Police - like soldiers - are conditioned to see other people as potential enemies, threats. Thus they are unconsciously "armed" at every moment, ready to respond violently, lethally, to any perceived threat. The most "effective" police officers and military persons are necessarily trigger-prone, with a "shoot first, ask later" mentality. So long as this is the case, we will continue to have killings by law officers and armed military people of victims who should not have been fired upon. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has attempted to enlighten policemen regarding this conditioning but as today's headlines show, the underlying problem of seeing everyone else as a potential enemy does not easily go away, and young people are among its chief victims.
Manhattan Institute For Policy Research is a totally disreputable organization. They might make grand sounding proposals about real problems but their solutions do not correspond with their rhetoric.
Why would anyone want to corporatize a public service? Customers? Really? How about better training? How about making sure every cop has the resources to do whatever assignment they are given? How about eliminating ticket quotas that reduce policing to the level of fundraising. How about specific social training for officers in immigrant and minority neighborhoods?
Sounds like the article is talking about making just the sort of changes that you are advocating.
If good cops tolerate bad cops, are they truly good cos?
*Charleston, SC officer Slager shot an unarmed man in the back five times.
*Cleveland, Ohio, an officer shot 12 year old Tamir Rice dead for no reason.
#Dallas TX. An officer fired an assault rifle into a car with kids for no reason, killed a 15 year old.
*NYC officer Liang shot Mr. Akai Gurley dead while walking in a stairwell.
Just because a person can pass the written and physical exam(s) doesn't mean that person is mentally fit to be a cop.
*Charleston, SC officer Slager shot an unarmed man in the back five times.
*Cleveland, Ohio, an officer shot 12 year old Tamir Rice dead for no reason.
#Dallas TX. An officer fired an assault rifle into a car with kids for no reason, killed a 15 year old.
*NYC officer Liang shot Mr. Akai Gurley dead while walking in a stairwell.
Just because a person can pass the written and physical exam(s) doesn't mean that person is mentally fit to be a cop.
1
What do the "police" do when some of their "customers" want to kill them in a neighborhood of "customers" that just doesn't care?
its not the NYPD who isn't serving the people it's the Administration who has continued to support a failing Educational system as well as Housing and Social Services who also fail dismally!
"What the report doesn’t make clear is how evicting his sister would have curtailed his criminal impulses."
That is not the purpose of such a move. First, it is intended to incentivize legal behavior for future tenants, by showing that illegal behavior like shooting at police officers and allowing unauthorized tenants leads to undesirable consequences.
Second, given the fact that there are a limited number of spaces in the Housing Authority buildings, it rewards those who do not commit criminal actions by giving them priority access to the spaces.
Finally, it enhances the safety of the other tenants in a complex by removing people who feel a right to shoot at others. Displacing risk, while not the best strategy, is often the only one an organization has at its disposal and it does protect the other people that particular organization serves.
That is not the purpose of such a move. First, it is intended to incentivize legal behavior for future tenants, by showing that illegal behavior like shooting at police officers and allowing unauthorized tenants leads to undesirable consequences.
Second, given the fact that there are a limited number of spaces in the Housing Authority buildings, it rewards those who do not commit criminal actions by giving them priority access to the spaces.
Finally, it enhances the safety of the other tenants in a complex by removing people who feel a right to shoot at others. Displacing risk, while not the best strategy, is often the only one an organization has at its disposal and it does protect the other people that particular organization serves.
Why don't you publish the details of George Kelling's proposed balanced scorecard for police departments - the specific metrics he thinks should be used, and how to avoid bias in measuring police-community relations - instead of just restating the same ideological arguments about policing for the thousandth time? Frankly Ms. Bellafante, no one cares about the latest anecdotal reflections on whether police are getting nicer or nastier in NYC anymore. We need metrics, not storytelling; the City's CompStat statistics - the FBI-based felony counts which illustrated the reduction of crime in every police precinct - are what told a vivid, real story about policing and showed the country that it was actually possible to reduce urban crime, which the New York Times now regards as a negative outcome. If anyone is really open to a Balanced Scorecard approach to policing, let's hear exactly what metrics about the quality of community relations would go into it - and how they would be protected from data contamination both from government and from political advocates.
9
There are many committed, fair, police officers. There are also those who show racism and class prejudice. Then there are those who come to the job simply not fit for duty because of their mental state.
However, acknowledging all of that, we need to remember that there are 300 million guns in our country. This article's faulty premise does not acknowledge the inherent, terrifying violence of a job that triggers even good cops to do the wrong thing, at the horrific expense of lives lost, families devastated and communities in disarray.
Get the guns off the streets (and get inner city kids and teens in year-round schools and after school programs to boot).
Give the good cops a job they can do, then get rid of the bad cops.
However, acknowledging all of that, we need to remember that there are 300 million guns in our country. This article's faulty premise does not acknowledge the inherent, terrifying violence of a job that triggers even good cops to do the wrong thing, at the horrific expense of lives lost, families devastated and communities in disarray.
Get the guns off the streets (and get inner city kids and teens in year-round schools and after school programs to boot).
Give the good cops a job they can do, then get rid of the bad cops.
7
I observed a couple with a sleeping baby in a stroller and two large pieces of luggage strategizing at the top of the stairs at the 50th street station on Thursday. Once I got up to the landing I looked to the right and saw 2 groups of police officers casually standing around chatting.
Not one noticed and therefore not one offered to assist them.
Not one noticed and therefore not one offered to assist them.
5
Y, as a retired police officer I read your comment and realized that you are clueless as to the meaning of the article. Yes, an officer could have helped carrying something, but, if he got injured he would be "on his own" since he he is a moving man. If the officers carried the child and the child was some how injured the law suits would be astronomical. I remember early in my career a young man driving down Broadway struck a pot hole and blew out a tire. He called 911 and I responded along with my partner to incident. He demanded that we change his tire as the pot hole was on a city street. We rxplained to him that we would take a report, call a tow truck and that he could sue the city for damages. That all being said, he went into the precinct and filed a multiple page complaint claiming that by not fixing his car we had not done our jobs. By the way, why didn't you carry the luggage?
5
Republicans like to say they want local power to the "people" and less oppressive government
Yet white police departments police nonwhite neighborhoods without any feedback or consequences from the "customer"
To borrow from a republican narrative: local control is important and unions are bad.
Communities shouldn't be so unhappy with the government servants that they pay for.
Unless it's just racism and the police are supposed to be alien to these communities because the relationship is supposed to be adversarial
Maybe crime is just a coded excuse to suspend the tenets of Democracy that rarely apply to non whites. Crime is just an excuse to persecute minorities and feed them into a for profit prison system that takes tax payer money and mostly employs whites.
It's funny that outside of Chicago crime rates are very low yet republicans keep pushing this narrative as to how the police should behave in communities that aren't white. They want a militarized police and fight things like body cams. Yet they persecute the IRS for doing their job..hmmm.
Local control and representation
Accountability for government workers
No tyranny from government...whether it's the British or the police
Unless your just racist and looking for an excuse to oppress
Yet white police departments police nonwhite neighborhoods without any feedback or consequences from the "customer"
To borrow from a republican narrative: local control is important and unions are bad.
Communities shouldn't be so unhappy with the government servants that they pay for.
Unless it's just racism and the police are supposed to be alien to these communities because the relationship is supposed to be adversarial
Maybe crime is just a coded excuse to suspend the tenets of Democracy that rarely apply to non whites. Crime is just an excuse to persecute minorities and feed them into a for profit prison system that takes tax payer money and mostly employs whites.
It's funny that outside of Chicago crime rates are very low yet republicans keep pushing this narrative as to how the police should behave in communities that aren't white. They want a militarized police and fight things like body cams. Yet they persecute the IRS for doing their job..hmmm.
Local control and representation
Accountability for government workers
No tyranny from government...whether it's the British or the police
Unless your just racist and looking for an excuse to oppress
1
I am happy when I am safe.
I don't care if the police do that by shooting criminals, profiling, walking the beat, playing little league, or baking donuts. If they do any of those things and I am not safe, I am not happy.
I don't care if the police do that by shooting criminals, profiling, walking the beat, playing little league, or baking donuts. If they do any of those things and I am not safe, I am not happy.
9
Of course, our sense of personal inviolability is paramount to our well being. However, when authorities profile, they inevitably violate the rights and safety of innocents, for qualities no fault their own. And I'm sure that makes them feel less safe. Are their feelings of a different importance than yours?
3
I know something about the methodology of Broken Windows, a social science 'experiment,' my PhD is in Social Science, 1973, with some criminology.
The 'experiment' prominently abandoned two cars, one in our very own Bronx, stripped immediately; and a second, in Palo Alto CA, where the car was NOT (at first) stripped.
Some 'experiment,' two cars, one stripped, and a transformation in policy. An embarrassment of methodology (later BW was properly evaluated and affirmed).
So, to community relations policing
Mr Kelling, cited here, has a website, https://www.manhattan-institute.org/expert/george-l-kelling
where I found the Newark Foot patrol Experiment (1981)
https://www.policefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/144273499-Th...
wherein, p 19 of pdf pagination, p 5 the reports' own internal pagination (copy protected), the authors find
==>> NO statistically significant drops in crime,
THIS WILL BE ON THE EXAM
although elsewhere they report subjective perceptions of greater safety. Go figure.
NYC has forgotten the 1,000s of murders in NYC 'those days,' mostly black, then and now, whose saved lives, coincide with BW, first started on the subways,graffiti and fare beating. Worked! Next City-wide and worked also. Quants still argue though.
Stop and frisk is NOT BW, BW is more of Zero Tolerance.
The Housing Authority policy is irrelevant.
Re racial over-incarceration, I have yet to hear, 'lock us up as much as white people.'
The 'experiment' prominently abandoned two cars, one in our very own Bronx, stripped immediately; and a second, in Palo Alto CA, where the car was NOT (at first) stripped.
Some 'experiment,' two cars, one stripped, and a transformation in policy. An embarrassment of methodology (later BW was properly evaluated and affirmed).
So, to community relations policing
Mr Kelling, cited here, has a website, https://www.manhattan-institute.org/expert/george-l-kelling
where I found the Newark Foot patrol Experiment (1981)
https://www.policefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/144273499-Th...
wherein, p 19 of pdf pagination, p 5 the reports' own internal pagination (copy protected), the authors find
==>> NO statistically significant drops in crime,
THIS WILL BE ON THE EXAM
although elsewhere they report subjective perceptions of greater safety. Go figure.
NYC has forgotten the 1,000s of murders in NYC 'those days,' mostly black, then and now, whose saved lives, coincide with BW, first started on the subways,graffiti and fare beating. Worked! Next City-wide and worked also. Quants still argue though.
Stop and frisk is NOT BW, BW is more of Zero Tolerance.
The Housing Authority policy is irrelevant.
Re racial over-incarceration, I have yet to hear, 'lock us up as much as white people.'
1
For the past few weeks I've been thinking of the relationship between the airlines and their passengers as parallel to the relationship between the police and the civilians. The airlines would throw their passengers under the airbus to open seats for their employees, and the police would sacrifice the citizens to protect themselves. Neither the thin blue line nor those flying into the blue seem to have much respect for their customers.
10
Community policing is a good start to restore trust between the community and the police force who serve us. There was a time when the police officers were on a first name basis with members of the community. Kids knew that they could go to their police officers for help and parents knew that police officers were part of their kids village. The war on drugs changed our attitude but it's not too late to restore what was lost.
I know here in Portland our mayor wants to eliminate the horse mounted officers who patrol downtown. We're very sad to see them go. If you are lost or need help they are easy to spot and very friendly. Tourists pose for selfies with them.
Right now in many communities there's an us versus them mentality. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Community leaders working with the police can help foster a more positive relationship especially as they already have the community's trust. Every community is unique but local leaders will have ideas of what will and won't work.
I know here in Portland our mayor wants to eliminate the horse mounted officers who patrol downtown. We're very sad to see them go. If you are lost or need help they are easy to spot and very friendly. Tourists pose for selfies with them.
Right now in many communities there's an us versus them mentality. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Community leaders working with the police can help foster a more positive relationship especially as they already have the community's trust. Every community is unique but local leaders will have ideas of what will and won't work.
4
The headline was enough to grab me, thinking with dismay that the idea of training police to regard people as "consumers" is a terrible advancement on an already classist law enforcement system. One would think that in the era of Trump, a liberal paper like the Times would want to move away from espousing consumerism, and at least, giving private citizens-- which is what we all are, regardless of race, class, creed and even rap sheet -- the last shred of dignity in being just that, private citizens, protected by the Constitution, not our value on the consumer market (which is just a more subtle way of privileging the rich). Housing Authority's rule of barring people with a felony conviction was a crude, one size fits solution to appease the biggest taxpayers of the housing complex -- the rich. It had nothing to do with the safety of the residents or the social cohesion of the complexes. We should address this directly. The truth is, if auxiliary police were actively on duty to keep social cohesion within the housing units, fostering trust and a sense of safety, everyone would have a place to live. Reform must work for the people whose lives are the most immediately affected by it, not rich white liberals who want to congratulate themselves on solving a social problem they know very little about.
3
Please pay them a lot more it that's the desire. Hardest most thankless job going.
4
Try teaching.
4
Try working a full year making life & death decisions!
1
First unasked question: Who is the customer? At the moment, the police are a militarized force that works based on top down command. The customer is the politicians and the businesses who play such a large role in their re-election. Those customers decide what the policing priorities are -- wage the war on drugs, get the homeless off the streets, etc. If we had true community policing, the customer would be the community. That means the community would decide what are the policing priorities. The community would decide if people released from prison can rejoin their families in public housing. The community would decide if people should be arrested for a public display of alcohol, etc. or if restorative justice is more appropriate. And the community would evaluate their police force. Any other approach to "Community Policing" is just a bunch of nice words.
6
I think that "consumers who need to be kept happy" goes to far. While it is true that our tax dollars pay public servants, this is not a situation where "the customer is always right," nor should it be. I think a better aim is mutual respect between police officers and the public as fellow citizens and human beings. I worry that metaphors such as "the thin blue line" can separate officers from the public in potentially harmful ways. We citizens need to respect the difficulties that officers face, and should rightly expect the same respect -- and even empathy -- in return.
1
James Comey loved these destructive exclusion policies when he was working in Richmond. He called his version Project Exile. It tore up families unnecessarily. On the larger issue, basing assessments of quality and effectiveness on "customer satisfaction," has ruined hospital care and much of public education.
3
So much of what goes on reminds me of a lesson from a project management course that I took.
A new hospital orderly is hired, and told that, in a hospital, cleanliness is next to godliness. Everything is fine until one day an ambulance pulls up. The patient has knife wounds and is spurting blood all over the place. Of course the orderly won't permit the patient to be brought inside the hospital.
A new hospital orderly is hired, and told that, in a hospital, cleanliness is next to godliness. Everything is fine until one day an ambulance pulls up. The patient has knife wounds and is spurting blood all over the place. Of course the orderly won't permit the patient to be brought inside the hospital.
7
So based on the comment from Robin, there isn't a crime problem in some these neighborhoods. It's just part of a conspiracy to oppress people.
4
No, dear Times reader, crime has not taken a holiday. But, my point was that crime must be understood in a social context that is replete with class and racial bias. We all know that it is minority and poor communities that suffer the most from the ravages of social disorder i.e. drug and street crime. These minority communities have been under served based upon their racial and class profiles. The long term issues I was addressing , economic and racial injustice, need to in the forefront of any serious attempts to deal with social disorganization in our communities citywide and nationwide.
9
The war on crime was and continues to be a war on the underclass, the under resourced, the underrepresented and the non-white. It continues because it serves the purpose of intimidation of those groups mentioned above. The war on crime makes fear of the other a strategy for divide and conquer that keeps the working poor of white, black and Latino peoples afraid of each other and thus politically immobilized. The war on crime terrorizes the middling classes with the specter of a society about to go out of control: thus the need to militarize its guardians of law and order. Nothing will be fundamentally changed in policing until there is fundamental change in who holds power at the very heights of the political and economic system...Everything else is window dressing.
18
What a great initiative! One thing though, living in government housing for 66 years?
9
When the alternatives are "private housing run by a saboteur landlord" and "own home serviced by shady contractors who laugh at terms like 'competitive price' and 'guaranteed service' ", why not?
8
In my densely-poulated urban neighborhood, crime is high, but you never see police on foot, despite a very high walkability score. Mostly the police - all I've met friendly and very professional - respond to calls, so you see them in patrol cars whizzing by on their way to something very unpleasant. Community policing was popular for a while; we got to see police on foot and on bicycles, but that seems to have ended with the crackdown on stop and frisk. I don't know why it's so complicated - in Europe, even in countries where some gun ownership is legal, police seem to mix very well with their "customers." If they connect more with neighborhood residents, perhaps the sense of otherness that raises suspicion would subside. But effective crime control isn't the exclusive responsibility of the police - it's a responsibility shared with the community. Maybe we're focusing too much on the police as the sole agents of change.
16
Hear, hear! Someone recommend that the NYPD read Born to Walk by Dan Rubinstein, viz. the chapter about police getting out of their cars and on to their feet.
1
Foot patrols are a very inefficient use of police resources. It slows down responses to real emergency calls. 'The cop on the beat' is more of a nostalgic urban fantasy. This new 'community policing' initiative is also a waste of NYPD resources. In my precinct (the 122) the two 'community' cops gave out their email and cellphone#s. Very feelgood but our highly-paid cops are not social workers. What the 122 needs is a new commander who does more than send out happy tweets. While still low compared to the rest of the city robberies are up 37% over the last two years while she sits in her office tweeting out nonsense. I'm sure the same can be said for other precincts.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-122...
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-122...
1
There are multiple anti-crime, anti-gang groups in NYC already and they've been covered extensively. Unlike them, the police hold greater influence & power since they work for the government.
1