NYPD Leadership Has Allowed Racist, Unconstitutional ‘Stop & Frisk’ Policy To Continue, A New Report Finds

Source: Allison Joyce / Getty

News about the NYPD–New York City’s police officers–will flabbergast anyone who is not nor has never been a young Black person in America. Independent review found that police officers in New York City are still practicing stop and frisk, and when they’re caught doing it, they’re not being properly disciplined.

In 2013, a federal judge ruled that the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices enacted by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg were unconstitutional, largely because they overwhelmingly targeted Black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24, and the overwhelming number of those targets were found to have not committed any crimes. (The largely Caucasian “tough on crime” crowd, including Bloomberg, have often credited stop and frisk for a sharp decline in violent crime in the city by the time the ex-mayor left office. The data doesn’t support that assertion though, as some 80% of those stopped and frisked were determined to be innocent.

More than a decade later, a comprehensive report shows that, at every level, the New York Police Department has failed to punish officers who have violated the constitutional rights of citizens — particularly those citizens who lack the complexion for protection.

From the New York Times:

It finds that police commissioners during the past decade have routinely reduced discipline recommended for officers found to have wrongly stopped, questioned and frisked people, undermining efforts to curb unconstitutional abuses.

The report by James Yates, a retired New York State judge, was ordered by Judge Analisa Torres of Manhattan federal court and made public on Monday.

Mr. Yates was assigned by the court to conduct a “granular, step-by-step analysis” of the department’s policies and discipline governing stop-and-frisk, a tactic of detaining people on the street that was being used disproportionately against Black and Latino New Yorkers.

The 503-page document that resulted paints a picture of an agency unwilling to impose discipline on an abusive practice that has prompted criticism that the department oppresses many New Yorkers.

The commissioners “demonstrated an inordinate willingness to excuse illegal stops, frisks and searches in the name of ‘good faith’ or ‘lack of malintention,’ relegating constitutional adherence to a lesser rung of discipline,” Mr. Yates writes.

 

Source: Erik McGregor / Getty

Is the police union head actually arguing that the police are above the law?

Predictably, Patrick Hendry, the president of the Police Benevolent Association union, took issue with Yates’ report, saying it is “completely at odds with the disciplinary system” that police officers navigate.

“Police officers are still too often second-guessed and penalized for doing the job we were sent out to do,” Hendry said. “This never-ending monitorship has had over a decade to address the department’s policies and procedures in this area, but the answer always seems to come back to hammering the cops on the streets.”

That sounds like a wordy way of saying: The police shouldn’t be policed because they’re the police.

Cops should be closely monitored. They have too much power and authority not to be. These are human beings who are just as flawed as the citizens they assert their authority over. They have the same incentive to be dishonest when they’re accused of wrongdoing that everyone else has. Hendry doesn’t even appear to be denying that the department is failing to discipline cops who are violating both the law and the Constitution. He has been confronted with a data-driven report conducted by a former officer of the court that shows cops are still violating people’s rights and they’re not being properly disciplined for it, and instead of dealing with that and advocating for police departments to course-correct, he’s essentially asking: Wait, why are we even reporting this in the first place?

He can’t handle the truth.

But Hendry is only responding the way police union leaders always respond whenever anyone tries to hold cops accountable, dismantle the blue wall of silence and prove the necessity for police oversight with facts and numbers that don’t lie the way cops do when they’re protecting themselves or each other.

One can only wonder if Hendry and other high-ranking officials like him are just afraid of what investigators will find if they keep digging instead of simply letting cops be cops.

More from the Times:

The report arrives at a tumultuous time for the department. Edward A. Caban, the commissioner for a little more than a year, resigned on Sept. 12 after federal agents seized his phone as part of a criminal investigation. He has not been accused of wrongdoing, but the report underscores the perception that commissioners have created a culture of lax discipline in their response to cases across the board.

Since becoming commissioner in July 2023, Mr. Caban had stopped the disciplinary cases of 54 officers before they faced internal trials, according to an analysis by ProPublica that The New York Times published in June. On Sept. 9, in one of his final acts, Mr. Caban released watered-down guidelines for punishing officers for infractions like abuse of authority, discourtesy and misconduct, although not wrongful stop-and-frisk tactics.

In a letter explaining the revised guidelines for punishment, Mr. Caban said the changes would help the department continue “on the path of a fair and just discipline system.”

“Fair and just” for who?

You know who we should probably hear from on all of this? NYC mayor and ex-cop Eric Adams. He could probably help us get to the bottom of why cops are still violating the rights of citizens and going virtually unpunished. Of course, Adams would need to explain why specialized police units he revived to seize guns were also found to have been stopping and frisking citizens without probable cause, according to Mylan L. Denerstein, a court-appointed monitor who filed a report in federal court in Manhattan earlier this month showing that illegal police stops increased on Adams’ watch. (Seriously, Blomberg, Adams, Rudy Giuliani — has NYC ever had a mayor who didn’t decide unconstitutional racial profiling was the best way to reduce crime?)

The Fourth Amendment should be held as sacred as the First and Second Amendments in America, and it often is — but not so much when it comes to Black people. That’s the issue that needs to be addressed and monitored constantly — a cop’s hurt blue feelings be damned. 

See Also:

NYPD Shoots Black Man After Alleged After Fare Evasion For $2.90 Subway Ride

Dozens Of Patriot Front White Supremacists Evade Train Fare In NYC With No Repercussions, Video Claims

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