requirement when in public. The executive order that went into effect a few days ago says this:

Effective at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 17, 2020 any individual who is over age two and able to medically tolerate a face-covering shall be required to cover their nose and mouth with a mask or cloth face-covering when in a public place and unable to maintain, or when not maintaining, social distance.  

Sounds good and necessary, but as appellate public defender Sam Feldman points out on Twitter, this executive order conflicts with a law that's been around since the middle of the 19th century. That's going to be a problem.

If you can't read/see the tweets, Feldman says the new order does not suspend Penal Law § 240.35(4), which has been in existence since 1845. People trying to follow the executive order may find themselves engaging in criminal behavior. Here's Feldman:

As of 8pm tonight, wearing a mask in public places around other people who are also wearing masks is both forbidden and required by New York law. I'm sure the police will enforce these contradictory mandates in a completely rational & nondiscriminatory fashion.

Here's the law that's still on the books while the governor is mandating mask-wearing:

Being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised, or knowingly permits or aids persons so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place;  except that such conduct is not unlawful when it occurs in connection with a masquerade party or like entertainment if, when such entertainment is held in a city which has promulgated regulations in connection with such affairs, permission is first obtained from the police or other appropriate authorities…

Perhaps the swiftest (or at least most entertaining) resolution would be for Governor Cuomo to issue an executive order declaring the entire state a "masquerade party" until the COVID-19 threats subsides. It might be the best thing for Cuomo himself, who appears to have run afoul of the law by "knowingly permitting or aiding persons so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place."

Given the law's origins, maybe it's time to take it off the books. Unlike others in the nation targeting KKK members, this one was a response to the "Anti-Rent War" in which protests by tenants culminated in a battle between anti-renters and local law enforcement. Some protesters disguised themselves as Indians, leading to the anti-mask ordinance. Rent is a pretty hot topic at the moment, what with 22 million Americans now unemployed. With planned rent strikes on the way in New York City, the new mask mandate is likely to run head on into the state's anti-mask law once law enforcement arrives on the scene.

A mask-wearing mandate coupled with an anti-mask law is selective enforcement just waiting to happen. And if it's anything like the last few hundred years of selective law enforcement, it will be minorities who pay the price for conflicting messages. We've already seen this happening elsewhere in the nation, where social distancing mandates are being enforced against minorities who throw parties but ignored when a bunch of white people decide stay-at-home orders violate their god-given right to act as attack vectors during a pandemic. Leaving it up to police officers to decide whether a person wearing a mask is a compliant citizen or a lawbreaker is going to result in a lot of blown judgment calls.

Filed Under: andrew cuomo, anti-mask law, covid-19, executive order, mask mandate, masks, new york