Looking at this photo, one starts to wonder if there are any good people in the NYPD.
There are.
This is what happens when they stop staring like fools and instead say No.
Adrian Schoolcraft says he isn't exactly sure when, but at some point he had decided that it was important to document the orders that he was given that he thought were out of line. He recorded roll calls where officers were constantly being told to do more stop-and-frisks, even though it's illegal to stop a random person on the street and frisk them without reasonable suspicion. In December 2008, a sergeant tells officers to stop-and-frisk quote, "anybody walking around, no matter what the explanation is." He recorded Stephen Mauriello, the commander the 81st precinct-- and the person Adrian Schoolcraft says really brought the hammer down for higher numbers-- ordering the officers to arrest everyone they see. This happens in a couple of recordings, like this one from Halloween 2008.
Any roving bands-- you hear me-- roving bands more than two or three people--I want them stopped -- cuffed -- throw them in here, run some warrants. You're on a foot post? Fuck it. Take the first guy you've got and lock them all up. Boom....
--Ira Glass,
This American Life
What do we call that back here on planet Earth? Kidnapping.
One of the producers of our radio show lives in the 81st precinct. And she says that it's one of those neighborhoods where everybody has stories of ridiculous tickets. One of her neighbors was bringing his aunt home from the hospital, and he double parked. Two officers told him to move his car, and when he didn't, he was handcuffed, forced to lie down in the street, and tasered twice-- all in front of a crowd of people, including her, who live on the block and heard him calling for help. One common citation is for having an open container of alcohol. One neighbor says he was walking home from church with his six year old daughter, drinking a small carton of Tropicana orange juice, and he got a ticket for that. Others got tickets for water and Gatorade that was being given away at the park. George Walker has lived on the same block for over 40 years and says older guys like him get a lot of tickets. He thinks maybe they're targeted because they don't give the cops any fuss. He says he's gotten a dozen tickets this past year, nearly all for open container, even though he says he wasn't drinking alcohol.
The Times
expanded the picture of how abusively quotas were being pushed in an article that essentially ran alongside the radio piece.
Might this obsession with writing tickets and abducting innocents have detracted from the precinct's ability to Protect and Serve? Village Voice Reporter Graham Rayman informs us (through This American Life) that the consequences were horrifying.
[Harold Hernandez is] a very distinguished detective. He was working in the 33rd precinct in Washington Heights. And one morning he comes into work and there's a guy who's accused of first degree rape sitting in his interview room. So he sits down and he looks at the guy. And he has a little twinge, and he says, have you ever done this before? And the guy said, yeah. And Hernandez says, how many times? And he says, oh, I don't know, seven or eight. And Hernandez says, where? And he goes, in this neighborhood. And Hernandez is now dumbstruck because there's been no report of a serial rapist-- sexual predator-- working the neighborhood. [...]
So he and a fellow detective get in the car and they drive around. And they look, and the suspect-- whose name is Darryl Thomas-- points out the locations. And then Hernandez takes his notebook and he writes down the locations. And then he goes back and he looks through stacks of crime complaints. And he finds them. And he realizes that they've been [...] downgraded. They've been classified either as criminal trespassing or criminal possession of a weapon -- both relatively minor crimes, given that the actual conduct in the narrative that the victims are describing is either first degree burglary, robbery, or sexual abuse, sexual assault. And he confronts his bosses about it. He confronts the precinct commander. And he confronts his detective squad commander. And everyone just shrugs.
So while the precinct was inflating some numbers through kidnappings, they were artificially holding down others through, among other tactics, the abetting of rape.
When it became clear that Adrian Schoolcraft wasn't interested in working within this policy, he was extensively monitored. This, despite the fact that it is illegal to in any way penalize failure to meet policing quotas. In one exemplary (if apparently common) meeting that Adrian recorded, a Duty Captain asked Adrian what he would do if he walked past "a bunch of kids on a stoop".
Are you going to create something there? Because I could tell you that if that [Bleeped] told me to fuck myself. Yeah, so you go in the handcuffs for telling me that? Yeah. That's it. If you let that go because there's no violation, because he didn't break the law, then I feel bad for you. Because then you have a tough job. And then maybe you should find something else to do, you know? So if you call that creating something? You call that creating something? Or do you call that a matter of keeping the respect, because they'll step all over you when they see you out there. They'll do whatever they want in front of you when you're out there.
Jim Dwyer of the New York Times
walks us through what happens when Adrian Schoolcraft's efforts to document (in writing and extensive recordings) misconduct are discovered...
One night in October 2009, a team of police officers, led by a deputy chief, raided the home of a police officer named Adrian Schoolcraft, and dragged him out of his bed and to the psychiatric emergency room at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. He was held for six days in a locked ward. No judge was involved. There was no hearing.
...and the
reaction from the police department (silence), the Mayor, and the hospital.
“While the police may bring someone who is potentially at risk to themselves or others to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation, they have no say over who is admitted or for how long,” Frank Barry, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, said this week. “That’s up to the mental health professionals at the hospital.”
Rather than absolving the mayor of responsibility, that circumstance amplifies it. Jamaica’s spokesman, who did not return a phone call on Thursday, has said that the doctors relied on the observations of the police officers....
Dressed only in a gown, he spent three days in the psychiatric emergency room, then another three days in a locked ward among seriously disturbed people, with no phone, clock or mirror.
After his father tracked him down and brought him home, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center sent Adrian Schoolcraft a bill for $7,185.