New York City’s Democratic Mayor-elect, Bill de Blasio, recently named a former New York City police commissioner in former New York City Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 1990s administration, Bill “Zero Tolerance” Bratton, to be the De Blasio Administration’s police commissioner in 2014. Coincidentally, De Blasio Administration Police Commissioner-Designate Bratton apparently tolerated New York City police violations of the civil liberties of many New Yorkers when he was the Giuliani Administration’s police commissioner. As University of Minnesota Law School Institute on Criminal Justice Judith Greene noted in an article, “Zero Tolerance: A Case Study of Police Policies and Practices in New York City,” that appeared in the April 1999 issue of “Crime and Delinquency”:
“The police reforms introduced in New York City by William Bratton are now hailed by...Rudy Giuliani as the epitome of `zero-tolerance' policing, and he credits them for winning dramatic reductions in the city's crime rate. But the number of citizen complaints filed before the Civilian Complaint Review Board has jumped skyward, as has the number of lawsuits alleging police misconduct and abuse of force...Police Commissioner William Bratton...served as commissioner for the first 27 months (from January 1994 to April 1996) of Giuliani's first term as mayor...
"...Bratton had served from 1990 to 1992 as chief of the New York Transit Police..At Transit, he pursued a...policing campaign that consisted of large-scale arrests of young New Yorkers for fare evasion...
"...Bratton attacked the legal restrictions that had impeded aggressive enforcement against those deemed disorderly. He `took the handcuffs off' the police department and unleashed patrol officers to stop and search citizens who were violating the most minor laws on the books (e.g., drinking a beer or urinating in public), to run warrant checks on them, or just to pull them in for questioning...
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| Former NYPD Commissioner William Bratton |
"There is a wealth of documentation to support the charge that police misconduct and abuse have increased under the Giuliani administration's zero-tolerance regime. The total number of citizen complaints filed annually with the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) increased more than 60 percent between 1992 and 1996, and Mark Green--the elected New York City public advocate--has charged that the police torture of Abner Louima in a precinct station house in the Borough of Brooklyn in the summer of 1997 was part of a larger `pattern of police abuse, brutality, and misconduct' in New York City that the Giuliani administration has failed to address...
“Joel Berger says that during the first year of the Giuliani administration, the number of complaints filed by citizens before the CCRB that involved incidents where no arrest was made or summons issued showed a sudden and sharp increase. The proportion of `general patrol incidents'--that is, civilian complaints associated simply with routine police contacts (involving no suspicion of criminal activity, no hot pursuit, no arrest or summons)--among all complaints increased from 29 percent for the last year of the Dinkins administration to 58 percent under Mayor Giuliani...
“According to New York City Public Advocate Mark Green, recent CCRB complaint data suggest that the problem of police misconduct is disproportionately concentrated in New York City's...minority neighborhoods. Nine out of 76 precincts account for more than 50 percent of the increase in CCRB complaints since 1992; 21 precincts account for more than 80 percent. Mark Green charges that those precincts with the highest incidence of misconduct `appear to have disproportionately higher percentages of African American and Latino residents'...Norman Siegel--director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU)...has presented data showing that three quarters of all CCRB complaints are filed by African Americans and Latinos. He reports that African Americans (who make up 29 percent of the city's population) filed 53 percent of all complaints in 1996...
“Moreover, the vast majority of complaints filed with the CCRB are never substantiated, and the small portion that are substantiated usually do not result in proper disciplinary actions...Furthermore, Public Advocate Mark Green has complained that so few substantiated cases ever result in charges brought or disciplinary actions taken by the police department that the civilian complaint process is a sham….Data from the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services from 1993 through 1996 show that arrests in New York City rose by 23 percent across the board. Reflecting the broken windows, zero-tolerance policing strategy introduced by Bratton, misdemeanor arrests rose by 40 percent--led by drug arrests, which were increased by 97 percent over this period..."
i voted for de blasio, his son with big natural said he would eliminate it.STOP AND FRISK . There now talking reform. im 50 year old black man, i am constantly getting stopped driving. talked to like im not an american citizen very disrespectful. i know how to fight for my rights, but what about young kids they scare daily ,looking for drugs guns. do that in white communities there kids have been doing all the shooting lately . the police are just a big gang of bullies yes there are good cops but if they dont reform or get rid of the bad ones they are part of the problem . poor people rise up take the city to court and bankrupt there budget plead not guilty on any charge and strike bridges trains stores stop giving your money away .WAKE UP PEOPLE . WE NEED SCHOOLS TRAINING HOUSING JOBS .GET POOR PEOPLE TO BUILD THERE OWN HOUSING AND HELP MAINTAIN IT .IT WILL BE CLEAN AND KEPT UP .
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