Quotas To Go On Trial

Via a class-action lawsuit with a potentially enormous pool of plaintiffs:

Under the ruling by Manhattan federal judge Robert Sweet, those eligible to join the suit include everyone whose summonses were dismissed “upon a judicial finding of facial insufficiency and who were ticketed without probable cause” since May 25, 2007.

With any luck, this will happen just in time for, ugh, Ray Kelly’s mayoral run.

But Maybe We’ll Get Lucky And Al Qaeda Will Start Robbing Liquor Stores . . .

Between raping women, assisting citizens in distress and spying on Muslims, there’s just so little time left for anything else:

The owner of a Harlem liquor store broken into twice in a week says police took too long to respond, and failed to look at surveillance footage which showed the thieves until after they’d struck a second time.

Commissioner Clinton Kelly Will School You On What Not To Wear

Muted colors please, and something that doesn’t hide that cute butt of yours:

Men of color said cops don’t bother them as long as they are dressed in a suit or in work clothes.

“It matters what you wear, just don’t look like a hoodlum,” said [. . .] a 23-year-old black man, explaining that a cop stopped him on S. Ninth St. after a nearby shooting asking what he knew about it.

[The man], then a Pathmark cashier in full uniform, said a second officer let him go.

“He said, ‘Leave him alone. He’s going to work,’” Kinard said. “Maybe if we dress nicer, they will leave us alone.”

. . .

“I had a bright pink shirt on that day,” [another man who had been frisked] said. “I was an easy target.”

New Orleans In April (Read: Jazz Fest!!!!!)

Eventually we’ll find out that they’re surveilling nearly everybody, and then we won’t have to worry that they’re being discriminatory:

In April 2008, an undercover NYPD officer traveled to New Orleans to attend the People’s Summit, a gathering of liberal groups organized around their shared opposition to U.S. economic policy and the effect of trade agreements between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

When the undercover effort was summarized for supervisors, it identified groups opposed to U.S. immigration policy, labor laws and racial profiling. Two activists — Jordan Flaherty, a journalist, and Marisa Franco, a labor organizer for housekeepers and nannies — were mentioned by name in one of the police intelligence reports obtained by the AP.

“One workshop was led by Jordan Flaherty, former member of the International Solidarity Movement Chapter in New York City,” officers wrote in an April 25, 2008, memo to David Cohen, the NYPD’s top intelligence officer. “Mr. Flaherty is an editor and journalist of the Left Turn Magazine and was one of the main organizers of the conference. Mr. Flaherty held a discussion calling for the increase of the divestment campaign of Israel and mentioned two events related to Palestine.”

. . .

Flaherty, who also writes for The Huffington Post, said he was not an organizer of the summit, as police wrote in the NYPD report. He said the event described by police actually was a film festival in New Orleans that same week, suggesting that the undercover officer’s duties were more widespread than described in the report.

Flaherty said he recalls introducing a film about Palestinians but spoke only briefly and does not understand why that landed him a reference in police files.

“The only threat was the threat of ideas,” he said. “I think this idea of secret police following you around is terrifying. It really has an effect of spreading fear and squashing dissent.”

Trust Is Easy To Build, Provided You Don’t Shoot Anyone

Maybe Ray Kelly is right about stop and frisk — these people sure seem like they’re OK with it:

[A] Fresh Direct driver [. . .] said he gets stopped by cops often when he visits relatives in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“It’s standard . . . ‘Spread your legs, feet apart.’ I know the procedure. I just stand still” said [the man], 24, who lives in Williamsburg. “I don’t care if I’m stopped. I have nothing to hide. Just don’t shoot me.”

“Run Roughshod Over The Constitution” Is Probably The Biggest Cliche In Civil Liberties Editorial Writing

And yet The Times’ Sunday editorial basically calling on the NYPD not to “run roughshod over the Constitution” could be a turning point in unweirding the atmosphere in New York City:

Since 9/11, courts have broadened the Police Department’s investigative authority in the vital interest of protecting the city from terrorist attack. The department should not interpret that as a license to run roughshod over the Constitution.

Even the Commissioner himself so easily conflates stop and frisk and terrorism. It’s spooky how easy (via):

“Listen, I know we’d all like to go back to a more peaceful time in America. That’s just not the country in which we live, and it’s certainly not the world in which we live. Sometimes I believe there’s this notion that if we don’t have a threat for two months, well, things are getting better. Only they’re not. This is a long-term war we’re in against terrorism, and we are going to continue to do what we’re doing. And we are going to continue to go after guns.”

No wonder people are supposedly “supportive” of NYPD tactics — if you don’t listen closely it sounds like they’re stopping Osama bin Laden and frisking Mullah Omar.

You Want Me Frisking That Kid Against That Wall! You Need Me Frisking That Kid Against That Wall!

As the Mayor might put it, Ray Kelly executes a “cute” rhetorical maneuver:

The defensive scowl etched into Mr. Kelly’s face dropped away as he suggested that the Council was notably at a loss to offer ideas — any ideas at all — for how to stop violence among young minority men.

“What I haven’t heard is any solution to the violence problems in these communities — people are upset about being stopped, yet what is the answer?” Mr. Kelly asked Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, who had been asking the commissioner to acknowledge that the department’s practice of street stops in minority communities left many people “feeling under siege.”

“What have you said about how do we stop this violence?” Mr. Kelly asked, asserting that violence among minority youth is “something that the government has an obligation to try to solve.”

Look, no one wants any one of the 51 city councilmembers thinking about how to stop violence — lord knows what they’ll come up with. But just because they’re morons doesn’t make it OK to stop over half a million people (actually, 684,330; if that were a city, it would be the 19th largest in the country, ahead of Baltimore, Boston, Seattle, DC, Denver and Oklahoma City) last year under god knows what pretense.

I Personally Like The Idea Of Soda Pop In Every Water Fountain

A poll is out indicating that New Yorkers are supportive of the NYPD’s program that collects intelligence on area Muslims: “A majority of city voters believe the New York Police Department has acted appropriately in anti-terrorism efforts that have focused on Muslims, according to a new poll.”

But people think a lot of things, and just because someone thinks something — or even a majority of them think something — doesn’t necessarily make those things good ideas. For example, at one time a large number of people thought it was OK to torture terrorists if they had information about a ticking time bomb (45 percent), or even use a nuclear weapon against a terrorist camp (34 percent). No really!

Then there’s consistent public support for an amendment to make flag burning illegal.

And people still seem to have an issue with gay people adopting children.

You can go on and on finding polls that uncover all manner of ideas. Basically, we think a lot of things; that doesn’t always mean we’re right. Especially when it comes to what we think it’s OK to let the cops do.

Third Terms Work Best When Everyone Shuts The Fuck Up And Does What The Higher-Ups Want

At some point you have to wonder if even the cops themselves are embarrassed about stuff like stop & frisk:

[The victim] said the officer who frisked him [ . . . ] was “really aggressive,” especially when grabbing around his crotch area. He felt violated. The search of his car came up empty, but the cops issued [the victim] a summons for parking in front of a fire hydrant. [The victim] took down [the officer's] badge number and later filed a complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Months later, the board ruled that [the officer] had abused his authority by frisking [the victim] and searching his vehicle. [The officer's supervisor] was also convicted of abuse of authority for allowing the search.

[The victim] said he felt validated, but it doesn’t stop him from worrying about being stopped again.

“This Culture Has Got To Change”

The issues raised in the Voice series that showed the NYPD was cooking the books actually were investigated by the NYPD, except the findings were kept secret:

The implications of the report are obvious: If the 81st Precinct was a typical station house, then crime manipulation is more widespread than city officials have admitted.

John Eterno, a criminologist at Molloy College and a former NYPD captain, says that what was happening in the 81st Precinct is no isolated case. “The pressures on commanders are enormous, to make sure the crime numbers look good,” Eterno says. “This is a culture. This is happening in every precinct, every transit district, and every police housing service area. This culture has got to change.”

As for [the 81st Precinct Commander], he’s no rogue commander, says Eterno, who has published a book about crime reporting with John Jay College professor Eli Silverman. “[The commander] is no different from any other commander,” he says. “This is just a microcosm of what is happening in the entire police department.”

What If You’re The One Who Gave A Drug Front A Four-Star Review On Yelp?

Would you question what you wrote on the listing? Would you start to question your foodie bona fides? Remember, if you ever think that you might be in a drug front, you’re probably in a drug front. Key tipoffs should include inattentive waitstaff, inconsistent food, the large group of menacing-looking men sitting over there the back and of course the expansive and perhaps overly generous delivery area.

Then there are the more obvious clues . . . for example, the weapons cache, as the Queens D.A. press release details (.pdf):

As part of the investigation, officers executed five court-authorized search warrants and recovered four firearms, including a defaced Colt .38 caliber revolver; a defaced sawed off Mosburg shotgun; a .380 Sig Sauer semi-automatic and a Remington 870 shotgun with a scope. Also seized were more than a kilo of cocaine; 777 glassines of heroin (more than one ounce) and two ounces of marijuana; as well as $3,520.

New York City’s Red State Problem

Staten Island, known for its brisk prescription painkiller business, seems to be the place in the city to procure hillbilly heroin:

Prescription pills were illegally sold for $20 a pop alongside bagels and beer at a Staten Island deli, officials charge as part of a sting that led to 25 arrests.

. . .

Nel Boy Bagels on Amboy Road in Great Kills was targeted as part of an investigation begun last fall dubbed Operation Bitter Pill, officials announced on Saturday.

. . .

Undercover detectives bought 2500 Oxycodone pills, 368 Percocet pills and 245 Xanax pills as part of the sting, along with 300 grams of cocaine and two assault weapons, a Tec-9 and a 9mm gun, officials say.

They Can And They Did

Go big and stay home:

A fugitive fool who taunted cops on his Facebook page, “Catch me if you can, I’m in Brooklyn” — has been captured by U.S. marshals.

And guess where.

Victor Burgos was sitting at a computer with his Facebook page open when a task force of marshals and NYPD detectives tracked him down in an apartment on Jefferson St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

That’s Disappointing

The lady who a judge sentenced to indefinite jury duty after accusing her of lying about her biases on her juror’s questionnaire was let go:

Juror 799 sat off by herself in the jury assembly room for most of Wednesday, calmly flipping through newspapers and a pamphlet entitled “A Guide to Continuing Your Education After Prison,” until the judge sent a clerk and a deputy marshal to fetch her in the late afternoon.

He told her she was free to go, but that he would dock her $40-a-day juror pay. She didn’t argue.

“The purpose of this order was to attempt to create some consequences or disincentive for people who intentionally obstruct the court’s ability to empanel a fair and impartial jury,” he said.

Holi Moly

Cops shut down the yearly Holi festival in Richmond Hill on the grounds that “you can’t have powder”:

For some 25 years, Hindus in Richmond Hill have held a parade to celebrate the ancient religious holiday Holi — the Festival of Colors. Participants traditionally throw colored powder at one another, but Sunday cops seized loads of the powder from paradegoers. “They walked around and started grabbing from anyone they saw,” said parade organizer Vishnu Mahadeo, 50, president of the Richmond Hill Economic Development Council. “They said the law said you can’t have powder.”

More detail: “Phagwah parade,” Queens Courier, March 22, 2011.

See also: “The Problem With Community Boards”.

Location Scout: Phagwah Parade.

Since You’re Talking About Cash-Strapped Municipalities Saving Money . . .

You could raise $3.4 million year by charging groups like the NYC Marathon for overtime or you could save $75 million a year by cutting back on pot arrests:

New York spends $75 million a year to lock up people caught with marijuana, a new study says, even though it’s not technically a crime.

The report by the Drug Policy Alliance says the NYPD spends that much on 50,000 annual pot arrests, in which 86% of those arrested are black or Latino.

Of course that might require a reconfiguration of the mayor’s “progressive goals,” but with his lowest approval ratings in eight years, there’s room to reconfigure.

Play Idea: Last Con Man In Manhattan

Alternate title: Con Err. Opening this summer at a fringe festival near you.

Maybe The Thought That You Just Blew Almost $200 At An Applebee’s Makes You Do Rash Things

Less dine and dash than binge and dash:

They feasted on shrimp and ribs, washing it down with booze and coffee.

And when it came time to pay their $170 tab Saturday afternoon at Applebee’s restaurant in New Dorp, [a Staten Island woman] and her friend handed over a Visa card.

When told the card was no good, the duo didn’t search their wallets for cash or another credit card, prosecutors contend. They didn’t even offer to wash the dishes.

Instead, they bolted without paying, cursing and yelling at a restaurant employee, said court papers.

Looking at the menu for the New Dorp Applebee’s, I’m confused. Double-Glazed Baby Back Ribs are $22.99. Double Crunch Shrimp is $13.99. That’s still under $40. How much booze and coffee can one possibly consume at an Applebee’s?

It’s A Bad Winter To Do Sketchy Shit

It’s important to always drive carefully on snow-covered streets, especially when transporting stuff you don’t want authorities to discover:

A New Jersey man who was severely beaten — and part of whose ear was hacked off — was found tied up inside the trunk of a BMW that crashed in upper Manhattan early Wednesday, police said.

. . .

The driver, who goes by the name of Blake, slammed the luxury sedan into a livery cab after running a red light on snow-covered Dyckman St., near an exit for the Harlem River Drive, the sources said.

The [livery cab driver] said the suspect tried to flee the crash by making a U-turn, but got stuck in the snow.

. . .

When police arrived, they spotted what looked like a bullet hole in the blue BMW’s trunk, which also had blood spots on it, the sources said.

They popped the trunk open and found the victim, bound and barefoot, with the bloody remains of one of his ears dangling from his head, the sources said.

And then there’s something called “thundersnow” . . .

Stumbling-Related Quote Of The Day

After the Mayor boasts that “a woman could walk in virtually every neighborhood in this city during the day and not look over her shoulder, and most neighborhoods at night,” the Daily News asks women across New York City whether they feel it is safe to walk around: “Bloomberg’s trippin.’”

So If The People Actually Writing The Summonses Think Of Them As “Quotas,” Then That’s What They Are, Right?

Some police officers are pushing back at ticket writing performance goals, er, quotas:

Tensions over tickets have reached a boiling point at a Brooklyn precinct where officers are considering a day-long summons boycott.

“We’ve talked about it,” said one police source familiar with the possible slowdown in the 79th Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “Nobody feels this is right, asking us to write summonses just to meet a quota.”

Investigate A Smoking Gun Too Closely And Your Eyes Will Burn

And you’ll have soot all over your smug mug and probably resemble Wile E. Coyote like after one of those Acme bombs blows up in his face. And you’ll probably cry a little, too. Because nothing institutionalizes a policy like a memo:

The NYPD will launch a probe into memos at a Brooklyn stationhouse that appeared to set quotas for traffic summonses, Mayor Bloomberg said Monday.

(Don’t not take a look at the copies of the memos at the Daily News link, because they’re awesome.)

Earlier: We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Quotas — We Have Productivity Goals For That!; Abolish The Quota System! Now!; No Ticket Quotas, Eh?; The Urban Speed Trap; It’s Not So Much A Quota As It Is A Make-Work Plan For Its Enforcement Agents; The NYPD Tow Operation Division’s Version Of “Drugs On The Table”; “Productivity Goals” Return.

Most Awesome Cop Ever

It’s sort of like what might happen if Marge Gunderson lived in Bed-Stuy instead of Fargo:

One bullet whizzed past Officer Jones’s head. She fired back, emptying her five-shot revolver. One shot knocked the gun from the man’s two-handed grip, piercing his right middle finger and grazing his left hand, according to the police. Another shot hit the lock on the front door, jamming it.

One shot knocks the gun out of the suspect’s hand, and the other one locks the door . . . that’s like something you see in a movie. Wow . . . and this was the first time she had to use her gun. She was promoted to detective today.

(Ray Kelly owes her more than that for the bad PR day they had.)

And Sometimes The Strategy Goes Horribly Wrong

This is not why you cook books:

Responding to the ongoing Voice series “NYPD Tapes,” Hernandez reveals publicly for the first time that the downgrading of crimes to manipulate statistics allowed a man to commit six sexual assaults in a Washington Heights neighborhood in 2002 before he was finally caught after his seventh attack.

The initial six crimes, committed over a two-month period, went unnoticed by 33rd Precinct detectives, Hernandez says, because patrol supervisors had improperly labeled most of them as misdemeanors. It was only through a lucky break — an alert neighbor spotted the suspect pushing his seventh victim into her apartment — that the rapist, Daryl Thomas, was finally captured.

And You Thought The Coen Brothers’ Quirky Take On Life Was Out Of Touch With Reality

There should be a special charge added to offenses perpetrated by criminals who prey on people without legs:

A homeless man is accused of tying his legless friend to the bed in a Grasmere motel, hiding his prosthetic legs so he couldn’t get up, and stealing his property as he lay bound.

Carl Hughes, 33, committed the bizarre theft in the early morning hours on April 19 in the Cosmopolitan Motel at 1274 Hylan Blvd., police allege.

Hughes’ friend, 43-year-old Joseph Valente, was letting him stay in his room in the motel, according to authorities.

At about 2:10 a.m., Valente awoke to find himself tied at the chest with an electrical cord, police allege.

His prosthetic legs and his wheelchair had been moved away from the bed, a law enforcement source said.

Hughes was walking out of his room with a laptop, a debit card, a cell phone and unspecified medication, court papers allege.

Somehow, Valente managed to get free and contact authorities.

Police tracked Hughes to a park bench in Manhattan on Tuesday, and arrested him in connection with the crime, authorities said.

When an officer told him he was being taken to Staten Island to answer for a robbery, Hughes blurted out, “Oh, the guy with no legs!” the law enforcement source recounted.

If It Weren’t For Comstat You Wouldn’t Think Crime Was Down, And If You Don’t Think Crime Is Down Then You Don’t Know Any Better Anyway — Until You Get Mugged, But Then You’ll Probably Just Assume It Was An Aberration, In Which Case, Cool, Keep Cooking Those Books, Landsman

It’s like the Western District on The Wire but for reals (there’s audio, too!):

On December 8, 2008, he excoriates officers who failed to write enough tickets for double-parking, running red lights, and disorderly conduct, and who failed to stop-and-frisk enough people.

“I see eight fucking summonses for a 20-day period or a month,” he says. “If you mess up, how the hell do you want me to do the right thing by you? You come in, five parkers, three A’s, no C’s, and the only 250 you do is when I force you to do overtime? I mean it’s a two-way street out here.”

Later, he adds, “In the end, I hate to say it — you need me more than I need you because I’m what separates the wolves from coming in here and chewing on your bones.”

. . .

In another incident, an elderly man walked in off the street to report that someone had broken the lock on the cash box in his apartment and had stolen $22,000. When he reported the incident at another precinct, he was told that it was a “civil matter” and to call 3-1-1, the city’s complaint hotline.

New York Is Not Safer, Just Cheaper On eBay

The Observer quipped that New York was like The Wire the other day when they linked to the Times’ story about how the City intends to tear down some mid-rise housing project buildings in Brooklyn. But it even goes beyond that:

More than a hundred retired New York Police Department captains and higher-ranking officers said in a survey that the intense pressure to produce annual crime reductions led some supervisors and precinct commanders to manipulate crime statistics, according to two criminologists studying the department.

. . .

In interviews with the criminologists, other retired senior officers cited examples of what the researchers believe was a periodic practice among some precinct commanders and supervisors: checking eBay, other Web sites, catalogs or other sources to find prices for items that had been reported stolen that were lower than the value provided by the crime victim. They would then use the lower values to reduce reported grand larcenies — felony thefts valued at more than $1,000, which are recorded as index crimes under CompStat — to misdemeanors, which are not, the researchers said.

Meanwhile, the Daily News publishes a firsthand account of another way to fudge the numbers on New Year’s Eve:

People who came into the stationhouse couldn’t believe the precinct captain was there to greet them and take their crime report. The supervisors and cops looked at me like I was nuts, or more accurately, just pathetic. But there was no way I was going to be the only captain in Brooklyn South who couldn’t beat last year’s figures.

. . .

So what did I do that night? Did I fudge crime stats? Did I send crime victims on their way with no satisfaction? Absolutely not! I just . . . delayed.

I might have taken the complaints, but nothing was getting logged in the computer — and therefore would not “officially” count in Compstat — until after midnight. Until 1998.

The complainants were happy. They got personal service from the captain. The 124 room civilian personnel were happy. They got to relax that night because nothing was going into that computer until I said so. More importantly, the borough commander and, ultimately, the police commissioner, were happy because Bensonhurst came in one so-called “index” crime below the year before. CRIME WAS DOWN IN ALL OF BROOKLYN SOUTH!

Well, not really, because seven index crimes measured in Compstat were reported by victims from 2 p.m. to midnight, but since I prepared and reviewed the hand-written “scratch” copies, only five crimes could possibly be entered into the computer program by midnight. The other two were typed in sometime in the early hours of 1998 – a new year!

Did that make me corrupt or unethical? Maybe. Who cares now? All I know is I didn’t get any nasty calls or threats from “downtown” on Jan. 2.

Maybe The Metal Handcuffs Were Over The Top?

Don’t worry, the Board of Education has a plan:

After Alexa scribbled her name, the date and a smiley face on her desk during a Spanish class on Monday, her teacher reported her to an assistant principal, who placed a call to cops, city officials said.

The cops arrested Alexa, escorting her out of the school with her hands behind her back in metal handcuffs, Camacho said.

City Department of Education spokeswoman Margie Feinberg called the episode a mistake. “The principal made a mistake and has lifted the suspension,” she said.

. . .

The NYPD is expected this month to start using Velcro handcuffs to subdue unruly kids following a pilot program in 22 schools in northern Queens.

Short People Got No Reason To Live

But it’s weird — he looks so much taller on TV:

A con man trying to impersonate Paul Simon was arrested for trying to take money out of the singer’s bank account — because the teller realized the 6-foot-1 crook looked absolutely nothing like the diminutive rock legend, police sources told The Post.

This Was To Be Our Stimulus!

The make-work plan for the department busy with quota-driven ticketing (and more ticketing) and busting people for candy hits a snag when both Bloomberg and then the White House wimp out:

The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would “prefer that they did it elsewhere” and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder.

“It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that’s too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bloomberg told reporters.

“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City.”