In 2013 Mayor Bill De Blasio was voted into office with pledges to reign in police violence and stop-and-frisk policing targeted at blacks and latinos.
Two proposed City Council initiatives aimed at changing law-and-order practices that critics say unfairly target minorities and the indigent have taken different paths, with one gaining steam as the other stalls.
The difference is a matter of politics and practicality, experts and stakeholders said.
Police officers in the five boroughs are struggling to adapt to changes to stop-and-frisk polices.
In a 94-page report released last week, attorney Peter Zimroth revealed that many New York Police Department officers still haven’t figured out the court-mandated changes made to its stop-and-frisk program.
NEW YORK — When New York City officials announced this week that Manhattan police would stop arresting most of the scofflaws who littered, drank in public, or took up two seats on the subway, and give them summonses instead, they were in many ways addressing a lot more than such penny-ante violations of the law.
The CCRB, the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board issued a report which verifies what police reform advocates have known, that the NYPD has been carrying out illegal and improper home entries and searches. A case in point -- the death of Ramarley Graham.
In response to the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board releasing a report highlighting improper searches after multiple other reports indicated other unconstitutional searches, Communities United for Police Reform released the following statement from spokesperson Jose Lopez.
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.
A new series of bills would give police officers the discretion to steer certain low-level broken windows offenses like drinking in public, littering, and public urination to civil court, rather than criminal court.
“It’s good to see justice as such a central focus of Speaker Mark-Viverito’s State of the City address, and we welcome a focus on how we achieve it for New Yorkers. There were important proposals put forward today, and our hope is to work together with Speaker Mark-Viverito and the Council to achieve these goals, while at the same time passing critical police reforms like the Right to Know Act.
On Monday, January 25, 2016, Communities United for Police Reform members testified before the New York City Council hearing on the Criminal Justice Reform Act.
