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Watch Ray Kelly And City Councilmember Lock Horns
By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 16, 2012
Modified Mar 16, 2012
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By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 16, 2012
Modified Mar 16, 2012
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Remember that "heated" and "combative" City Council meeting with Ray Kelly we told you about? Now there's video, thanks to Azi Paybarah at Capital New York. The video, which might as well be titled "Ray Kelly Being A D*ck," shows that tense moment in yesterday's hearing where Kelly refused to answer Councilmember Robert Jackson's question about NYPD spokesman Paul Browne's credibility. In case you can't make it out, Kelly's initial response is to mutter [SPOILER ALERT] "I won't even bother."
Capital New York has more greatest hits videos from yesterday's contentious hearing. Today, Councilmember Jumaane Williams, an outspoken critic of the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy, fired back at Kelly in an impassioned statement. Williams writes:
What my colleagues, members of the media and observers witnessed yesterday was a NYPD Commissioner on the defensive, forced to defend the fiscal and environmental consequences of unjust policing practices like the department’s use of stop, question and frisk. Faced with the legitimate concerns of council members, unfavorable polling data and statistics from his own department which call their policies into serious question, Commissioner Kelly alleged that there is no leadership coming from my colleagues or I on reducing violence in communities of more color.
As co-chair of the Task Force to Combat Gun Violence, which I and others had championed before its implementation, I find this laughable. No one is more committed to reducing violence in communities of more color than the members of those communities. We work closely with our local precincts, clergy councils and block associations to advocate for the best police coverage of our streets; by the way, that effort is hampered by a greater focus on overtime pay over hiring more patrolmen, an approach several of my colleagues called into question yesterday.
It is a false choice to have to decide between tackling gun violence and responding to improper policing that threatens basic civil liberties. In fact, dealing with both results in building better police-community relations, which are the bedrock of effective cooperation and safer streets. This is in direct contrast with the Commissioner’s stop, question and frisk policy, which he has failed to effectively prove correlates with shootings and homicides in our highest-risk precincts, based on his department’s own statistics.
That is real leadership, something Commissioner Kelly has failed to demonstrate on this crucial issue. Real leadership would be standing up and admitting that’s there more than concern over stop, question and frisk, but that there’s a serious problem. Real leadership would be meeting with young black and Latino New Yorkers and listening to their concerns. Real leadership would be advancing gun buyback programs, rather than deriding it as some sort of ‘chicken soup’; just one bowlful in my district last November produced more than 10% of all the guns recovered by almost 700,000 stop, question and frisks last year.
Real leadership would be de-emphasizing quotas, or ‘productivity goals’, and re-emphasizing good police work. Real leadership would be actually speaking with other city agencies like the Department for Youth and Community Development to discuss the relationship between violent crime and youth development; gun violence is a epidemic with multiple symptoms such as chronic poverty and underfunded youth services, and not addressing all of those symptoms in concert is senseless.
In the absence of Commissioner Kelly’s real leadership, my colleagues and I will continue to pursue meaningful reform that brings about safer streets for all New Yorkers, as opposed to discriminatory and lazy policing.
Tagged
City Council
nypd
paul browne
Ray Kelly
robert jackson
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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