Although I disagree with John Eterno and my friend Eli Silverman in their assessment of NYPD’s ‘Stop and Frisk’ tactics, I am posting their article “Ray Kelly's Record Should Rule Him Out Of Heading Homeland Security” as published in the British newspaper The Guardian. I happen to think Kelly would make a very good Homeland Security Secretary.
RAY KELLY’S RECORD SHOULD RULE HIM OUT OF HEADING HOMELAND SECURITY
The NYPD chief who has presided over the 'stop-and-frisk' policy and spying on Muslims would be a dire pick for DHS secretary
By John Eterno and Eli Silverman
July 22, 2013
The idea of nominating of Raymond W Kelly for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security would violate President Barack Obama's core principles and polices. The president has espoused openness, transparency, trust and confidence in government; inter-agency law enforcement co-operation; partnerships with citizens; and fair, equitable, effective and non-discriminatory law enforcement. On being elected, he promised:
__Obama and Biden will ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal incentives to state and local police departments to prohibit the practice.
Attorney General Eric Holder, another longtime critic of racial profiling, has worked to put the Department of Justice in a position to monitor "stop-and-frisk", the controversial policing tactic that has a disparate impact on blacks and Latinos. Speaking to the NAACP last week, Holder called the policy "outrageous".
Kelly's extensive record as commissioner of the New York City Police Department, on the other hand, speaks for itself. It is rife with secrecy, top-down managerial manipulation, impervious to any outside scrutiny, contemptuous of any questioning, and has embraced extensive surveillance and discriminatory policing of religious and racial minorities.
The NYPD's abuse of "stop, question and frisk" is an example of Kelly's trampling of basic rights. In 2002, Kelly's first year in office under the current mayor, there were fewer than 100,000 forcible stops. Crime was already dramatically down 63% since its height in the 1990s.
By 2011, at the peak of stop-and-frisk, the NYPD made nearly 700,000 forcible stops, mostly of minority youth. Over 85% of those stopped were released without a summons or arrest. There appears to be no need for this rapid increase in stop-and-frisks since crime rates had already significantly decreased.
Additionally, the large number of stops makes no sense. The NYPD is claiming crime is down 80%, yet at the same time, there are supposedly hundreds of thousands of suspects walking the streets. The two statements cannot logically co-exist.
The NYPD asserts that this practice "saves lives". While no sound study supports this assertion, it is clear that in a free society the police need to find legal ways to fight crime while respecting basic rights. Such heavy-handed tactics alienate minorities and more likely damage efforts to fight crime.
If people in minority neighborhoods "see something", those abused by police certainly will not say something. Also, some stopped may get ticketed or arrested for minor violations: in an age of information-sharing, such minor violations will show up on record checks which has the effect of reducing job opportunities of those who get ticketed for these trivial violations.
With respect to fighting crime and terrorism – supposedly, Kelly's strength – there are a number of key issues. Importantly, the NYPD commissioner has failed to act in any meaningful way on numerous claims of crime report manipulation. Our own research, including the book The Crime Numbers Game, demonstrates that such manipulation is commonplace.
Kelly created an impotent committee to review these practices but it lacked subpoena power, a budget, and the ability to grant immunity. Compounding this problem is the horrendous treatment of brave whistleblowers such as Adrian Schoolcraft, Adyl Polanco, and Robert Borelli. Each of these officers was penalized for exposing corrupt practices.
Schoolcraft, the worst-treated of the three, tried to report his allegations through channels and was ignored. He was placed in a mental institution for six days, has been suspended since February 2010, despite the fact that his allegations were all confirmed by the department's own Quality Assurance Division report, as well as by the hamstrung commission created by Kelly.
His department's lack of accountability and transparency is disturbing: a recent report by the New York public advocate found that the NYPD is one of the worst city agencies when it comes to responding to Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests. Giving the NYPD a fail grade, the public advocate noted that "28% of answered requests took more than 60 days to process," while a whopping "31% of requests received no response."
In 2010, the NYPD was one of only two jurisdictions in New York State not to report basic misdemeanor crime statistics. The New York Times had to sue for that data. Lost property statistics, too, are no longer published on the NYPD website – even though they were first released with great fanfare only a few short years ago (after many years of stonewalling).
Kelly's work on counter-terrorism, proclaimed as a strong point, is also exaggerated. He removed thousands of officers from crime fighting and transferred them to terrorism and intelligence units. Further, officers have been sent overseas. These are local officers not working with the federal government, who do not have diplomatic immunity; nor, to anyone's knowledge, do they have training by the State Department.
During the 2005 London bombings, Kelly released information reported to him by his overseas officers that the British authorities clearly did not want to be disclosed. For his part, Kelly has claimed that the NYPD has thwarted up to 16 terrorist plots. That number has now been reduced to three or four, and the NYPD now admits that it was not NYPD alone that stopped those plots, but joint action with the FBI.
Meanwhile, the FBI in New Jersey has complained that the NYPD's heavy-handed surveillance tactics have damaged their counter-terrorism efforts. Through hard work, the FBI has built bridges to communities; the NYPD's tactics are tearing them down.
If Kelly's record on fighting crime and terrorism is certainly questionable, his failure to protect basic rights is deplorable. The surveillance operations on Muslim Americans, exposed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporting, as well as Len Levitt's NYPD Confidential, is among the most egregious activities allowed by Kelly. NYPD officers were literally spying on innocent Americans simply because of their religion. NYPD officers attended college outings, went to New Jersey, and formed a secret partnership with the Central Intelligence Agency. Such profiling is the epitome of abusive policing.
If Ray Kelly were to become secretary of Homeland Security, one of the most powerful law enforcement positions in the United States, we can only ponder the level of damage he might do to basic American freedoms. If he makes the move from NYPD commissioner to Homeland Security secretary, Kelly will carry with him to Washington some very hefty baggage. Heavy enough to sink some of the core values of the Obama administration.
No comments:
Post a Comment