In Mayor de Blasio's first year in office [PDF], the NYPD made 221,851 misdemeanor arrests, a decline of only 6,000 compared with the final year of Mayor Bloomberg's third term; most of that drop can be attributed to the police department's acquiescence to existing marijuana decriminalization during the last three months of the year. "You know The Who song, 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,' " says Robert Gangi, the head of the Police Reform Organizing Project.
Defending his practice of Broken Windows policing (which disproportionately affects low-income New Yorkers of color), NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton wrote disdainfully of "ivory tower studies" that "fail to grasp how crime is managed."
So periodically, Gangi's group sits in summons court or sets up a booth in the subway to collect stories from New Yorkers on how arrests and summonses for low-level offenses have affected their lives.
"The purpose is to put flesh on the bone, that these practices really mess with people," Gangi says.
All of the stories below, with the exception of one, allegedly occurred under de Blasio's tenure; Gangi notes that he works hard to ensure that they are credible.
A middle-aged Latino man was walking with his friend in the Port Authority building in Midtown Manhattan. The friend wanted to go home while the man wanted to stop somewhere to eat. The man lent his Metrocard to his friend and went looking for a restaurant. An officer stopped him, accused him of selling his Metrocard, and arrested him on that charge. The man was confined in a holding cell overnight where all his fellow detainees were either African-American or Latino. When he appeared in court the following morning, the judge dismissed the charge.
A black man riding his bike in the street swerved to avoid a car that actually hit him — he and his bike fell onto the sidewalk. An officer arrived on the scene and arrested him on the charges of bike on the sidewalk and resisting arrest because the man initially pushed back when the officer put his hand on him from behind and the man did not know it was a cop touching him. The officer cuffed and locked up the man — not bringing him to the hospital though the man complained about a severe pain in his leg. Held overnight in jail, the man refused to agree to a plea when he appeared in court because he had done nothing wrong. Upon his release by the judge — he has a later court date for his trial — the man went immediately to a hospital where doctors diagnosed and began treating his fractured leg. He’s now looking for a lawyer to represent him in the criminal case and another attorney to bring his lawsuit against the city for wrongful arrest among other claims.
The police arrested a young black woman and her 3 friends while they stood in the lobby of her building in Brooklyn. The officers charged them with marijuana possession even though the young people had no drugs on them. They were held in jail overnight and though they had done nothing wrong, took their public defenders’ advice to accept a plea to a lesser charge. One prospective employer denied her a job because she now has a criminal record.
Several officers approached a group of black people on a street in Harlem and asked if any of them knew a man that they, the cops, were looking for. A man in the group explained that the person they sought was not anywhere nearby. When the officers seemed dissatisfied with that response and spoke rudely, the man said that he had heard enough and that he was leaving. One of the officers said, “ Where do you think you’re going?” and the group of officers attacked the man, knocking him down and beating him so badly that he had to be hospitalized for treatment of his injuries. The officers arrested the man for resisting arrest and obstructing government administration, charges which the court dismissed. The man filed an eventually successful lawsuit against the city.
A Latino boy and girl were walking her dog in a Harlem park. Police officers approached and spoke rudely to them. The officers gave each teenager a summons for ‘being in the park after dusk’. The officers wrote on the tickets that it was 11PM, even though it was actually 8 o’clock. The girl reported being terrified when she appeared in summons court and said that she still felt that way even after the judge 'threw the summonses out’.
A black man tossed a soda can into a garbage bin on the street. Unknown to him, the can fell out of the bin onto the ground. An officer followed him into his building lobby and confronted him about the soda can. The man apologized and offered to go back outside to pick up the incriminating can. The officer, though, detained the man, cuffing and arresting him and charging him with littering.
On our Feb 13th monitoring visit to the arraignment part in Brooklyn’s criminal court, we observed that the police had arrested a young man of color on the charge of being in the park after dusk. After the judge let him go on an ACD, we asked the man why the police had arrested rather than ticketed him. Because there was a warrant out for me, he explained, for not showing up in court on a previous summons. We asked what the first summons was for. Also park after dark, he said, adding that the same officers had stopped him both times.
On our Feb 27th monitoring visit to the arraignment part in Manhattan’s criminal court, a public defender motioned that she wanted to speak with us during a break in the proceedings. “My first 9 cases were all unlawful solicitation,” she said, her head shaking in dismay. (Unlawful solicitation means a person asks someone to swipe her/him onto the subway & is considered an arrestable infraction even if the individual asked is willing to do so). We asked her about the race of the people charged. “All black,” she said.
"These stories make you wonder if de Blasio knows how Broken Windows is applied in New York City," Gangi says.
