Whoever succeeds Mayor Michael
Bloomberg will have an important legacy to protect: the astounding reductions
in violent crime that began three mayors ago and have continued under Mr.
Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Raymond Kelly.
The next mayor’s challenge will be to meet high expectations for protecting the public — and not just against street crime, but terrorism, too — at a time of strapped budgets and with a depleted force of about 34,500 officers, down from a peak of about 40,000 in 2000. Though crime has been falling for a long time, the trend is not automatic or irreversible: data from this month, for example, show rapes, felony assaults and grand larcenies inching up.The new mayor will also have to curb unconstitutional policing — the widespread harassment of innocent black and Hispanic men and surveillance of law-abiding Muslims — that has inflamed resentment across the city.
This won’t be easy. Still, it’s a chance for a fresh start, for new strategies that keep the peace, respect the Constitution and heal the divide between police and public.
While the city under Mr. Bloomberg has not returned to the seething racial hostility of the Giuliani years, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Bloomberg have paid a heavy price for their attachment to the stop-and-frisk program, which has infuriated and humiliated hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers in a mostly fruitless hunt for criminals and illegal guns. It has needlessly eroded community trust and provoked the City Council to pass measures opening the Police Department to outside oversight and led to civil rights lawsuits, with the possibility of a federal court appointing a monitor to stop abuses. (After soaring in recent years, the stop-and-frisk numbers are way down, and yet the homicide rate has continued to fall.)
The Republican candidates, Joseph Lhota, John Catsimatidis and George McDonald, have largely accepted the Giuliani-Bloomberg-Kelly argument that hardball policing is essential to public safety. The Democrats generally have better ideas. Most are ready, even eager, for a new police commissioner, though Christine Quinn straddles the issue, saying she would gladly keep Mr. Kelly but fire him if his priorities ever collided with hers. They all want to reform stop-and-frisk, differing mainly in the intensity of their objections. John Liu calls it blatant racial profiling. Anthony Weiner attacked stop-and-frisk by evoking the Nazis, for which he was sharply and rightly criticized.
Beyond reforming abusive tactics, though, are other issues of police staffing and deployment. Most of the Democrats want to expand the force and improve community policing — putting more officers on the beat to listen to residents’ complaints and concerns and stop crimes before they start. The question is whether we need more officers to do that. Nearly every candidate says yes. Sal Albanese would hire 3,800 new officers. Ms. Quinn would hire 1,600. William Thompson Jr. would put 2,000 more officers on the streets by moving some out of desk jobs and hiring new recruits. He and Bill de Blasio would put more experienced officers in high-crime areas, ending a practice of flooding troubled neighborhoods with rookies.
Mr. de Blasio, differing with his rivals, says the department already has enough officers, who just need to be deployed more efficiently. He says he got this advice from William Bratton, former commissioner in New York and Los Angeles and a guru of innovative policing. Mr. Bratton, in an interview, did not take a position on whether the department, the nation’s largest, actually needed to be bigger; he said that more cops couldn’t hurt, but that the new mayor should do a top-to-bottom review to see how well the force is deployed and to find efficiencies.
The candidates love the CompStat program, which analyzes crime data to swiftly identify and attack crime trends. Ms. Quinn would use CompStat to hold the department to its community-policing goals — to track how many public meetings officers and supervisors attend, for example. She and Mr. de Blasio would also use innovations like devices that identify the source of gunfire, giving police investigations a technological edge.
Not all the candidates’ ideas are sound. Ms. Quinn should stop defending the department’s deplorable practice of indiscriminate surveillance of Muslims, a clear abuse of power. Mr. Weiner pledges to “take DNA from more arrestees” — a flawed, suspicionless search tactic that the Supreme Court (wrongly) validated in June. Mr. Catsimatidis would get around the stop-and-frisk problem with a technology that doesn’t exist: a portable device that would detect a gun in someone’s pocket from afar.
The next mayor should do what Mr. Bloomberg did 12 years ago — take a fresh look at old problems while honoring time-tested principles of respectful, responsible policing. The sense of security most New Yorkers feel today is precious, especially if you remember what the city was like without it. Everyone in the city needs to enjoy that freedom from fear — in their homes, in the streets, in places of work and worship, and in every encounter they have with their Police Department.
The next mayor’s challenge will be to meet high expectations for protecting the public — and not just against street crime, but terrorism, too — at a time of strapped budgets and with a depleted force of about 34,500 officers, down from a peak of about 40,000 in 2000. Though crime has been falling for a long time, the trend is not automatic or irreversible: data from this month, for example, show rapes, felony assaults and grand larcenies inching up.
The new mayor will also have to curb unconstitutional policing — the widespread harassment of innocent black and Hispanic men and surveillance of law-abiding Muslims — that has inflamed resentment across the city.
This won’t be easy. Still, it’s a chance for a fresh start, for new strategies that keep the peace, respect the Constitution and heal the divide between police and public.
While the city under Mr. Bloomberg has not returned to the seething racial hostility of the Giuliani years, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Bloomberg have paid a heavy price for their attachment to the stop-and-frisk program, which has infuriated and humiliated hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers in a mostly fruitless hunt for criminals and illegal guns. It has needlessly eroded community trust and provoked the City Council to pass measures opening the Police Department to outside oversight and led to civil rights lawsuits, with the possibility of a federal court appointing a monitor to stop abuses. (After soaring in recent years, the stop-and-frisk numbers are way down, and yet the homicide rate has continued to fall.)
The Republican candidates, Joseph Lhota, John Catsimatidis and George McDonald, have largely accepted the Giuliani-Bloomberg-Kelly argument that hardball policing is essential to public safety. The Democrats generally have better ideas. Most are ready, even eager, for a new police commissioner, though Christine Quinn straddles the issue, saying she would gladly keep Mr. Kelly but fire him if his priorities ever collided with hers. They all want to reform stop-and-frisk, differing mainly in the intensity of their objections. John Liu calls it blatant racial profiling. Anthony Weiner attacked stop-and-frisk by evoking the Nazis, for which he was sharply and rightly criticized.
Beyond reforming abusive tactics, though, are other issues of police staffing and deployment. Most of the Democrats want to expand the force and improve community policing — putting more officers on the beat to listen to residents’ complaints and concerns and stop crimes before they start. The question is whether we need more officers to do that. Nearly every candidate says yes. Sal Albanese would hire 3,800 new officers. Ms. Quinn would hire 1,600. William Thompson Jr. would put 2,000 more officers on the streets by moving some out of desk jobs and hiring new recruits. He and Bill de Blasio would put more experienced officers in high-crime areas, ending a practice of flooding troubled neighborhoods with rookies.
Mr. de Blasio, differing with his rivals, says the department already has enough officers, who just need to be deployed more efficiently. He says he got this advice from William Bratton, former commissioner in New York and Los Angeles and a guru of innovative policing. Mr. Bratton, in an interview, did not take a position on whether the department, the nation’s largest, actually needed to be bigger; he said that more cops couldn’t hurt, but that the new mayor should do a top-to-bottom review to see how well the force is deployed and to find efficiencies.
The candidates love the CompStat program, which analyzes crime data to swiftly identify and attack crime trends. Ms. Quinn would use CompStat to hold the department to its community-policing goals — to track how many public meetings officers and supervisors attend, for example. She and Mr. de Blasio would also use innovations like devices that identify the source of gunfire, giving police investigations a technological edge.
Not all the candidates’ ideas are sound. Ms. Quinn should stop defending the department’s deplorable practice of indiscriminate surveillance of Muslims, a clear abuse of power. Mr. Weiner pledges to “take DNA from more arrestees” — a flawed, suspicionless search tactic that the Supreme Court (wrongly) validated in June. Mr. Catsimatidis would get around the stop-and-frisk problem with a technology that doesn’t exist: a portable device that would detect a gun in someone’s pocket from afar.
The next mayor’s challenge will be to meet high expectations for protecting the public — and not just against street crime, but terrorism, too — at a time of strapped budgets and with a depleted force of about 34,500 officers, down from a peak of about 40,000 in 2000. Though crime has been falling for a long time, the trend is not automatic or irreversible: data from this month, for example, show rapes, felony assaults and grand larcenies inching up.
The new mayor will also have to curb unconstitutional policing — the widespread harassment of innocent black and Hispanic men and surveillance of law-abiding Muslims — that has inflamed resentment across the city.
This won’t be easy. Still, it’s a chance for a fresh start, for new strategies that keep the peace, respect the Constitution and heal the divide between police and public.
While the city under Mr. Bloomberg has not returned to the seething racial hostility of the Giuliani years, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Bloomberg have paid a heavy price for their attachment to the stop-and-frisk program, which has infuriated and humiliated hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers in a mostly fruitless hunt for criminals and illegal guns. It has needlessly eroded community trust and provoked the City Council to pass measures opening the Police Department to outside oversight and led to civil rights lawsuits, with the possibility of a federal court appointing a monitor to stop abuses. (After soaring in recent years, the stop-and-frisk numbers are way down, and yet the homicide rate has continued to fall.)
The Republican candidates, Joseph Lhota, John Catsimatidis and George McDonald, have largely accepted the Giuliani-Bloomberg-Kelly argument that hardball policing is essential to public safety. The Democrats generally have better ideas. Most are ready, even eager, for a new police commissioner, though Christine Quinn straddles the issue, saying she would gladly keep Mr. Kelly but fire him if his priorities ever collided with hers. They all want to reform stop-and-frisk, differing mainly in the intensity of their objections. John Liu calls it blatant racial profiling. Anthony Weiner attacked stop-and-frisk by evoking the Nazis, for which he was sharply and rightly criticized.
Beyond reforming abusive tactics, though, are other issues of police staffing and deployment. Most of the Democrats want to expand the force and improve community policing — putting more officers on the beat to listen to residents’ complaints and concerns and stop crimes before they start. The question is whether we need more officers to do that. Nearly every candidate says yes. Sal Albanese would hire 3,800 new officers. Ms. Quinn would hire 1,600. William Thompson Jr. would put 2,000 more officers on the streets by moving some out of desk jobs and hiring new recruits. He and Bill de Blasio would put more experienced officers in high-crime areas, ending a practice of flooding troubled neighborhoods with rookies.
Mr. de Blasio, differing with his rivals, says the department already has enough officers, who just need to be deployed more efficiently. He says he got this advice from William Bratton, former commissioner in New York and Los Angeles and a guru of innovative policing. Mr. Bratton, in an interview, did not take a position on whether the department, the nation’s largest, actually needed to be bigger; he said that more cops couldn’t hurt, but that the new mayor should do a top-to-bottom review to see how well the force is deployed and to find efficiencies.
The candidates love the CompStat program, which analyzes crime data to swiftly identify and attack crime trends. Ms. Quinn would use CompStat to hold the department to its community-policing goals — to track how many public meetings officers and supervisors attend, for example. She and Mr. de Blasio would also use innovations like devices that identify the source of gunfire, giving police investigations a technological edge.
Not all the candidates’ ideas are sound. Ms. Quinn should stop defending the department’s deplorable practice of indiscriminate surveillance of Muslims, a clear abuse of power. Mr. Weiner pledges to “take DNA from more arrestees” — a flawed, suspicionless search tactic that the Supreme Court (wrongly) validated in June. Mr. Catsimatidis would get around the stop-and-frisk problem with a technology that doesn’t exist: a portable device that would detect a gun in someone’s pocket from afar.
The next mayor should do what Mr. Bloomberg did 12 years ago — take a fresh look at old problems while honoring time-tested principles of respectful, responsible policing. The sense of security most New Yorkers feel today is precious, especially if you remember what the city was like without it. Everyone in the city needs to enjoy that freedom from fear — in their homes, in the streets, in places of work and worship, and in every encounter they have with their Police Department.
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD/NY
Ads
Need money? Click here for revolutionary ways to make it online.
Enjoy fast and reliable bulksms. Unlimited validity. Click here to check it out.
Click here for Amazing Buzz on the Internet!
Click here to refresh yourself.
Ads
Need money? Click here for revolutionary ways to make it online.
Enjoy fast and reliable bulksms. Unlimited validity. Click here to check it out.
Click here for Amazing Buzz on the Internet!
Click here to refresh yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment