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DOH Draft Report Shows More People Have Died In Police-Involved Incidents Than Previously Reported
By
David Cruz
Published Jun 24, 2020
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By
David Cruz
Published Jun 24, 2020
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The city Department of Health has released a shelved draft report revealing that the number of fatal police-related incidents is much higher than what the NYPD has publicly reported in recent years.
The 27-page draft report -- covering the years of 2010 to 2015, using death certificate data -- identified 59 more NYPD-related deaths, on top of the 46 that the public already knew about, pushing the actual number to 105. Fatalities were broken down by whether the person was intentionally killed by police, died as officers were trying to arrest them, or bystanders.
Black and brown people made up two-thirds of the total number of deaths at 82, according to the report, underscoring the glaring disparity of fatal police interactions involving persons of color.
Four of the 13 bystanders were killed by police who intended to shoot a suspect, while more than half, including four pedestrians, were killed during a car crash involving police. More than half of the bystanders who died were women, according to the report.
The report explained that these deaths may have gone underreported because death certificates might have been mis-labeled to exclude police involvement or human error. In cases involving the death of a person involved in an accident during a police pursuit, the police department does not include it in their official tally, as reported by the New York Times, which broke the news of the draft report last Friday.
What the NYPD must report is legal intervention deaths, where a police officer used deadly force on someone if the officer felt their life was threatened while performing their duties.
The draft report was compiled in 2017 by then-DOH commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett who sought to understand the impact of police-involved incidents following the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Natasha McKenna, among others. Bassett left the agency in 2018, leaving the report unfinished and undisclosed.
The report's existence prompted New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Member Ritchie Torres, chair of the Oversight & Investigations Committee, to subpoena DOH, ordering the release of the report by June 23rd.
In a statement posted on Twitter announcing the report's release early this morning, current DOH commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot said the manner by which the federal government collects data involving police-involved incidents needs reform.
"In recent years, we have seen deaths at the hands of law enforcement that have spurred national calls for transparency and reform. This movement for justice inspired us to review our own processes for calculating so-called legal intervention fatalities," said Barbot. "We learned that our own system for recording these deaths -- the same system applied by the federal government to all jurisdictions -- is flawed. The 'gold standard' must be questioned when it doesn't reflect reality."
Barbot's opening statement in the draft report revealed that the NYPD has piloted a tracking system to offer a full picture of the collateral damage caused by police, which Barbot said "must be routinely updated with timely data" to learn how it can reduce the number of deaths.
The Legal Aid Society has criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio for delaying the report's release. In a statement, the Legal Aid Society said the lack of urgency in making it public demonstrates the administration’s “antipathy to transparency.”
“It also underscores Mayor Bill de Blasio’s unwillingness to hold the NYPD accountable for anything, perpetuating a culture that leaves entirely unchecked and, indeed, feeds police violence in Black and brown communities across New York City,” read the statement.
Update, 4 p.m.: Freddi Goldstein, spokesperson for the the Mayor's office, released a statement shortly countering Legal Aid's claim the de Blasio administration lacks transparency.
“The Mayor found out about the existence of this study less than a month ago. It moved quicker in the days since he knew about it than the five years before," said Goldstein. "To suggest it was withheld from public view because of him is nothing short of dishonest.”
Tagged
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police-involved death
department of health
David Cruz
David is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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