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A conversation with author and NYPD whistleblower Edwin Raymond
By
Alison Stewart
and
Jordan Lauf
Published Nov 6, 2023
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By
Alison Stewart
and
Jordan Lauf
Published Nov 6, 2023
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When Edwin Raymond joined the NYPD in 2008, he was hopeful that he could take part in its mission “to enhance the quality of life in New York City by working in partnership with the community” in Brooklyn.
What he found instead was a police force that he claims prioritized arrest quotas over public safety, and was full of implicit bias.
An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America" by Edwin Raymond
Courtesy of Viking
For years, Edwin thought he could change things from within the system by refusing to go out of his way to arrest people for fare jumping or other minor infractions that could haunt someone for years, especially since he was only being encouraged to do so in primarily Black neighborhoods.
But he was passed up for a promotion to sergeant even after finishing eighth on the test out of 932 people, ostensibly because he wasn't meeting the arrest quotas expected of him.
So Raymond began recording interactions with superior officers, and even all the way up to some top brass. Those recordings became a key part of a bombshell New York Times Magazine piece: “A Black Officer's Fight Against the NYPD.”
Raymond also became a plaintiff alongside 11 other officers of color in a lawsuit alleging that supervising officers encouraged cops to meet arrest quotas and the policy targeted people of color.
Raymond retired from the force, ran for the City Council and has now written a new memoir with Jon Sternfeld, titled “An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America.”
He joined WNYC’s Alison Stewart on “All of It” to discuss his new book, what he thinks is wrong with policing in the city, and what he thinks of Mayor Eric Adams. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation. You can listen to their conversation here.
Stewart: You write, “the Brooklyn of my youth was a dangerous place.” You grew up in East Flatbush. What did you bear witness to as a kid?
Raymond: It was gunshots almost every night. Crack cocaine was still very prevalent, and everything that came with it: from the shootouts that would happen for territory to the violent crimes that those who are addicted would commit in order to support their habits.
But, being a kid, you don't realize what you're in. So it was also growing up in a community that was still coming together; it's a growing West Indian Caribbean neighborhood. And I still enjoyed my childhood as much as I could, despite the realities of also growing up very poor.
My mother passed away when I was only 3. My dad didn't work since I was 6. He didn't speak English and we didn't have public assistance. It was a rough childhood, but it was a beautiful childhood at the same time.
He had some profound mental health issues, which you describe very poignantly in the book. At one point you came back to the house, looked at the wall and realized it was covered with roaches. Like, he really wasn't taking care of himself. He really had some profound health issues.
Shortly after my mother passed away, he sent my brother and I to Florida to live with his brother, my uncle.
It was two short years, but it had been a lifetime, seeing the contrast to what we came back to. And this is all part of what was tough about growing up, but simultaneously fortified me to be the man I am today.
What was your view of cops when you were a kid?
One of the tasks that I had, being that my dad didn't speak English, is, I had to translate the news for him. So, we watched everything, including the show “Cops,” “America's Most Wanted,” et cetera.
I'd pretty much seen cops as the good guys that are here to protect us all. When I was in Florida, that's when the Rodney King situation happened and I was too young to fully understand what was going on.
So it wasn't until I was about 11 when Abner Louima happened, and it happened in Flatbush. Abner Louima was from Flatbush. He was also Haitian. That's the first time I questioned and said, “Woah, what's going on here?” Everyone was saying this guy was a church guy. It didn't even make sense for him to go through that. But I didn't really question the overall behavior of cops until that.
And two short years later, we had the Amadou Diallo shooting. And that's the one that made me really wake up and say “Woah! What is going on?” And then a year after that, I started getting stopped by cops and thrown on walls.
Who had the talk with you?
My dad. Immediately after Abner Louima, he explained, because of the body that you're in as a Black man, a young Black boy at the time, that society is not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. You have to work very hard.
He didn't use the term “success sequence,” but you can't afford to make any mistakes, especially because we're so poor. He had his criticisms about the United States, but he did see this as the land of opportunity. You follow these steps, you will be better than what you are now, and I listened, thankfully.
When did you first get the idea to maybe consider being a police officer?
It's crazy because my dad actually suggested it, and I thought he was crazy. I said, “What is this guy talking about?” But two things that happened simultaneously: When I was 18, I was violently thrown on a fence and searched illegally, just walking in my neighborhood.
And then, a family friend who's like an uncle, Nixon. I saw him at the Haitian Flag Day parade that takes place every May in Flatbush.
And I was just like, “Wow, a cop! I know him!” Prior to meeting Nixon in uniform, cops were just nameless faces driving by. There was no deeper interaction, with the exception of like, community affairs, but overall, everyday police officers, there was nothing more there.
And this was at the time of Operation Impact, where cops were put on corners all over, you know, they were there in our neighborhoods standing there, but they wouldn't even say good morning.
Those two things made me say, "this is what I need to do. Why is it that I experienced what I experienced and other Black men and Black and Latino folks experience what we experienced?"
And also, to see I could do about it.
Could you see yourself in uniform? When you saw Nixon, could you see yourself?
Yeah, when I saw Nixon, it became tangible. It became real.
There was a moment, and I can't remember if this was in the academy or when you were an officer, so forgive me, but it really stuck with me. Somebody talked about, “Hey, be careful out there, because now you look like the perps.”
So this was toward the end of the police academy. It was one of the instructors. He was trying to say something positive. He basically said, “Don't become a victim of implicit bias.”
The problem is that he was using implicit bias – and that shows you how implicit it truly is.
He essentially said, “OK, If you're out there in certain communities and you see a Black or Hispanic person with a gun, don't just pull out your gun and start shooting. Because the department is getting more and more diverse. We're starting to look more and more like perps.”
So yeah, it stood out to me. I caught it immediately and he meant well, but that's how powerful implicit bias is.
You write about how a lot of the problems you saw within the NYPD stem from broken windows policing. The theory is that signs of disorder, vandalism, loitering and broken windows create an environment where lawlessness can take root. Now that's a theory. What can and has gone wrong when this theory is in the real world?
So, broken windows. The timing of broken windows to me is quite serendipitous. At the time where, you know, former Commissioner [Bill] Bratton and Mayor [Rudy] Giuliani implement broken windows, crime plummets.
But this happens throughout the entire nation, even in places where this isn't implemented. But this is what takes credit for crime dropping. And there are people who would stand firm and say, we absolutely need this.
To be clear, I'm not saying that we completely ignore minor infractions, but to treat it like the crime of the century and come with the sledgehammer is not the way.
I've watched colleagues do the worst in the name of meeting their numbers, because of quota-driven broken windows enforcement.
I've seen lieutenants make up infractions on the spot. And say, “We have to be creative out here.” I've seen everything from all types of racial profiling.
The gray area is something that's exploited. And that's just a euphemism for unconstitutional policing, right?
But the way they rationalize it is, “We're trying to get the guns off the street.”
There are cops in the NYPD who believe it's absolutely OK if they're working in certain parts of the city and they see a young Black man driving an Infiniti to pull the car over and figure it out later. This is what has happened because of pressure, quotas and broken windows.
What about officers who completely believe the opposite, like you do? What do they do on a daily basis?
Unfortunately, it's a serious price to pay. Prior to the lawsuit, the police department's leadership would put you in performance monitoring and it's the first step in removing the protections of the union.
And if you don't change your behavior, at some point, you can get terminated. And when you're five, six, seven, eight or 10 years in, you really can't afford to get terminated. You’re halfway through to receiving a pension. So you fall in line, and it eats you up inside, but you fall in line.
What some others do is they try to get off the hamster wheel by going to a specialized unit. There's literally a saying in NYPD: patrol is for the birds, meaning. No one wants to do this. So they try their best to get out of it in some way.
Which is so upsetting because patrol is how you're supposed to interact with the people in the street and the people in the neighborhood.
Well another saying in NYPD is "patrol is the backbone of the job." So it's both the backbone and for the birds. Think about that dichotomy.
But, folks try to get off of patrol. Sometimes by leaning into the system and surpassing their quotas, which then puts them in a position to apply elsewhere.
But the period of time that they had to surpass the quota, people are being violated. It's a terrible system, and the leadership needs to wake up and evolve.
Diversity is one of the things that they wanna brag about today. But cosmetic diversity is worthless, right? This is not just about employment opportunity.
The true power of diversity. and what representation is supposed to bring, is a diversity in thought. If you get a Black man or Hispanic woman or an Asian person, and you don't tap into everything that makes them unique and bring it into how we can police better, it's pointless.
I don't care if everyone on the force is white. If you have the right thoughts and the right things are being implemented, I would much rather that than a police department that looks more like me and I'm being violated.
Were these quotas stated explicitly?
Absolutely. I mean, they are always going to deny it because it's unlawful, but they won. They waste no time getting right into it. It was a trifecta: arrests, summonses, and stop and frisk. Those were the three numbers that we were given monthly.
What do Black cops talk about when they get together, off the record?
Oof, you really want that answer? Wow … um… [Long pause]
They're fed up. They feel powerless. Many of them come up with all sorts of ways to suppress what's really going on. Because if they ever had to deal with it head on, they probably wouldn't be able to do their job, like they'd probably quit their jobs.
But they're torn because the job allows them to make a comfortable living, and they feel stuck, many of them. To go back to school is expensive, to go in another career path, so a lot of them are miserable, or in order to, to not deal with the misery of the reality of, as I say, you know, donning the uniform of the oppressor.
They try to not pay attention to the cumulative sum of what's going on out there.
You were passed over for a series of promotions despite finishing in the top 10 on the test and you make a decision that you're gonna make some recordings. What went into that decision?
It’s not something I enjoyed at all. But I paid very close attention to the Floyd v. the City of New York case, the stop-and-frisk case. And I watched as the department's leaders testified, just lying in their testimony. And I remember thinking, “Wow, if you can't prove this, they're just gonna be prepped by the attorneys and lie.”
At the time, I didn't know exactly what was gonna happen with the recordings, but I knew I wasn't gonna switch my position in doing what was right and what was lawful.
So I figured, “No matter what's coming. I want to have the proof. I don't know what's coming. I might never need these, these recordings, but just in case it's better to have than not have.”
But it's not something that I enjoyed at all. It was necessary to protect myself and be able to prove my case.
What was something that was recorded that was particularly damning for the force and for the leadership, I guess I should say.
Oh, I mean, the expectation that this is reserved for Black and brown communities, that's on the record. The fact that this is happening to me because I'm Black, you know, the way that the defenses of the system, the way that they're trying to steamroll my career and take my head off for daring to speak up just first internally before I even become a whistleblower.
And then obviously, after using my First Amendment, they came even stronger. The existence of the quotas and the fact that this is the system, this is what it is: just go along, just play the game – all of that is recorded.
We reached out to the NYPD as we should have obviously for comment and I'm going to read it to you. They sent to us: “We congratulate Mr. Raymond on his recent retirement from the New York City Police Department and for his efforts, albeit unsuccessful, to win elected office during his time with the NYPD. However, Mr. Raymond never proposed any initiative or program to department leadership that would suggest he was interested in reforming the policing profession, whether parochially, nationally or globally. Despite that reality, we certainly remain open to hearing or reading about any ideas he might now foster.” Is that true that you never proposed any initiative or program?
That's absolutely untrue. I won’t take it out on the person with the task to write that lie. They're just doing their jobs. They're just going with the flow. They're just playing the game. It is not true at all.
As early as 2014, I was chosen to be part of then Commissioner Bratton's re-engineering 2014 initiative, where many ideas were proposed. And weren't implemented. I've been very public about not just criticizing what's wrong; I've been ready to say what we should be doing. I've said it. “You're the chief, there’s a chain of command. You call me to the office. I can't just walk into your office.”
I sat down with top officials in this current administration proposing plans. I've emailed plans.
This is the third time I've heard this, right? Now it's just a template that they send out to all media.
NYPD, I know you're listening. The next time you send that out, I will come with the receipts. If you wanna sit down and have this conversation, you know how to find me. If I have to read that again, if I have to hear that again, people will be embarrassed. All right, reach out. You know how to reach me.
What has this experience been like for your mental health?
I gotta quote Tupac, the late Tupac Shakur. “Dying inside but outside you're looking fearless.”
I hate this. You know, there are people who think, “Oh, look, he just wants to be in front of another camera.” And now it's, “Look, he's just trying to sell books, et cetera.”
No, no, this has not been fun. I survived the impossible, right? Given the hand of cards that I was dealt, I'm both the last person that should be doing this, and ironically, the best person to do this – because I know what it feels like to suffer. You cannot do this without suffering. But I don't enjoy it. And I don't deserve it.
This has not been good. Therapy has been great. The people that love and care about me, their support has been great. The many people on social media who reach out, every single comment, it matters.
You know, there are videos that people send me, I replay them. I'm so thankful for the support system. But this has not been easy at all.
What is a small change that could happen next week if someone had the political will? That really wouldn't be that big a deal to do?
Honestly, cops have to be motivated to do their jobs optimally. The simple quotas and pressure, without officers understanding what they're contributing to, forced to believe the lie of “this is just for public safety.” Reach out to cops, the people at the bottom, the rank and file, ask them about how things can be improved, and we will get a different police department. We need the justice-minded officers, which exist, to be elevated into positions of power, into leadership positions.
I think about Capt. Derby St. Fort, who is pure talent, a visionary, someone ready to take the policing, not just in the NYPD, but to be a national model. But someone who's stymied and his legs are cut off and he can't be promoted simply because he dares to do things differently.
Our mayor is a former police officer. What would you like to see him do?
[Long pause] I'm confused by the mayor. I looked up to the mayor early in my career. He's been a mentor. He's been supportive.
What I've seen in the New York City Police Department is not a reflection of the man that I've known for over a decade. It's not a reflection of the activists that we all fell in love with. It's a reflection of something very different.
The mayor has the opportunity to make sure that current leadership does, behaves in a way that reflects his, those values that we respect about him. And the mayor has an opportunity to empower folks like Capt. Derby St. Fort.
Edwin, thank you for being here. Take care of yourself.
Thank you.
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