The NYPD, since the summer BLM protests, and the voluminous video evidence of crimes by police officers against protesters, have fallen back on their traditional strategy: scare people. Or, to be more precise, blackmail the public. This is the bargain they say you can’t afford to turn down: support our systemically racist police force or we will abandon you to a state of nature, harsh, brutal, and short. The specific tactic is to bemoan thIs years spike in annual cop retirements. The implied threat being that all our best and brightest are leaving the force because you keep saying mean things (e.g., that we’re racists) about us so you will just be left to fend for yourself. DeBlasio, self appointed defender of the downtrodden, at the end of his second term, has accomplished nothing vis-à-vis NYPD structural reform.
My response to highly elevated annual retirement numbers? Great. The more the better. Is it no longer a safe space for racists such that they have to take their big fat pensions at age 45 before taking second careers painting houses, and being private security dudes? Fantastic. Let’s aim even higher next year! This year‘s entry level class of 900 police cadets was the biggest in New York history. I wish them well and I am happy they’re there, inexperienced though they may be. Better a decent rookie then an experienced bigot.
Back in 2016, 11 other NYPD colleagues and I decided to do the unthinkable: blow the whistle on the department’s widespread and always denied discriminatory policy of enforcement quotas. Quotas unlawfully pressured officers to deliver a minimum amount of arrests, tickets and stop-and-frisks on a monthly basis and punished those who failed to produce them by the deadline.
Colleagues with whom I’ve discussed this issue over the years have often been unable to see how problematic this type of policing was, frequently defending it as a way to “ensure cops are working,” and they certainly didn’t understand what was discriminatory about it if indeed an infraction had been committed.
The problem is that broken windows policing of quality-of-life infractions, underlined via arbitrary enforcement metrics, results in over-policing an entire demographic of people based on the actions of less than 1% of that population.
The underlying justification is usually that the racial breakdown of that less than 1% is responsible for more than 90% of violent crimes. But to assert this is actually the paragon of systemic racism; it gets ingrained in the minds of those in positions of power, whose actions can then negatively impact millions.
This is why it is crucial to ensure that those ascending to leadership positions don’t harbor bigoted views.
It’s ironic that I quote former commissioner William J. Bratton, who’s guilty of spreading systemic racism by way of hustling broken windows policing throughout the nation, but I can’t think of anything that fits more appropriately. In the opening chapter of his 1998 memoir, he states: “you can seriously undermine any organization by putting the right people in the wrong job,” and I couldn’t agree with him more.
In my 12-year career, I saw it time and time again — but nothing is more of an insult than the recent report regarding the bigotry apparently spewed in a police blog by NYPD Deputy Inspector James Francis Kobel under the alias of “Clouseau.” (Kobel denies that he was responsible for these posts.)
Not only has he been a cop for 30 thirty years, but his last assignment, for the last four years, was commanding officer of the NYPD’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity. This office is meant to be the safe haven for those in protected classes who have faced different forms of discrimination, and it seems to have been under the leadership of ignorant bigot. The leadership of the NYPD continues to demonstrate they are exactly who the millions of people marching the streets think they are.
We’re at the point in American history where more and more people feel that policing is beyond repair. Individuals such as Clouseau and the system that allows him to thrive are the reason why reform is so slow and always unsuccessful.
Too often, police reform doesn’t come from a sincere place; it’s simply a public relations ploy that the leadership acquiesces to in order to pacify the masses while strengthening the structures that intentionally harm the most justice-minded officers and the most vulnerable citizens.
How can one expect true reform when racists seem to remain in key positions? He is said to have contributed 500 comments on “The Rant,” which for years has been a safe-space echo-chamber for bigots with badges. The comments at issue racist, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamo-phobic, anti-Semitic and sexist. Disparaging comments made time and time again about the intellectual inferiority of Blacks that “evolution continues to elude,” all reportedly coming from the person in the NYPD who’s the watchdog against discrimination.
I think of the people of this city who’ve possibly been victimized by this man throughout his career and the officers who’ve possibly been victimized by having complaints of discrimination not properly investigated under his supervision.
Having a front-row seat allows me to say firmly that many white officers are great people who simply try to do the best job that they can, but those without that luxury will feel vindicated in believing that all white officers are just another Clouseau.
The true culprit in all of this is the culture and operational structure of the NYPD that allows people like this to have lengthy, thriving careers. There are thousands of officers who harbor similar views, and we’re forced to wonder if any have ascended to positions which determine whether Black and Brown applicants make it into the department, or a Black captain makes it to the discretionary rank of deputy inspector, which Commissioner Dermot Shea had no issue promoting Kobel to.
Mayor de Blasio has failed time and time again to tap into the best to lead this department, as he promised while campaigning in 2013. It is crucial to have leaders who understand the detriments, culture and structure of the police department. If not, sure enough, we will be here again soon.
Raymond is an active NYPD lieutenant who’s running for City Council in central Brooklyn.