KELLY’S WAR ATTACKED

While I hold John Eterno and Eli Silverman in the highest regard, I disagree with them on t his one.

EXPERTS POINT TO FLAWS IN NYPD TERROR EFFORT
Justice Department taking a look

By Mark Toor

The Chief
March 5, 2012

Two law-enforcement experts who have charged that the way the NYPD uses Compstat encourages officers to falsify crime statistics say the department’s controversial anti-terrorism program not only violates people’s constitutional rights, it’s also not good policing.

“It really reeks of racism,” said John A. Eterno, who retired from the department as a Captain and is now associate dean and director of graduate studies in criminal justice at Molloy College. He said the Police Department’s recently-reported investigations of out-of-town targets appear to be self-initiated rather than a response to actual evidence of possible terrorism. “Why focus just on Muslims?” he asked.

‘WE FOLLOW LEADS’

“We don’t target individuals based on race or religion. We follow leads,” Mayor Bloomberg said Feb. 24. He gave no further details of the leads.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that the Department of Justice would begin reviewing complaints that the NYPD counter-terror efforts were violating Muslims’ rights. The review will help DOJ determine whether to open a civil-rights investigation, he said.

Mr. Holder said that police seeking to monitor activities by citizens “should only do so when there is a basis to believe that something inappropriate is occurring or potentially could occur.” Many in the city’s Muslim communities say the NYPD is looking at all Muslims as though they were terror threats.

Eli B. Silverman, a Professor Emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who has consulted for and trained police departments around the world, said he saw parallels with the department’s stop-and-frisk initiative.

‘CAST A NET AND HOPE’

Stop-and-frisks pull in hundreds of thousands of people each year, about 12 percent of whom are summonsed or arrested. Similarly, Mr. Silverman said, NYPD surveillance activities in Newark, N.J. and on Long Island targeted entire communities. NYPD officers in those operations did a census of every Muslim-owned business and religious institution, even those owned by Jews, Turks, Indians and other groups that have never engaged in terrorism on U.S. soil. Mr. Silverman described the strategy as “Let’s throw a wide net and hope to pick things up.”

“The department is extending its reach beyond what’s considered reasonable,” Mr. Eterno said.

He and Mr. Silverman, who were asked by THE CHIEF-LEADER to comment on the anti-terrorism program, are the authors of a recently-published book about the problems that have developed with Compstat, “The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation.” The book says Compstat, which combines computer-generated crime patterns with a demand for accountability from police commanders, has been perverted from an important crime-fighting tool into a forum that encourages cops of all ranks to falsify crime numbers, downgrade felony reports and issue unnecessary summonses.

Mr. Eterno said the job of a government agency fighting terrorism is “to stop it while respecting basic rights...

It’s hard. It’s meant to be hard.”

He noted problems with sending officers undercover outside the city, as the NYPD did with a group of Muslims from Yale taking a rafting trip. Notifying local law-enforcement of such activities, he said, is a matter of “common courtesy and safety.” He said the undercovers “could be mistaken for perps.”

RISKS OVERSEAS

Sending officers overseas as observers, as the department does, is risky as well, he said. They’re not trained by the State Department, he noted, and working in a foreign country without training is dangerous. Further, he added, “If a cop gets into trouble they have no diplomatic immunity” and would be at the mercy of local authorities.

The two men noted that nobody’s reviewing NYPD policy, as opposed to Federal intelligence operations, which are subject to Congressional oversight and other checks and balances. “The NYPD is its own judge and jury,” Mr. Silverman said. “If there’s any criticism, they say you’re soft on terrorism, or pandering.”

Mr. Bloomberg responded to concerns expressed by Yale President Richard C. Levin by ridiculing the university, saying the NYPD’s goal is “to protect the very things that let Yale survive.” Mr. Kelly said politicians who criticize the stop-and-frisk program are “pandering” to win votes.

“Bloomberg is constantly backing up Kelly,” Mr. Eterno said. “We rarely if ever see him saying, ‘That’s a good point, I’m going to look into it’.”

‘STEPPING ON PEOPLE’S RIGHTS’

Mr. Eterno held out some hope that things could improve before the end of Mr. Bloomberg’s term as he considers his legacy. “Right now it’s not a very good one—just horrible, stepping all over people’s constitutional rights,” he said.

But Mr. Silverman said the chances of change are between “none and zero.” He said Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Kelly are “wedded to a narrative”—crime is down and there have been no successful terrorist attacks. “Constitutional rights and everything else is secondary,” he said. “They would feel they’d have egg on their faces if they reverse course.”