Good-government and police-reform groups blasted the City Council’s “handshake agreement”with the Police Department Monday as “irresponsible” and “not how the City Council should act,” in the words of Citizens Union’s Dick Dadey.
A government watchdog laid out a proposal Monday for greater transparency of NYPD operations and accountability for officer actions.
Citizens Union released an 18-point policy statement that, among other goals, seeks to establish consistency across the police oversight system and expand the range of disciplinary options for cases of officer misconduct.
The group’s executive director, Dick Dadey, said the introduction of a new police commissioner, James O’Neill, next month opens a door to improved NYPD-community relations.
Last week, City Council Members Ritchie Torres and Antonio Reynoso sent out a joint statement in which they addressed the ramifications of the impending retirement of NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. “With the departure of William Bratton,” the statement reads, “we are reminded that administrative agreements are every bit as short-lived as commissioners themselves, coming and going in the moments we least expect.”
WHEN NEW YORK MAYOR Bill de Blasio introduced incoming Police Commissioner James O’Neill last week, he praised him as the “architect” of neighborhood policing — the city’s version of the “community policing” approach being implemented across the country as a solution to the increasingly contentious relationship between law enforcement and people of color.
A recent analysis of statistics from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services by police reform advocacy group found that marijuana arrests rose in the first six months of 2016 compared with the same period last year.
Growing up in Flatbush in the 2000s, I fell in love with the vibrancy of my community. I loved the way we gelled together — different cultures, with different layers of broken English sprouting from mouth to mouth, speaker to speaker.
One of the most vivid images I still hold on to, however, is the way police patrolled parties and community gatherings. They looked more like corrections officers walking down aisles of prison blocks than the agents of community safety they professed to be.
The NYPD is taking longer than expected to get its body camera pilot program going, according to a court document filed Tuesday, because the department has yet to pick a contractor for the equipment, which could mean another six months before officers are outfitted.
The pilot program will feature 1,000 cameras in 20 precincts, and will be compared to 20 control precincts. The yearlong pilot program was ordered in August 2013.
Many believe that the biggest responsibility of the Mayor of New York City is to keep people safe and Bill de Blasio has largely done that, in no small part by letting his lightning-rod police commissioner, Bill Bratton, call the shots on public safety policy. The mayor has focused on pre-kindergarten and affordable housing while Bratton has governed the streets, helping bring crime down to historic lows.