NYPD Officers Are Again Whining About Being Asked To Document Their Biased Policework

from the cry-harder,-cop dept

The New York Police Department is complaining about having to do work again. The New York Post reports officers are unhappy that they're required to do a little bit more paperwork for every stop, regardless of whether the stop results in a citation or arrest.

NYPD cops will soon have to start recording the race, gender and age of every person they pull over during a vehicle stop — even cyclists, The Post has learned.

From Jan. 1, officers will be required to fill out a new form that notes the demographics of the person driving the vehicle or bike, and whether any police action was taken against them, according to an internal order obtained by The Post.

The forms have to be filled out even if no law enforcement action is taken.

This is nothing more than the logical next step for a department that has repeatedly shown it engages in biased policing. Years of lawsuits over its stop-and-frisk program resulted in a court-ordered mandate to collect demographic information on stop-and-frisk encounters. The NYPD complained about the extra work when this was ordered in 2013. Then it spent the next half-decade refusing to comply with it.

Another mandate followed, demanding the collection of information on all stops, which would seemingly include any stop, even those not conducted on foot. The NYPD wasn't any happier with the new mandate and one of its unions claimed that recording demographic information would result in fewer stops and less policing.

That attitude remains unchanged three years later. The NYPD has been given another mandate and officers are once again claiming they're just not going to do it. Their rationale for failing to comply with direct orders? People might find out NYPD officers are engaged in biased policing.

But an NYPD officer with more than two decades on the job said it is just a “recipe for disaster.”

“As an officer, I’m definitely going to think twice about pulling anyone over. That’s the first thing they’re going to look at how many black and Hispanic people you pulled over,” the cop said.

The officer added that some cops were already hesitant to stop people — and the additional paperwork would just deter them even more.

The PR spin by the NYPD implies something different than the opinions offered by the rank-and-file:

“We are complying with the requirements of Local Law 45 of 2021,” an NYPD spokesman said.

But it's not a complete rebuttal. It is possible to comply with the requirements while also engaging in fewer stops of drivers and bicyclists. It sets the stage for the NYPD to blame any rise in crime rates on demographic tracking requirements, rather than step up and discipline officers for refusing to comply with the order or do their jobs. Chances are good no officers will be punished for refusing to do either of these things.

And, once again, a police union is there to blame everything on everyone else, rather than suggest officers do their best to comply with the mandate. Here's Police Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch, railing against everyone else who isn't a cop refusing to their job.

“They passed bill after bill to further the anti-police narrative, but did absolutely nothing to help us curb the bloodshed in our neighborhoods,” he said. “The incoming Council needs to refocus their priorities. Instead of new paperwork, we need meaningful support to get violent criminals off the street.”

I'm not sure what the NYPD is incapable of accomplishing with a $10 billion annual budget, but city officials have agreed to a $465 million increase for 2022. That suggests there's at least a half-billion in "meaningful support" headed its way and that the city council isn't just engaging in an anti-cop narrative. This just sounds like cops who don't want the public to be better informed about how this $10 billion/year is being spent.

If cops are afraid of engaging in any policing because of a fear of it being interpreted as biased policing, perhaps they should direct their anger at the decades of biased policing that led to these mandates. The culture of the department could have been changed at any time. Instead it took court orders and new laws to force the NYPD to confront its own racism. Now that it has to, officers are deciding they'd rather not be forced to look in the mirror.

Filed Under: bias, nypd, police, racism, transparency

Institute For Justice Survey Shows How Philadelphia's Forfeiture Program Preyed On Poor Minorities

from the I-guess-the-gov't-feels-minorities-just-haven't-been-oppressed-enough dept

The Institute for Justice managed to kill off most of Philadelphia's severely abused civil forfeiture program in 2018. Litigation resulted in a consent decree that banned law enforcement from seizing cash amounts less than $250 and seizures of less than $1,000 were forbidden unless accompanied by criminal charges or if the seizure was to be used as evidence in a trial.

This consent decree was necessary because the Philly PD had abused the system for years, taking minute amounts of cash off anyone they arrested as part of a catch-and-release program where alleged criminals were free to go but the PD held onto the cash. Officers were also caught buying seized houses at auction, flipping them to turn a profit, and incentivizing even more bogus property seizures.

Of course, the PD took the "evidence" loophole and ran with it, seizing vehicles as supposedly instrumental to prosecutions that never happened before auctioning them off and pocketing the money.

The Institute for Justice has doubled back on the impetus of its lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia, surveying victims of forfeiture programs and coming up with plenty of reasons why residents should be thrilled these programs are now (mostly) dead.

Its report [PDF] on Philly forfeiture surveyed 407 residents, resulting in data that shows the PD targeted minorities frequently and poor minorities most frequently of all.

The demographic characteristics of Philadelphia forfeiture victims look quite different from those of Philadelphians overall. Figure 1 disaggregates the racial and ethnic makeup of the sample, showing the large majority of respondents were Black. Indeed, as Figure 2 shows, Philadelphia forfeiture victims are more likely to be Black than the general population. They are also more likely to earn lower incomes and be unemployed and less likely to have a college degree or own their homes. These results suggest Philadelphia’s civil forfeiture machine disproportionately entangled members of disadvantaged communities.

This is partly a result of biased policing efforts, which continues to be a problem for law enforcement everywhere, not just in Philadelphia. But targeting low income residents also ensured the Philly PD would be more likely to retain ownership of seized property. Residents making less than $50,000 a year had lower amounts taken from them and often lacked the funds to seek their property's return. With legal fees approaching $3,500 for a successful return effort, most chose to simply walk away from the forfeited property, rather than spend time and money they didn't have fighting against a system designed to deter them from retrieving seized property.

When it comes to forfeiture in Philadelphia, no job is too small:

Police seized as little as $25 in cash, a cologne gift set worth $20 and crutches.

As the report points out, the median value for seized property was just $600. More than 50% of seizures were amounts less than $600. Nearly 70% were for less than $2,000. Less than one-quarter were for more than $3,000 -- an amount that might turn a legal battle for the return of property into a breakeven effort.

But even the initial step in recovering property was often bypassed by the city. You can't try to reclaim property if there's no record of the police taking it from you -- something police officers appear to have used to their advantage.

More than half of respondents—58%—never received a receipt for their property at the time of seizure, and two thirds did not receive any information from police about how to begin the process of getting their property back. A simple receipt may not sound like much in the grand scheme of the complex civil forfeiture process, but people who received a receipt at the time of seizure were eight times more likely to get their property back than those who did not.

As for the argument that confiscating cologne sets and crutches is essential to fighting crime, the stats don't back that up. In most cases, forfeitures were completely removed from criminal convictions or even criminal charges.

Of those respondents who ultimately lost their property to forfeiture, more than half (56%) were never charged with a crime, and three-quarters were never found guilty of any wrongdoing—that is, they were not convicted of a crime, nor did they enter into any sort of plea deal with the court.

As we've covered extensively at Techdirt, abusive forfeiture programs aren't unique to Philadelphia. They're everywhere. It's only in recent years that legislators have decided to do something about abuses entities like the Institute of Justice have highlighted, reported on, and sued about for years. Things are changing for the better in many places, but more work still needs to be done to push cops back to earning their money honestly, rather than just taking stuff because they can.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, bigotry, civil asset forfeiture, legalized theft, philadelphia, poverty, racism
Companies: institute for justice

Texas Legislature Says You Can't Teach About Racism In Schools, But Social Media Sites Must Host Holocaust Denialism

from the these-things-might-be-connected dept

Everything is bigger in Texas, even the act of unconstitutional spitting on the 1st Amendment. We've already talked about the blatantly unconstitutional bill, HB20, that picks up where Florida's already-declared-unconstitutional bill leaves off, and makes it even worse. Well, that bill was voted on Friday and Texas Republicans approved it by a vote of 76 to 44.

But, as Adam Kovacevich noted on Twitter, some Democratic legislators wanted to make sure that the Republicans supporting such a gross infringement of the 1st Amendment were on the record for what they supported. So they introduced amendments to carve out the "must carry" rules for Holocaust denialism, terrorist content, and vaccine disinformation. And Republicans made sure to reject all three amendments, thereby explicitly admitting that with their bill they want to make sure that websites are forced to carry vaccine disinformation, terrorist content, and Holocaust denialism.

Now, to be clear, all three of those things are (mostly) protected under the 1st Amendment. But so is the right for a website to remove them and not be associated with them. Anyway, 73 Texas legislators said that websites should not be able to takedown "vaccine misinformation." Literally, that's what they voted against:

And, reading the amendment on terrorist content, it appears that no website will be allowed to remove ISIS-promoting content any more, which is an interesting choice by Texas Republicans.

And then there's the Holocaust denialism bit. Social media sites will have to include it as well. I'm kind of surprised that the legislators introducing this amendment didn't also do one explicitly about "critical race theory." Now that really would have tested things. After all, this very same Texas legislature that, earlier this year, passed an equally unconstitutional bill that says teachers in Texas can't openly talk about America's racist past.

And, I guess that is at least consistent. You must post stuff denying the holocaust, but suggesting that there is systemic bigotry? Well, that's beyond the pale.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, content moderation, critical race theory, free speech, hb20, holocaust denial, racism, social media, terrorists, texas

Violent, Bigoted Cop Accused Of Beating Another Cop Is Upset His Text Messages Expose Him As A Violent Bigot

from the petard-toting-mfers-getting-themselves-hoisted dept

Lawyers for a cop accused of beating an undercover cop during a 2017 protest are pretty angry prosecutors have let the public know just what kind of bigoted dirtbag the indicted officer is.

St. Louis police officer Dustin Boone -- along with four other officers -- attacked undercover officer Luther Hall. Boone is white. Detective Hall is black. This is relevant information, even if Boone's lawyers are claiming his texts -- which contain plenty of bigotry -- aren't. Boone's legal rep is seeking to have prosecutors sanctioned for bringing Boone's texts to his prosecution.

Boone's attorney, Patrick Kilgore, argues in a court filing that the now-public information is "inflammatory, irrelevant, and highly prejudicial" and disclosing them violates a judge's order to file much of the information under seal. He notes that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote about the texts and other information from the prosecutors' filing and claims it could taint the jury pool and keep Boone from receiving a fair trial.

They're definitely "inflammatory." How could they not be? These are former officer Boone's own words. And they seem relevant as they make it pretty clear how easily a bigot like Boone could "mistake" a black undercover officer for a protester in need of a beating. Here's Boone in a group text [PDF] to other St. Louis police officers a few months prior to the beating he's now facing charges for:

It's already a state of emergency! There are r niggers running wild all across the city and even if/when we catch them..... they don't get in any trouble because there are plate lips running the CAO!

Here's what the CAO reference means:

CAO is apparently a reference to the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office, which is under the supervision of the city's first Black circuit attorney, Kim Gardner.

That's not the only one containing the n-word. This term was used in a group text to "Kayla, Kelsea, Mom, Ashley Marie, Dad" that reads:

What city r we in?

These fuckin niggers r the same as St. Louis niggers.

So, the lawyer for this lovely person wants these texts tossed and prosecutors sanctioned for introducing "highly prejudicial" information. And, to be fair, it will certainly make jurors feel things about Boone that they likely wouldn't have felt without them. But is it too unfair? It certainly seems relevant -- not just because of how Boone apparently views black people, but because it also shows how gleefully he participated in the beating of a fellow officer.

Prosecutors say that Boone hooked his phone on his uniform and livestreamed Hall's beating for Ditto. The hour-long video wasn't saved, but prosecutors say Ditto's messages back and forth with Boone prove that she watched what happened — and that Boone was involved. Afterward, Ditto wrote "That was SOOOOOO COOL!!!!"

Perhaps the most memorable part of this exchange (other than Boone's sudden contrition after the news came out he had beaten an undercover detective) is his girlfriend's response to the beating. Everyone tells you "just comply" with cops' orders if you don't want to get hurt. Here's a civilian take, and it's a good one considering it's from someone who was in a personal relationship with a cop:

But damn you guys need to practice more. Even I was confused. One guy was sayin HANDS DOWN, HANDS DOWN.

Next dude saying HANDS UP.

Then HANDS DOWN, HANDS DOWN, GET YOUR FUCKIN HANDS UP.

And that's not the end of the disturbing communications. There are multiple texts celebrating excessive force use -- including Boone's efforts to ensure these beatings weren't captured by nearby CCTV cameras or bystanders. There's a text suggesting Boone stole money from a crime scene. There's a whole string of texts detailing he and his fellow officers' abuse of prescription drugs like Adderall and Concerta.

Here's his recommendation to fellow officer Kyle Santa who was asking on behalf of another police officer.

Depends on if he wants to feel like he feels like seeing in HD and making night turn into day (adderall) or if he just wants to feel a really really focused white guy (concerta). Adderall is essentially cocaine base in a compressed pill form……. It's pretty special. It makes u chew on ur tongue and like ur lips like a crack head and u can't stop talking for the first 8 hours. It is also nearly impossible to get drunk AND cures hangovers in a matter of 11 minutes.

Sure, I can see why Boone's lawyer wants these messages kept out of court. They make his client look like a violent, racist drug addict. That's certainly not going to help -- not when his lawyer is trying to clear him of charges related to the violent beating of a black man… one that Boone seemingly would never have regretted if the beating victim hadn't turned out to be a fellow officer.

Even if Boone's lawyer manages to get these texts tossed and the prosecutors sanctioned, they'll hopefully be enough to prevent Dustin Boone from ever wearing a badge again. And it should serve as a wakeup call for all the officers he worked with -- the ones who ignored his violence, racism, and drug abuse until he made the only unforgiveable mistake: beating up another cop.

Filed Under: dustin boone, luther hall, police, police brutality, racism, st. louis, text messages

It's Time To Start Dismantling One Of The Nation's Oldest Racist Institutions: Law Enforcement

from the Blue-Line-flags-are-pretty-much-Confederate-flags-tbh dept

For as long as cops have been poorly-behaved, people have talked about defunding the police. This talk has gotten louder in recent years and almost deafening in recent weeks as protests over police brutality erupted around the nation in the wake of the George Floyd killing.

But what does it mean to defund the police? In most cases, it doesn't mean getting rid of police departments. It means taking some of the millions spent on providing subpar law enforcement and spreading it around to social services and healthcare professionals to steer people trained to react with violence away from people who would be better served with social service safety nets or interventions by people trained to handle mental health crises.

Those opposed to defunding police departments (that's most police officials and officers) say it can't be done without ushering in a criminal apocalypse. Police departments demand an inordinate amount of most cities' budgets but law enforcement officials refuse to agree money should be steered away from them even as cities prepare to redirect some calls cops normally handle to other city services.

Cops believe they're the "thin blue line" between order and chaos. They believe they're the only thing standing between good people and criminals. But that's just something they say to make themselves feel better about the babysitting and clerical work that consumes most of their working hours. Josie Duffy Rice's excellent article about the long racist history of American law enforcement brings the receipts. What's standing between us and supposed chaos is barely anything at all.

New Orleans has the fourth highest murder rate in the nation but clears only 35 percent of homicide cases. In 2018, the city’s police cleared only 2 percent of all rapes. The country at large isn’t much better. Last year, the Washington Post launched an investigation into murder clearance rates in 50 cities over the course of 10 years. The results were bracing. “Despite a nationwide drop in violence to historic lows,” the Post reported, “34 of the 50 cities have a lower homicide arrest rate than a decade ago.” In St. Louis, during the period the Post studied, it calculated that 54 percent of all homicides resulted in no arrest. In Baltimore, during the period it studied, the Post calculated that only 35 percent of all homicides resulted in an arrest. In Chicago the rate was 26 percent. The “line” isn’t just thin and blue—it’s porous and arbitrary.

What was a handy way to keep slaves (and then former slaves) in line evolved into the law enforcement community we have today. We may no longer send out police officers to round up slaves but we do allow a bunch of racist garbage data to decide where they should focus their efforts. Predictive policing is impossible to differentiate from the low-tech policing of yesteryear. In both cases, enforcement efforts focus on poor residents and minorities.

And, like employees everywhere in every business, far too many cops look for the path of least resistance. Meaningful busts that actually reduce criminal activity are the exception. Low-level BS busts are better. They kill time, look busy, and turn citizens into junk content for the justice system. Clickbait churn but for human beings.

It's the sort of thing that led to Charleston resident Henry Earl becoming a late night talk show punchline and the subject of nationwide ridicule. Earl was arrested more than 1,500 times -- almost always for public intoxication. Every two or three days, cops would pick up Earl and toss him in jail for three to five days. This happened over and over again for fifty years. And for what? What was the societal net gain of arresting the same man 1,500 times for a low-level violation? Well, it kept the cops paid and they got to look like they were doing something to earn their paychecks.

This is how the "thin blue line" actually operates. And it bears no resemblance to the lofty statements they make in defense of their own profession. Most police work is busywork. But in this nation, the busywork tends to negatively affect certain people the most. This is the fact cops and law enforcement officials can't admit to themselves:

It would be at least honest if we said that enduring arbitrary harassing, beating, tasing, and strangulation by the state was the price of being “associated with reduction in violent crime relative to control areas.” That we don’t say this, and that we only imply it for certain classes of people, exposes the assumptions built into American policing. It’s those assumptions that, on the one hand, allow Henry Earl to be arrested more than a thousand times, and on the other offer a sporting chance for anyone who’d like to try their hand at murder or rape.

Given the history and the current state of policing, it makes sense to start stripping law enforcement down to its basic components and rebuild it to serve the public, rather than its own interests.

Filed Under: defund the police, law enforcement, police, racism