Bye, bye, Bill (not that one)

From NBC:

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton is stepping down as the city's top cop and will be replaced by Chief of Department James O'Neill in September, Mayor de Blasio announced Tuesday.
De Blasio lauded the commissioner's contributions to New York City since taking over the job in January 2014 and praised the man who will replace him, a veteran cop with more than 30 years on the force who grew up in the city and whose experience he said will advance the work of neighborhood policing.

Under Bratton, the city already has made plans to shift toward that strategy, one predicated on building trust and working relationships between police and communities. O'Neill has been heavily involved in those efforts, and de Blasio said neighborhood policing would be in place in 51 precincts as of this fall.

College Point police academy officially opened

From PIX11:

For years mayors have proposed a new police academy for the city’s 35,000 uniformed officers.

The current facility in Gramercy, which opened in 1964, is a tattered mess.

So on the eve of his third term in office, Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly broke ground on a new academy in College Point, Queens.

Current NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio cut the ribbon on the sprawling state-of-the art 30-acre facility.

"We’ve already outgrown it. We’ve outgrown it because of our commitment to training," Bratton said.

"We have five strategies in the NYPD, that are going to guide going forward – dealing with terrorism, tackling crime, rebuilding trust in our communities, acquiring hundreds of millions of dollars in the latest technology – but is all built on the foundation that this building represents – training."

The 750,000 square foot building has mock scenarios of what goes on — on real city streets.

There are simulated precincts, courtrooms, city streets, and businesses.

Gangs responsible for 40% of murders in NYC

From the Daily News:

Along with the mass killers and rifle-toting terrorists who are driving the nation’s gun debate are New York’s own gangbangers, who are behind the triggers of nearly half the city’s shootings, officials said.

And when gunplay across the five boroughs turns deadly, gang members are quite often responsible, accounting for 130, or 40%, of the city’s murders this year, police said.

It’s not just the traditional beefs over drugs or money, cops said. Crews are calling each other out over the smallest of slights or — worse yet — the belief that shooting someone will turn a boy into a man.

“It’s a fearsome reality: violence for its own sake,” Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told the Daily News. “The gun has come to define manhood for these young men, and the willingness to use it has become a rite of passage.”

Killings by gangs or crews — smaller groups of young men who claim one or two blocks as their turf — are expected to be slightly higher this year than in 2014, although cops were still tallying the numbers, police sources said.

As of Dec. 6, the 324 murders in the city represented a 5.5% increase over the 307 homicides committed by the same date last year. The number of shootings as of Dec. 6 was 1,061, a 3.2% decrease from the 1,296 committed in the same time frame in 2014. Overall serious crime is down 2.4% citywide.

The News obtained data from the NYPD’s Gang and Juvenile Justice divisions and used it to create maps showing where gangs and crews operate in the city. There are about 375 citywide, mostly clustered around housing projects.

Map is here.

DeBlasio a no show for murdered cop's street renaming

From PIX 11:

44-year-old Todd Cardillo flew up from Florida for a second, NYPD ceremony honoring his slain father this year — and, for a second time, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio did not attend an event designed to “right a wrong” from more than 43 years ago when former Mayor John Lindsey failed to attend the 1972 funeral for Patrolman Phillip Cardillo, who was fatally shot in a racially-charged incident at a Harlem mosque.

Mayor de Blasio was traveling in Israel this past weekend, and when PIX11 asked Commissioner Bratton about the current mayor’s absence, Bratton responded, “You’ll have to ask the mayor that, he received an invitation.”

The mayor's office issued the following statement on his absence at the renaming:

“The Mayor is grateful to Patrolman Phillip Cardillo and his family for giving the ultimate sacrifice to New York City in his efforts to protect our city’s residents. The Mayor has also been honored to attend street renamings for officers who have died in the line of duty during his administration."

Commissioner Bratton took pains to apologize for a climate, on April 14, 1972, that led police officials to let 16 suspects leave the mosque, as the crime scene where Cardillo’s blood was spilled was cleaned up by Nation of Islam mosque members.

“It was a shame then, and it’s a shame now,” Bratton said, standing at a podium outside the NYPD’s new Police Academy in College Point, Queens, where a portion of 28th Avenue was about to be renamed Patrolman Phillip Cardillo Way. “It was wrong to give politics jurisdiction over an active crime scene. It was wrong that neither the then-mayor nor police commissioner attended Phil’s funeral. It was wrong to let political pressure interfere with a murder investigation.”

Homeless to be booted from subway

From CBS:

New York City’s top cop has a tough strategy for dealing with the homeless who try to catch some shut-eye on trains, CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported.

“Subways are not for sleeping, and I wish we could have people understand that,” Bratton said.

As the mercury plummets and the homeless find it might be just a tad too cold to bathe in the fountains in Columbus Circle — as was seen in photos that surfaced in July — or sleep on the streets, the police commissioner wants the homeless to know they should go to city shelters, not the subway.

“Subways are not homeless shelters, and the homeless will not be allowed to congregate in them,” Bratton said. “The city has more than adequate shelters in other facilities.”

As the NYPD begins training thousands of cops to deal with the homeless, Bratton made it clear he doesn’t even want the homeless on station platforms.

“The homeless will not be allowed to take up residence on the platforms or on the subway cars,” he said.

The city said it’s doing all it can to find places for the homeless who want to take up residence on the city’s mass transit system.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio said that since July 2014, the city has “moved 773 chronically homeless individuals from the subway into transitional and permanent housing as well as to shelter and other programs. We continue to add case managers and clinicians to assist those on our streets.”

NYPD taking police away from NYCHA projects

From the Daily News:

Tenants at four housing developments in northern Queens — including the Queensbridge Houses, the nation’s largest — are furious about plans to eliminate an NYPD command assigned specifically to those projects.

They say the 158 officers from Public Service Area 9 have established strong community ties and worked to dramatically cut crime in the developments that house 17,800 people. The housing cops will be reassigned to the local precinct, according to documents obtained by the Daily News.

Residents were baffled, arguing that the switch runs counter to Police Commissioner Bill Bratton’s focus on “community policing.”

“Why reinvent the wheel?” asked Queensbridge Tenant Association President April Simpson-Taylor. “Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bratton are always talking about building relationships with the police. We have a great relationship with the police. And now that we have it, they want to take it away?”

This week's de Blasio leadership summary

He's giving up on banning horse carriages.

He's removing pedestrian plazas in Times Square to prevent bad behavior (but the one on Northern Blvd is still apparently a go).

He's sending Willets Point back to the drawing board. (Which is kinda interesting, because as public advocate, he thought the plan was just fine.)

What do you think of these decisions? Good? Bad? Spineless? Is he learning when to hold em, fold em, walk away and run?

More police in new budget

From the Daily News:

The mayor and the City Council are close to announcing a budget deal that will include funding for more cops, sources told the Daily News.

The final number will likely be smaller than the 1,000 that the council — over the objections of Mayor de Blasio — had been pushing for, said one source.

"It's not going to be the thousand, but we believe it's going to be a good number," the source said.

The issue of increasing headcount in the department, which the council believes is needed to combat a rise in shootings, was one of the major sticking points in tense budget talks, said the source.

Although the mayor had repeatedly said he was happy with the NYPD headcount as it is, the council wouldn’t budge on the issue in budget talks, said sources.

A separate source said the mayor's decision to add more cops came after negotiations with NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, who also wanted more officers.

Bratton agreed to cost-cutting measures the mayor had been calling for - like reducing overtime - in order to pay for more staff, the source said.

"Summer All Out" campaign will target high crime areas

From the Daily News:

Hundreds of cops will flood city streets beginning Monday as part of an aggressive NYPD initiative called “Summer All Out” to stanch the rise in murders and shootings.

More than 330 new police officers will take to some of the city’s grittiest blocks and precincts in an effort to bring this year’s homicide statistics back in line with last year’s historic lows.

The officers taking part in the crimefighting program will be assigned to work peak crime shifts — 4 p.m. to midnight and midnight to 8 a.m. — in areas like the 75th Precinct in East New York, Brooklyn (11 homicides through May 31), the 67th Precinct in East Flatbush, Brooklyn (seven homicides), and the 113th Precinct in St. Albans and Hollis, Queens (seven homicides).

They will also concentrate on public housing developments with the highest crimes rates.

NYPD needs more officers to fight ISIS

From PIX11:

The New York Police Department and other law enforcement agencies around the nation are increasing their surveillance of ISIS supporters in the U.S., in part to aid the FBI which is struggling to keep up with a surge in the number of possible terror suspects, according to law enforcement officials.

The change is part of the fallout from the terrorist attack in Garland, Texas earlier this month. The FBI says two ISIS supporters attempted a gun attack on a Prophet Mohammad cartoon contest but were killed by police. One of the attackers, Elton Simpson, was already under investigation by the FBI but managed to elude surveillance to attempt the foiled attack.

FBI Director James Comey told a group of police officials around the country in a secure conference call this month that the FBI needs help to keep tabs on hundreds of suspects.

As a result, some police agencies are adding surveillance teams to help the FBI monitor suspects. Teams of NYPD officers trained in surveillance are now helping the FBI’s surveillance teams to better keep track of suspects, law enforcement officials say.

NYPD Commissioner William Bratton has said he wants to add 450 officers to the force’s counterterrorism unit, partly to counter the increasing domestic threat posed by ISIS sympathizers.

Settling warrants by dismissing them

From the Daily News:

The de Blasio administration may give amnesty to some of the 1.2 million New Yorkers with outstanding arrest warrants for low-level offenses like drinking in public or disorderly conduct, a report said Sunday.

Under a plan being discussed, those with unresolved warrants would first receive a notification to let them know that they could be arrested. If they come forward, the cases could be tossed, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said.

City Council wants to decriminalize certain offenses

From CBS 2:

Turnstile jumping and public urination are still expected to be treated as crimes warranting an arrest, but a host of minor offenses such as drinking in public are expected to be treated administratively rather than criminally.

The changes would come under planned adjustments to the city’s quality of life laws being worked out by Mayor Bill de Blasio, police Commissioner Bill Bratton, and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, sources said.

The last line of this report is classic. Why ask for ID? Use the honor system!

Council looking to decriminalize quality-of-life crimes

From the Daily News:

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s office is working on a proposal that would make some of the most common criminal court summonses civil charges instead. Violators would get a ticket to one of the city’s administrative courts, such as the Environmental Control Board, instead of criminal court. Cops could no longer make arrests for those offenses, and missed court dates would turn into default monetary judgments instead of warrants.

Bratton appears cool to the idea, saying people wouldn’t take a civil ticket seriously.

A Daily News analysis shows the seven offenses that would be sent to one of the city’s administrative civil courts under the Mark-Viverito plan account for roughly 2.7 million, or 42%, of the summonses issued by the NYPD between 2001 and June 2014. They also account for more than 510,000 open arrest warrants, according to the analysis of data provided by the state Office of Court Administration.

The seven offenses under consideration are public consumption of alcohol, public urination, bicycling on the sidewalk, being in a park after dark, failure to obey a park sign, littering and unreasonable noise. The offenses under consideration for decriminalization are under the city’s administrative code — not the state penal code — making it possible to amend them without state approval, officials said.

Public urination and open container are the only two minor offenses for which fines can be paid by mail. But Lancman said many people have reservations about allowing people to simply pay online for criminal court summonses because they’d essentially be pleading guilty to a violation or, in some cases, a misdemeanor without having an attorney present.

“When it’s a civil offense we don’t have any problem letting people pay online or by mail without having to show up at all ... that would almost certainly mean you’d have a higher percentage of people paying a fine,” Lancman said.

He said that in criminal summons court, roughly half the people don’t show up, and of the people who do show up and are assessed a fine, a quarter of them don’t pay.

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.

The NYPD's questionable no-bid contract

From the NY Post:

The NYPD is poised to issue a no-bid contract to a Martha’s Vineyard-based firm who’s boss is a pal of Bill Bratton who worked with the police commissioner when he was a private consultant, records show.

The department plans to sign the deal with Strategic Policy Partnerships to fulfill Bratton and Mayor de Blasio’s mandate to fix community policing in the wake of the Eric Garner case.

The firm would help high-ranking officers mend community relations and enhance cadet training among other tasks, according to a Dec. 19 notice in the City Record, the city’s official publication for procurements.

The consulting firm is run by Bratton friend Robert Wasserman. Bratton — who ran his own law-enforcement consulting firm, the Bratton Group, before taking over the NYPD’s top job last January — raked in more than $53,000 while working with Wasserman on a contract with the Baltimore Police Department in 2013.

Their firms also worked together as law-enforcement consultants in Oakland, Calif., where Bratton earned $125,000.

Last year, Wasserman’s firm had a contract “involving the transition of the Bratton administration in 2014” that was funded through the nonprofit Police Foundation, according to NYPD Deputy
Commissioner Stephen Davis.

But the new contract will be with the NYPD and will be paid for by taxpayers.

The NYPD refused to disclose the amount of the contract, and Police Foundation President Susan Birnbaum did not return calls.

Thousands more cops defy Bratton order to be nice

From CBS New York:

Thousands of NYPD officers turned their backs Sunday as they watched Mayor Bill de Blasio eulogize an officer shot dead with his partner, repeating a stinging display of scorn for the mayor despite entreaties from the police commissioner not to do so.

The show of disrespect came outside the Brooklyn funeral home where Officer Wenjian Liu was remembered as an incarnation of the American dream: a man who had immigrated at age 12 and devoted himself to helping others in his adopted country. The gesture, among officers watching the mayor’s speech on a screen, added to tensions between the mayor and rank-and-file police even as he sought to quiet them.

Really, the only speaker worth listening to is Officer Liu's wife.

Protesters not interested in calming down

From Epoch Times:

A coalition of activists issued a scathing statement Monday, addressed to NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton and police union leader Patrick Lynch.

The letter, signed by over a dozen grass-roots organizations, including Black Lives Matter and Brooklyn Movement Center, charges the NYPD with attempting to silence the protests of those “seeking justice for victims of police violence,” as well as “reckless attempts to conflate constitutionally protected protest activities with the tragic murders of officers Ramos and Liu.”

On Monday, de Blasio and Bratton held a press conference inside the police department’s Manhattan headquarters, asking that protesters put on hold their demonstrations against police brutality in the wake of Garner and Brown’s deaths. For weeks, they have marched through city streets and staged peaceful protests to call for reforms in how police interact with communities of color.

“Let’s just focus on the families and what they have lost. I think that’s the right way to move toward building a more unified and decent city,” said de Blasio.

“We’ve responded by meeting in our homes, offices, and school—and walking out of them, with our hands up. Thousands of others have organized small actions that when woven together have tremendous impact. The problem isn’t the diverse voices that participate in dissent, a cornerstone of our democracy,” the letter stated.

The activists asked those “who stand on the side of justice to join us.”

While there have been a number of vigils held for the police officers by protesters in the last few days, today saw the continuation of protests against police use of force. A group of youth protest leaders in New York rallied in Union Square on Monday. Another group intends to hold a press conference Tuesday announcing plans for a New Year’s Eve protest.

Boy, this guy just can't make anyone happy lately.

Precinct lines to stay as is

From DNA Info:

Two precincts currently patrol Roosevelt Avenue through Corona, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights — the 115th on the north side, and the 110th on the south side.

Sen. Jose Peralta sent a letter to Commissioner Bill Bratton in November requesting they redraw the lines and have just one precinct monitor both sides of the avenue, though he didn't specify which one.

"A dividing line running miles down the center of a busy street makes no sense and almost certainly stretches resources thin," Peralta wrote.

"It also makes it more difficult to institute community policing measures when smaller neighborhood enclaves are split in half."

Bratton replied days later saying the lines were fine as they are.

Should the NYPD dump "Broken Windows"?

From Huffington Post:

As outrage simmered in the hours before the release of the Ferguson verdict, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton made a rare public appearance to defend his Broken Windows policing philosophy. But his remarks brought controversy from those affected by aggressive policing.

"No conversation on urban crime is complete without the communities that are affected by [Bratton's] policing theory," said activist and Huffington Post contributor Josmar Trujillo, dressed in a snapback and "Fire Bratton Now" t-shirt on the sidewalk outside the event.

During Bratton's remarks, Trujillo and at least a dozen other activists stood to protest the abuse they say Bratton's policing has brought to targeted communities in New York City.

The appearance was Bratton's attempt to shore up Broken Windows policing against a rising tide of discontent. But the best he could muster was a skin-deep redefinition of the theory, even as he failed to respond to loud concerns from his constituents.

Speaking in NYU's opulent Vanderbilt Hall, Bratton celebrated the crime reductions of his previous NYPD tenure. But he glossed over the reality that nearly every American city experienced a decline over the same period - even without locking away historic numbers of residents.

And he ignored the topic of police reform, highlighted by the recent shooting death of Akai Gurley, until questioned by NYU Professor Rachel Barkow. Asked what measures could reduce wrongful deaths, he was reticent to promise swift reform, citing high costs for proposed body cameras and logistical delay in pairing rookies with experienced officers.

But most troubling was his disingenuous attempt to redefine Broken Windows, which is conventionally understood as aggressive enforcement of quality-of-life laws like "panhandling [and] disorderly behavior."

Bratton claimed that the meteoric growth in low-level arrests is actually driven by policing of serious crimes - he cited drunk driving and domestic violence as examples - rather than by arrests for sidewalk grilling and moving between train cars.

But that claim does not mesh with the facts - arrests for quality-of-life offenses have surged faster than any other crime.

Turnstile-hopping, considered by many police reform advocates to epitomize Broken Windows policing, accounts for more jail convictions than any other charge (excluding all drug possession charges combined). From Bratton's speech, the audience would not have known that between 2008 and 2013, turnstile arrests grew by 69%.

Do you believe police stats?

From the Daily News:

The city experienced the lowest crime rate in August, September and October since at least 1994, new statistics show.

Total crime, which focuses on the so-called seven majors — murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto — is down 7.9% for the last three months as compared to the same period last year, data reveal.

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the record lows are proof that both his liberal and conservative critics need to back off.

“The reality of this city is that the city is getting safer and it’s getting safer because the cops are focusing on what they do and by and large are not paying attention to the left or to the right, which is appropriate,” Bratton said.

The way I look at it, if the police are refusing to take reports (and we all know they are), you can't claim that crime is down. Not to mention how much unreported crime there is because the victim is fearful or what have you.

Is the city safer than it was during the crack epidemic? Yes.

Is it safer than it was 10 years ago? I doubt it.