Thursday, May 13, 2010

81st Precinct was over-aggressive

From the Village Voice:

In the summer of 2008, NYPD officers in Brooklyn's 81st Precinct embarked on an aggressive campaign to reduce crime by arresting citizens for doing no more than standing on certain street corners and building stoops.

This program emerges on the remarkable audio recordings the Voice began making public last week. Over a 17-month period ending in October 2009, police officer Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded conversations at Bedford-Stuyvesant's 81st Precinct, including 117 roll calls, during which superior officers like precinct commander Steven Mauriello can be heard instructing cops to arrest people for things like "blocking the sidewalk."

Supervisors told officers to make an arrest and "articulate" a charge later, or haul someone in with the intent of voiding the arrest at the end of a shift, or detain people for hours on minor charges like disorderly conduct—all for the purpose of getting citizens off the street. People were arrested for not showing identification, even if they were just a few feet from their homes. Mental health worker Rhonda Scott suffered two broken wrists during a 2008 arrest for not having her ID card while standing on her own stoop.

The precinct's campaign led to a 900 percent increase in stop-and-frisks in the neighborhood, which commanders demanded from officers in order to hit statistical quotas.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

It amazes me how they can go after people here who are citizens and legal immergints but they just drive by all the illegals!

Anonymous said...

Maspeth Mom says...

Its sounds like what Mayor Guiliani tried to accomlish - if you clean up the quality of life crimes the more serious crimes will slowly go down.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how old Rhonda Scott was. It seems that if you break two wrists while arresting someone you are either extremely violent, arresting cripples or grabbing the senior citizen set.

Anonymous said...

It amazes me how they can go after people here who are citizens and legal immergints but they just drive by all the illegals!
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Where in the article did it say that they drove past illegals?

Anonymous said...

So let's have video and audio feeds into every precinct when they do roll call.

How bitter can you be? Rudy Giuliani left office 9 years ago. When does Maspeth Mom think that Bloomberg owns this problem?

Anonymous said...

The big compstat dilemma:How can you have less crime but more arrests/ summonses?

Klink Cannoli said...

Bedford-Stuyvesant is such a lovely section of Brooklyn to call home.

Anonymous said...

The NYPD are a CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE. 95% of the arrests that are made are UNCONSITUTIONAL, unlawful and out right wrong.

The NYPD harbor some of the lowest forms of life on the planet.

This is just ONE of the 100 precincts that the NYPD have. I would love to hear some of the more malicious road calls that take place in other precincts.

Aren't quotas illegal?

Anonymous said...

Queens Officer on 74th Street are also resorting to such arbitrary and frivolous tickets. Without proper reasons the officers are doing overkill in this area and increased the policing multiple times with the area teeming with officers.