In the face of mounting criticism of his record on transparency, Mayor Bill de Blasio called for changing a state law that the city has said blocks the release of details about disciplinary actions taken against New York City police officers.
Mayor de Blasio has made a formal plea to the state legislature to amend Section 50-a of the New York State Civil Rights Law, which the NYPD has used to justify withholding disciplinary records of police officers who have been accused of misconduct. "Without significant changes to this statute, the city remains barred from providing New Yorkers with the transparency we deserve," the mayor said in a statement.
At a news conference held at City Hall Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016, activists announced that city officials, along with Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, and community organizations filed a legal action supporting the release of a summary misconduct record of NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who held Eric Garner in a fatal and prohibited chokehold in July 2014.
Pull back the curtain!
So says a group of elected officials and activist groups that will file briefs Tuesday in support of a two-year legal battle to get the city to release the disciplinary records of the cop who fatally choked Eric Garner back in 2014, organizers said.
The effort is being mounted by Garner's mother Gwen Carr, members of the City Council, Public Advocate Letitia James and Communities United for Police Reform, a nonprofit dedicated to greater police accountability.
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.
QUEENS, N.Y. — On a recent evening in a nondescript apartment building in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, a small group of young social justice activists gather for a weekly ritual.
Armed with handheld video cameras and know-your-rights pamphlets, they hash out a strategy and exchange information about police movements in the area. All write on their arms the phone number of a lawyer who will bail them out of jail if things go awry.
Last week’s conviction of NYPD officer Peter Liang, the first conviction of a NYPD officer for killing a civilian in more than a decade, is an important step forward for justice for Akai Gurley’s family and police accountability. However, it hardly represents equal justice for our communities with respect to policing, or an end to the preferential double standard that most officers have experienced when they brutalize or kill.
On Thursday exactly a year ago, New York City was practically on fire. The startling decision last December 3 by a grand jury to not indict Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer behind the videotaped death of Eric Garner, blew the lid off a razzled metropolis whose citizens were already familiar with police brutality and discrimination. By then, of course, protests had spread across the country, due to the nearly concurrent decision with Michael Brown's case in Ferguson. In New York, as in Missouri, the anger was palpable—like you could reach out and touch it. And it stayed that way, for a while.
On the first anniversary of the NYPD's apparent neckhold killing of Eric Garner during an arrest for selling loose cigarettes, the Justice Department has still not decided on federal charges, but experts say the case has already set in motion potentially far-reaching changes in policing in New York.