In the Media

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton announces safest summer in 25 years

09/01/2015
New York Daily News

The season began with a troubling spike in gun violence, but crime stats from the last three months show the city is enjoying the safest summer in a quarter century.

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, when asked about the sharp rise in murders in some cities across the country, boasted on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” about the Big Apple’s recent drop in crime.

“Ironically, New York City this past summer, June to end of August ... this was the safest summer we’ve had in 25 years in terms of shootings and murders,” Bratton said Tuesday.

Fixing Broken Windows

Bill Bratton wants to be America’s top cop. His critics say that his legacy is tainted.
08/30/2015
New Yorker

On a bitterly cold night in February, William Bratton, New York City’s police commissioner, joined several hundred uniformed officers for an informal memorial service at the corner of 107th Avenue and Inwood Street, in Jamaica, Queens. It was past midnight, and everyone was waiting for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was due to speak. Twenty-seven years earlier, on February 26, 1988, a twenty-two-year-old officer named Edward Byrne was shot and killed on that corner, on orders from a drug dealer, as he sat in his patrol car guarding the home of a witness.

Is NYPD Crossing The Line, Again, In Its Black Lives Matter Surveillance?

That would be "the same troubling surveillance it has conducted for decades on political activists."
08/21/2015
Huffington Post

NEW YORK -- The New York City Police Department's involvement in the surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists, as revealed this week by The Intercept, is once again raising questions about whether the NYPD is unlawfully monitoring political activity.  

Electeds, community leaders call for unity in fight againtst poverty, homelessness

08/20/2015
New York Amsterdam News

This week, members of the United Nations brought up the issue of increasing homelessness in New York. At about the same time, at a rally at City Hall Tuesday, Communities United for Police Reform, elected officials and a diverse group of homeless and anti-poverty advocates united to call for an end to the recent public dialogue in New York City that has, in effect, sought to demonize and shame homeless and poor New Yorkers.

NYPD Officers Seek To Shame Homeless Population Through Social Media Campaign

08/12/2015
Think Progress

A new campaign launched by the Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) in New York City is encouraging members of a police union, as well as their family and friends, to track “the homeless lying in our streets, aggressive panhandlers, people urinating in public or engaging in open-air drug activity, and quality-of-life offenses of every type.” The crusade comes in the midst of recent media hysteria over homeless people allegedly committing crimes, and advocates fear the

Police On Strike After Black Lives Matter Protests? How Michael Brown's Death Changed Policing One Year Later

08/07/2015
International Business Times

As a boy attending Catholic school in upstate New York, Stephen Loomis would find a parked police car blocking the building’s lot on each school day, so that motorists approaching a nearby intersection wouldn’t cut through and endanger students. Loomis said he and his friends frequently went over to speak with the officer, who would occasionally pop the hood of his squad car and show off the engine.

“Suddenly, he’d get a call and then whiz off on another assignment,” Loomis said. “I remember imagining he was off to chase bank robbers.”

Lawmakers push public access to police camera footage

08/06/2015
Politico New York /

As New York City plans a dramatic expansion of the use of body cameras among police officers here, two state lawmakers are introducing legislation they say will make sure that video is available to the public.

Currently, police officers' “personnel” files—which include substantiated complaints and other records—are not subject to Freedom of Information Law requests.

New York public urination debate tests 'broken windows' theory of crime

Originator of 'broken windows' policing theory says arrests should be ‘last resort’
07/31/2015
CBC News
New York, no longer the crime-infested Gotham it once was, still has little tolerance for anyone with a full bladder and an empty wallet.
 
In a city where free public restrooms are few and far between, many resort to relieving themselves in public.

Obama’s Criminal Justice Plans: A Response to Ferguson?

07/23/2015
Chicago Monitor

Just hours after announcing the historic nuclear deal with Iran on July 14th, President Obama moved to speak about a domestic issue that had been simmering on the back burner for years. He called for far-reaching criminal justice reforms focused on reducing sentences for non-violent offenders and eliminating racial inequities within the system.

Pages