Stopping stop and frisk may have increased shootings

From AM-NY:

NYPD Commissioner William Bratton will speak publicly Monday about the latest downward crime trends in the city at a time when shootings continue to increase.

A persistent uptick in shootings has been one of the few troublesome crime trends facing Bratton since he took over as commissioner in January 2014. Police data show that shootings have increased around 17 percent so far this year over the same period last year, when the city reported an overall 6.3 percent increase in shootings.

Bratton has insisted the shootings are unrelated to the large drop in stop and frisk activity by cops. But the latest police data showed the New York City police precincts with the largest increases in shootings last year -- as well as, in a few cases, more homicides -- also reported having the lowest numbers of stop and frisks in 2014.

Council wants more cops

From the Daily News:

Disturbed by a recent spike in crime, the City Council Black, Latino and Asian Caucus pleaded with the mayor Monday to add 1,000 more cops to the NYPD.

Shootings have gone up 7% in the city through this week as compared with the same period last year, with much of the crime concentrated in neighborhoods with a large number of minorities — including the 47th Precinct in the northern Bronx.

This time last year, there had been one murder in the precinct. This year, there have been eight.

Earlier this month, Mayor de Blasio rejected a request by the City Council to hire more cops.

None of the Council members blamed the increases on the reduction of stop-and-frisk, a crime-fighting method that all opposed.

Appeals court upholds stop-and-frisk ruling

From the Village Voice:

The endless volley between Mayor Bloomberg and appeals courts is over: Friday morning a federal appellate court denied the city's motion to vacate U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin's ruling that stop-and-frisk is unconstitutional. The ruling detonates Bloomberg's last hope of overturning the ruling before Bill de Blasio takes office January 1.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the same three-judge panel that removed Scheindlin from the stop-and-frisk over partiality concerns, dropkicked the city's motions with a five-page opinion Friday morning.

Scheindlin ruled in August that stop-and-frisk was unconstitutional and imposed a serious of reforms on the NYPD aimed at curtailing the practice. But on October 31, the Second Circuit deemed that Scheindlin had acted partially, a decision based in part on the interviews she granted with the media in the weeks following the ruling.

On November 9, the city renewed its efforts to get out from under Scheindlin's ruling by filing a motion to vacate her decision. Today the Second Circuit said no.

Stop-and-frisk is back in business

From the Daily News:

In a shocking blow to critics of racial profiling and a win for Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD, a federal appeals court has halted the stop-and-frisk reforms ordered by a judge who ruled that aspects of the controversial policing policy were unconstitutional.

Mayoral front-runner Bill de Blasio, whose strident opposition to stop-and-frisk helped him win the Democratic nomination, blasted the turn of events.

"I'm extremely disappointed in today's decision," de Blasio said. "We shouldn't have to wait for reforms that both keep our communities safe and obey the Constitution. We have to end the overuse of stop-and-frisk, and any delay means a continued and unnecessary rift between our police and the people they protect."

The bombshell decree handed down Thursday by a three-judge panel delays the reforms, as requested by the city, until the appeals process is complete.

The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel also unexpectedly yanked Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin off the case, slamming statements she made in court and to the media as impartial and improper.

It was Scheindlin who in August ruled against the city and mandated the stop-and-frisk reforms, including an independent monitor for the NYPD.

The city almost immediately appealed the ruling and later requested a stay.

Blast from the past

Back in 2001 when this mailer went out, Mike Bloomberg made a big deal about putting an end to racial profiling. So much for that.

UPDATE: A federal judge has ruled stop-and-frisk unconstitutional.

What lame duck deputy mayors do with their time

From DNA Info:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg targeted Queens City Councilman Mark Weprin in retaliation for his support of two bills aimed at reining in the NYPD, sources told DNAinfo New York.

The two stop-and-frisk related measures, which passed the City Council last month, would allow people to sue the NYPD if they believe they were racially profiled and also creates an inspector general to oversee the department.

Bloomberg aide Howard Wolfson was “actively making the phone calls and making the last-ditch effort to find a viable candidate to run” against Weprin, said one Queens Republican insider.

The mayor’s office declined to comment.

But multiple sources on the ground in Queens confirmed that calls from Wolfson went out scouting for candidates who would use the mayor's considerable resources to run a campaign against Weprin.

Stop and frisk not as successful as thought

From the Daily News:

Stop-and-frisk has removed thousands of guns from the city’s streets — but the NYPD detained millions of innocent New Yorkers to find them.

A Columbia law professor testified Wednesday that just one gun was recovered for every thousand people stopped from 2004 through June 30, 2012.

“The NYPD hit rate is far less than what you would achieve by chance,” Jeffrey Fagan said in Manhattan Federal Court.

Testifying in the federal class-action lawsuit against the city and the NYPD’s controversial tactic, Fagan said his analysis of paperwork from 4.4 million stops found guns were confiscated at a rate of roughly one-tenth of 1 percent, or 5,940 firearms.

Knives and other contraband were nabbed in about 1.5% of stops, taking 66,000 weapons off the street, the professor said.

And 12% of the 4.4 million stops during that time period — roughly 528,000 — led to an actual arrest or a summons, Fagan said.

City Councilwoman Margaret Chin speaks as New York City women call on the NYPD to abandon the discriminatory procedure that a study shows yields few results.

And the rest were “just let go?” asked Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin.

“Yes, your honor,” Fagan replied.

Crowley forgets who slashed police force

From Elizabeth Crowley's Op-Ed in the NY Post:

More than 30 members of the City Council have co-sponsored the Community Safety Act, a set of bills designed to curb stop-and-frisks and alter NYPD policies. While it is indeed important to discuss ways of improving the NYPD, these bills neglect to examine a simple solution that will improve policing and keep us protected: Hire more cops.

...a larger force would make us safer — and greatly reduce the tensions that stops give rise to.

When Ray Kelly first served as police commissioner under Mayor David Dinkins, he promoted community policing that placed thousands more cops on the street — a policy continued by Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Community policing put officers in position to prevent crime and gave comfort to residents. The growth of the force that began under Dinkins put the NYPD’s ranks at nearly 41,000 under Guiliani — and brought a dramatic decrease in crime.

But since then Mayor Bloomberg has slashed more than 6,000 cops, including a 30 percent drop in detectives. We’re asking the NYPD to do more with less each year, even as it faces new responsibilities for counterterrorism and technology crime.

Mayor Bloomberg slashed 6,000 cops? I think Ms. Crowley has forgotten which branch of government is responsible for passing the budget every year. Just because the Mayor hands you a shit sandwich doesn't mean you have to eat it. But for the first time in NYC history, this Council, under the leadership of Christine Quinn, seems to think it does.

And if we're still debating whether or not stop-and-frisk works, then it probably doesn't. Not to mention that it's unconstitutional.

Also keep in mind that this Op-Ed was probably ghostwritten by Pat "Support it as a tool" Lynch, a "very close friend" of Liz Crowley.

New NYPD spying technology raises questions

From Metro:

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced that the NYPD is pursuing a controversial new technology in the war against illegal guns: body-scanning devices.

Kelly said the NYPD, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, is working to develop a tool capable of detecting concealed firearms.

The device can read radiation, or heat, emitted from a person’s body. The radiation does not travel through metal, allowing officers to “see” the outline of hidden weapons.

The NYPD is testing the new scanners, which currently only work from three to four feet away. Kelly said he’s hoping they will soon operate at a distance of more than 80 feet. Police will install the scanners onto NYPD vans to direct at suspects.

But some are concerned that the NYPD will abuse its new power. Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, sees the new technology as a double-edged sword.

“On the one hand, if technology like this worked as it was billed, New York City should see its stop-and-frisk rate drop by a half-million people a year,” said Lieberman. “On the other hand, the ability to walk down the street free from a virtual police pat-down is a matter of privacy.”

Bloomberg supports NYPD quotas

From the Village Voice:

In a July 2 letter obtained by the Voice, Mayor Bloomberg pleaded with Governor Paterson to veto a bill that broadened a ban on the use of quotas by Police Departments, and sought to prevent the NYPD from tying them to disciplinary action like transfers or shift changes.

The fascinating thing about this letter is that despite years of denials by the Police Department of the existence of quotas, Bloomberg all but admits that they indeed exist, and not just for tickets, but for arrests and, most controversially, for stop-and-frisks.

"The law defines a quota as a 'specific number of tickets...which are required to be issued within a specified period of time,'" Bloomberg writes. "The city finds the present law contrary to the effective management of public resources, and opposes in the strongest terms any expansion of this provision to include summonses or arrest activity for violation of any law or stops for suspected criminal activity."

The admission that there are quotas for stop-and-frisks is controversial because the practice is supposed to be done when an officer believes a crime has or is about to take place. In other words, they are supposed to be tied to conditions in the field, not some artificial number coming from police headquarters.

Bloomberg goes on to compare public sector quotas with private sector management goals. "For an employee whose function it is to issue parking tickets, a measurement clearly relevant to job performance is the number of summonses issued over the course of a reasonable period of time," he writes.

He closes by saying that the law could cause traffic and crime problems to increase. "By second-guessing the management of public safety agencies in their ability to measure arrest productivity and stop, question and frisk activity, the Legislature could cause fewer criminal arrests and summonses, more quality of life violations, more criminal activity, and actual injury to innocent victims," he writes.

Paterson, though, snubbed Bloomberg and allowed the bill to become law.

Another cop claims he was pressured to write tickets

From the Daily News:

A Bronx cop with an Ivy League degree is preparing to sue the city, claiming his failure to write tickets for 18 months led to a violent confrontation with his boss.

Officer Anthony Minoia says he was assigned to a one-block beat known in the 42nd Precinct as the "punishment post" after a bad evaluation.

The Columbia grad says the fact that he didn't write any tickets after that was not a protest against his boss, Deputy Inspector Timothy Bugge.

"I'm not going to pull out my summons book and write a summons because my boss is telling me he's going to make it difficult for me if I don't," said Minoia, 46, an Air Force vet. "I don't use my powers to make a deputy inspector get promoted."

Minoia is the latest cop to claim the pressure is on to write summonses, make arrests and do stop-and-frisks so commanders will look good at crime strategy meetings.

"I'm not going to give the bread deliveryman a ticket before going into the deli and telling him," he said. "I didn't forget what it was like to be a civilian before I got a badge."

Vallone wants to curtail stop-and-frisk

From NY1:

A Queens councilman is pushing for more privacy protection in the New York City Police Department's Stop and Frisk program.

Councilman Peter Vallone says it's wrong for police to maintain a database of people who were stopped and questioned, but not arrested or issued a summons.

Vallone, who heads the City Council's Public Safety Committee, has been exchanging letters with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly for the past few months.

Vallone says he supports the overall Stop and Frisk policy, but he thinks it's unfair for those who are stopped and let go to find their names held in a database for years. The councilman says the names should be systematically deleted after a certain period of time.

According to the New York Daily News, Kelly has no intention of removing the more than 500,000 names from the database -- and that a lawsuit required the NYPD to maintain the database.