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"Most Of Our Powers Were Taken Away": NYPD Blames Reforms For Increase In Violent Crime
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jul 7, 2020
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jul 7, 2020
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NYPD officials are largely blaming criminal justice reforms, coronavirus mitigation measures, and "anti-police rhetoric" for an increase in shootings, and a July 4th weekend that was marred by gun violence and 11 murders across the city.
"There is a multitude of reasons why shootings have increased in New York City," Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri told reporters at a press conference on Monday afternoon. "We have the knowledge to stop shootings; it’s unfortunate that most of our powers were taken away to stop the shootings. Knowledge is power? Well, we have the knowledge, we don’t have the power."
Yet the NYPD did not elaborate on what crime-fighting powers they have lost, nor did they say if record high unemployment, lost wages, or school cancellation due to the pandemic that has killed more than 24,000 New Yorkers and sickened countless more factored into their crime analysis.
According to the NYPD, there were 205 shootings in June of 2020, up from 89 in 2019, a 130 percent increase. Murders have also increased in New York by 23 percent for the first six months of 2020, from 147 to 181.
At a press conference on Monday afternoon, Chief LiPetri and Chief of Department Terence Monahan specifically singled out state bail reforms, a court system "shut down" by the pandemic, people released from Rikers Island due to COVID-19, City Council legislation that would ban chokeholds, the disbanding of the NYPD's anti-crime units that accounted for a disproportionate number of police shootings, and "the people who demoralized our men in blue, in so-called protest lines" for those increases.
The numbers they provided to link the increase in crime to criminal justice reforms was scant, and lacked context.
LiPetri said that because of the state bail reforms, 3,000 people have accounted for approximately 9,000 arrests since the pandemic began, but it's unclear if those arrests are for violent crimes or misdemeanors, or how many of those people might have been released on bail and arrested again under the old 2019 bail laws. (The "new" bail reform laws are now old: the state legislature's rollback of those reforms took effect on Friday.)
Of the 2,500 people released from Rikers due to COVID-19 concerns since the pandemic began, nine have been "tied to violent acts around the city," including two murders, though LiPetri conceded that one of those individuals would have served out their sentence before the murder was committed.
And 136 people released because of new bail reform laws this year were "involved in a shooting or a murder," the NYPD said. But did that mean they were a witness, a person of interest, a victim, or a suspect? The police department couldn't say.
Other metrics the police cited as affecting crime were even less quantifiable, like the protests that "crushed the morale of our cops," as Chief Monahan put it.
"If you walk across the street at City Hall Park over there and take a look on the street, you see the communist hammer and sickle that they painted out on the street," Monahan said. "Are these the loud voices that we should be following?"
There is also legislation that prohibits the police from using chokeholds in New York City that was passed last month by the City Council, that is awaiting Mayor Bill de Blasio's signature. The law prevents officers from "restrain[ing] an individual in a manner that restricts the flow of air or blood by compressing the windpipe or the carotid arteries on each side of the neck, or sitting, kneeling, or standing on the chest or back in a manner that compresses the diaphragm."
Chief Monahan claimed that this law would lead to prosecutions of the police because officers frequently need to kneel on unruly arrestees, and that one of the city's five DA's told him privately that it was "unconstitutional."
"There is a fear going through the police officers now from the diaphragm law—I call it the diaphragm law not the chokehold law," Monahan said, name-checking the bill's main sponsor, Queens Councilmember Rory Lancman.
"Rory Lancman, who is in one of the safest and affluent neighborhoods in the city, has signed a bill that is going to affect people in economically deprived areas of the city and have violence, because police officers may be hesitant to step forward and grab someone for a quality-of-life offense, if during the course of that the person resists and their knee should accidentally end up on a person's back," Monahan charged.
Reached by telephone on Monday, Lancman told Gothamist, "My district is nearly three quarters people of color, and if Chief Monahan wants to come and talk to my constituents about their urgent desire for police reform, I'd be happy to make that connection."
Lancman pointed out that the NYPD's own patrol guide contains a prohibition on any move that "may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air."
"So unless Chief Monahan is confessing to the NYPD never taking its own patrol guide seriously, there is nothing for a well-trained, well-disciplined, and well-intentioned officer to fear from this bill," Lancman said.
The councilmember, who sits on the council's public safety committee, is also calling for the removal of NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea for what he described as "an utter failure on the part of the police commissioner to follow the law, accept civilian authority over the police department."
Lancman said, "He's basically thrown up his hands and said all these new reforms are baloney, I can't run the police department with all of these new reforms, I give up."
Asked this morning if he was considering changing the NYPD's top leadership, Mayor Bill de Blasio replied, "The answer is no."
"This leadership group has achieved so much for this city," de Blasio said. "These are reformers who have achieved a lot."
Insha Rahman, an attorney and bail expert who is the director of strategy and new initiatives at the Vera Institute for Justice, said that while the increase in violent crime over the holiday weekend was certainly significant, the reasons the NYPD are giving for the increase should be seen as part of a "political backdrop."
"They're sulking at being called out for their recent and longterm behavior," Rahman said.
"The problem is, picking any short run statistics over a small period of time essentially will do exactly what you want it to do, will show want you want it to show. You can't cherry pick this data, or if you do, you have to know that you're cherry picking it."
Rahman cited a recent Vera Institute study that surveyed the policing budgets of cities across the country. Cities with more police officers did not necessarily have lower rates of crime.
"Baltimore has had extremely high crime rates compared to New York, but the difference isn't the number of cops, the difference is that New York City has funded violence interruption and violence prevention programs for decades while Baltimore has done far less of that," Rahman explained.
"The investment should not be more police flooding these high crime neighborhoods, but actually more resources that help with food stability and housing stability and keeping people fundamentally safe and healthy during this crisis."
With additional reporting from Brigid Bergin.
Tagged
Crime Statistics
nypd
police reform
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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