Stop and Frisk Outrage Part III

New Yorkers of color are stopped nine times as often as white New Yorkers by the NYPD, and the number of total stops has reached a new record. Revealingly, the NYPD's excuse for these stops is that people of color are behaving suspiciously.

Stops and Frisks

We have twice focused on the outrage of New York City's increasing numbers of race-based stops and frisks of innocent New York City's residents.

In January of 2009, we alerted our readers to the horrifying reality of the racially discriminatory stop and frisk activity, and we highlighted the fact that NYPD officers whose misconduct is substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCR) are very rarely subject to discipline.

The statistics will not be surprising to people of color who live in New York City, but all of us should be alarmed to see that our suspicions about law enforcement behavior and our extrapolations from personal experiences are in fact supported by the evidence. After analyzing over 1.6 million stops in New York City from 2005 to 2008, the CCR shows us that 80% of those stops are people of color, despite the fact that people of color represent only 53% of the New York City population. In addition, only 10% of stops are of white New Yorkers, though white New Yorkers are 44% of the New York City population. The disparity speaks for itself and helps explain why views of law enforcement personnel are very different in communities of color than they are in other communities.

In May of 2009, we returned to the stop and frisk topic when reports emerged that stop and frisk activity was increasing. We found that police find guns, drugs, or stolen property on whites about twice as often as they did on Black suspects. We found that stops of whites amounted to only 2.6 percent of the white population. By contrast, stops of Blacks, represented 21.1 percent of the entire black population. We learned that residents of Brownsville's 73rd Precinct and Harlem's 28th Precinct had a 30 to 36 percent chance of being stopped and questioned by police in 2006, while citywide, the average was about 6 percent. We also learned that though no summons is issued and no arrest is made, personal information is collected and retained regarding the person who was stopped. Since the stops occur only in non-white communities, this process amounts to a catalogue of personal details on the non-white population of our city with the target group skewing younger than the city as a whole. The outrage of the stops has been amplified and exacerbated by the scandal of the information collection.

New Outrage

The latest outrage is the primary reason cited by the NYPD for their stops of persons of color in our city. With persons of color nine times more likely to be stopped by the NYPD than white New Yorkers, the latest information reveals that nearly all of the stops of persons of color in New York City have been explained by the NYPD as resulting from the victim of the stop behaving in a stealthy manner.

Of the reasons listed by the police for conducting the stops, one of those least commonly cited was the claim that the person fit the description of a suspect. The most common reason listed by the police was a category known as “furtive movements.”

The "fit the description" excuse had been tossed around for years to excuse the racism of the NYPD, but the truth is now available to us.

With the truth available, we must hold the NYPD and the Mayor accountable. In 2010, the level of racism that he has supported within his own law enforcement entities is beyond unacceptable. If the Mayor will not denounce the racist policies of his police department and install new leadership at the NYPD, the Mayor must be forced to resign.

Budget Blame Game in NYC

Mayor Bloomberg is cynically suggesting that the New York City budget cuts he is proposing are being forced upon him by decision-making regarding the New York State budget in Albany. In reality, the Mayor is proposing enormous cuts in education to confuse taxpayers into thinking that Albany is setting the Mayor's budget priorities.

Albany Budget Turmoil

There is no question that Albany has not generated confidence in its budget efforts this year. The budget in Albany must be completed by April 1 under New York State Law. But, we are well into May this year, and there is no sign of a state budget.

That unsettling performance has added to an already dire budgetary picture at the local level. With the state facing a huge budget deficit in 2011, and with no clarity on what the 2011 state budget will be, municipalities across New York State are bracing for significant reductions on state funding.

Amongst the problems facing Albany is reduced federal funding. The federal stimulus dollars that President Obama fought to bring to state governments across our country immediately after his inauguration are now running out. In 2011, New York State (like so many states) will have exhausted nearly all of the support provided by the stimulus package passed by Congress in 2009, thereby creating increasing pressure on state budgets that are already strained beyond the breaking point. In 2012, essentially all of the stimulus money will be gone.

Until now, stimulus money spared governors and state lawmakers from making some of the most brutal budget cuts. But with this lifeline running out, officials are looking at making significant cutbacks to public services, particularly schools and health programs. "The stimulus funds have staved off what could have been even deeper cuts," said Todd Haggerty, policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "You're seeing states now are coming to that point where they will have to make additional cuts or find new sources of revenue for fiscal 2011 and that will continue in fiscal 2012."

Phony Blame for Albany

Despite the national impact of the end of the stimulus money, the Mayor has insisted on blaming Albany for the cuts that NYC will have to make to its own spending. In reality, NYC has choices it must make in the face of reduced revenues, and the Mayor has decided that primary and secondary education should be singled out to suffer in these lean times. Ironically, the Mayor focused his campaign for re-election to a third term, in part, on the assertion that he had been and would be successful in improving the NYC public schools.

Having overturned the New York City Charter in order to allow himself to run for a third term, and having been re-elected by a slim margin despite outspending his opponent by an order of magnitude, the Mayor is now using the prospect of undermining the public education system to shift blame away from himself and to Albany for the budget cuts he chooses to implement. If indeed Albany had the final say in how NYC's budget was designed, changing the New York City Charter in order for the Mayor to seek a third term would seem silly, or worse. But, we went through the trouble of accommodating the Mayor's need to be the Mayor, and, now that he has four more year to rule over his subjects, he should not be permitted to suggest that his budget priorities are set by politicians in Albany.

The budget cuts proposed by the Mayor are the Mayor's choices and reflect his priorities. He has decided that he will not cut any police jobs and that he will concentrate nearly all his cuts in the educational system.

We hope to see the Mayor adopt a more responsible set of budget priorities and a more responsible approach to communicating with the public about the budget choices he is making.

Bring the All Star Game to Queens and Times Square Scare

We faced an apparent act of domestic terrorism this past weekend. Let us hope that the terrorists will be brought to justice.

Also, as we think about the racist and misguided efforts of the Arizona Legislature and Arizona's Governor, we must demand that the leadership of Major League Baseball should immediately move the 2011 All Star Game from Phoenix, Arizona to Citi Field in Queens.

Times Square Scare

The past weekend's attempted car bombing in Times Square was amateurish but nonetheless frightening. The fertilizer chosen by the terrorist(s) in this case was not combustible and would not have been able to be used in the manner that a different type of fertilizer was used in the 1995 attack Oklahoma City. Authorities are suggesting that they are seeking a white male in his 40's in connection with the case, but they are also pointing out that the white male they are seeking might be completely innocent. Let us hope that the attempted car bombing doesn't create copy-cats, and let us hope that the terrorist(s) in this case is quickly captured and faces severe punishment.

Arizona vs. America

Arizona has enacted legislation allowing local law enforcement to take on the role traditionally undertaken by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Local law enforcement in Arizona has been authorized, starting 90 days from the date of the signing of the legislation, to demand proof of immigration status from anyone they encounter whom they suspect might be in the United States illegally. Anyone who cannot show proof of citizenship or legal immigration status will be arrested.

The new Arizona law is a bold-face anti-immigrant effort, and it has a decidedly anti-Latino tone. All Latinos in Arizona will be treated as suspects, and all Americans should be outraged by the new Arizona law.

Anyone who has lived in the United States knows that it is highly unnatural for a US citizen to carry proof of his or her citizenship or to be prepared to defend himself or herself against accusations of illegal immigration.

Anyone who has lived in the United States knows that a meaningful number of illegal immigrants in the US are non-Hispanic white people. But, it is only illegal immigration from Latin America that is the focus of the elected officials in Arizona and across the US.

With Arizona's declaration of war against Latinos, the rest of us must take action to oppose Arizona's attacks.

Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball has an opportunity to stand against the anti-Latino stance of Arizona.

The 2011 Major League Baseball All-Star game is scheduled to be played in Phoenix. The Mets have been seeking an opportunity to show off their new baseball stadium by hosting an All Star Game. The perfect solution is for the 2011 All Star Game to be moved to Citi Field in Queens, the home of the New York Mets.

By taking this action, Major League Baseball would show that it refuses to promote discrimination based on race or ethnicity. Major League Baseball would embrace the progressive image it promotes each April when it celebrates the first Major League game played by Jackie Robinson.

The change of venue for the 2011 All Star Game would only allow Major League Baseball to match what has already occurred in the National Football League. The NFL moved the Super Bowl out of Arizona to California when Arizona stubbornly refused to adopt the Martin Luther King holiday that had been embraced all over the United States. Surely, Major League Baseball is not less progressive or less committed to opposing discrimination than the NFL.

The decision to move the 2011 All Star Game should be made immediately. Fans and news outlets reserve hotel rooms and airline tickets well in advance, and New York City and the New York Mets need time to prepare. Arizona had plenty of opportunities to choose to walk away from the disgusting route they've chosen. Now, the loss of the Mid-Summer Classic should be one of the first consequences of Arizona's move toward a Jim Crow society.

Getting Away with Murder in NYC

With murders in NYC on the risen and stop-and-frisks at record levels, the percentage of murders being solved by the NYPD is on the decline.

Murders on the Rise

Every murder is an enormous tragedy, and the loss of life typically has a tragic effect on the lives of those left behind. The emotional and psychological toll of having a loved one's life taken away by a murderer is incalculable. Such an experience can be debilitating. Apart from the personal impact of each murder, each of those personal stories also represents lost productivity in the workforce for weeks and months after the tragedy. It even causes loved ones of those murdered to consider leaving New York City, and the resulting relocations drain economic activity from our city, reduce our tax base, and create lower population figures that lead to reduced federal and state financial support for our city.

Therefore, while no level of murder activity is acceptable, the declining murder rates that were initiated under Mayor Dinkins through his Safe Street / Safe City program and continued under his successors have been extremely welcome.

With the struggling economy and increased economic stress in our city, the numbers have started to move in the wrong direction. The number of murders in NYC at this point in 2010 is more than 20% higher than the number in 2009. The most recent figures show that murders have risen by 27%. That rise may sound more daunting than it should. A 27% rise is enormous, but the number of murders experienced in New York City in 2010 are still amongst the lowest ever recorded at this point in any given year. Nonetheless, more murders are an unacceptable trend. Left unaddressed, we might find ourselves returning to the days before the Safe Street / Safe City program.

Record Breaking Stop and Frisk Activity

We have discussed repeatedly the disgusting Bloomberg "achievement" of having in 2009 the largest number of stop-and-frisk incidents ever in our city. Approximately 90% of those stopped in the stop-and-frisk activity of 2009 were Black and Hispanic, and 90% of those stopped were found to have no illegal drugs, fire arms, or any reason for being stopped other than their skin color or ethnicity. This is also an incalculable tragedy.

Bloomberg was re-elected in 2009 despite the stop-and-frisk record and his horrifyingly unsuccessful stewardship of the New York City economy. But, we may be paying the price now. The Mayor's devotion to stopping innocent people in Black neighborhoods without cause may be interfering with preventing crime and solving crimes.

Declining Clearance Rates

The Clearance Rate is the percentage of crimes in a category that are "solved" and lead to an arrest. Clearance Rates in New York City were far lower in 2009 than in 2008 (59% in 2009 versus 67% in 2008) and far lower than the national average of 64%.

Murderers are literally getting away with murder more often. Instead of 33% of murders going unsolved (2008), we now have 41% of murders going unsolved.

The resources that the Mayor is devoting to terrorizing and harassing communities of color would be more valuable if they were invested in crime prevention and crime solving. There may be no more important step he can take in his third term.

Good Bye, Rubber Room

The Teachers' Union and the NYC Department of Education deserve praise for agreeing to eliminate the "rubber room" holding pen for teachers accused of misconduct and incompetence. We hope that their compromise reflects a new approach on both sides of the divide between the city government and the teachers.

Rubber Room Embarrassment

The Rubber Room was a name for a practice more than for a place.

New York City Department of Education practice had been to place teachers accused of misconduct or incompetence together in special rooms during what would have otherwise been their work-day and to pay them their full compensation while their cases were adjudicated.

This approach has brought embarrassment upon both the Teacher's Union and the Department of Education. Recently, the number of teachers in the Rubber Room had grown more than 700, and the cost of the compensation for those in the Rubber Room had grown to more than $65 million annually.

Teachers assigned to the Rubber Room were found to have major business activities run from the Rubber Room, and teachers whose horrible conduct made their place in the public payroll an outrage had the luxury of receiving full pay for years while having no responsibilities within the school system - no accountability without any reduction in compensation. On the opposite end of the spectrum, high quality teachers were assigned to the Rubber Room by threatened superiors when those teachers sought to expose the incompetence of those superiors. It was the ultimate lose-lose approach.

The Rubber Room persisted because the process of adjudicated was so painfully slow, and the Rubber Room became the symbol of our city's educational focus on teachers instead of on the needs of students and parents.

The End of the Rubber Room

Last week, the end of the Rubber Room at last emerged on the horizon. The NYC Department of Education and the Teachers' Union agreed to shorted the adjudicated time frame to six months (from a current average of 18 months), but it could result in incompetent, dangerous, or unethical teachers returning to the class room while their cases are still under consideration.

Many are skeptical that the plan accepted by both sides will have the desired impact, but the fact that the Teachers' Union and the City have agreed to a plan at all is cause for celebration. Cooperation between the teachers and those responsible for the educational system in our city has been rare, but such cooperation is the key to making progress on one of the most important issues affecting the future of our city, our state, and our country - how will we catch up to the rest of the world and prepare our children from the world that awaits them if we continue to accept a poor quality public educational system for the bulk of our children?

In NYC, we will only be able to make progress when teacher quality is permitted to be a key factor in compensation, promotion, termination, and lay off decisions. Moreover, until the Teachers' Union becomes more focused on benefiting from the best practices of its finest teachers and less focused on defending the careers of its worst performers, it will be unlikely to find common ground with parents or with current or future Department of Education leadership that truly sets excellence as its goal.

Let us hope that the pact which will eliminate the Rubber Room is the beginning of the end of a lack of excellence in NYC schools.

Lessons of the Harlem School of the Arts Demise

The recent closing of the historic Harlem School of the Arts has left families in Upper Manhattan shocked and angry. There are lessons from the failure of the school that all of us can use to improve the future of our community and help us attempt to avoid these types of shocking disappointments in the future.

History of the Harlem School of the Arts

The Harlem School of the Arts has closed. Though the school served thousands of families in Upper Manhattan in five different decades, we learned in early April that the Harlem School of that Arts would no longer be the beacon of artistic opportunity for young people that it has been.

The school, founded in 1964, had grown from 12 children studying piano in a church basement to three thousand children each year benefiting from instruction in nearly every instrument and musical genre, drama, visual arts, and dance. The school was founded by a renowned soprano of the late 1930's and early 1940's, Dorothy Maynor. Ms. Maynor was the wife of the pastor a Harlem church and housed the Harlem School of the Arts in Harlem in its early days. She was excluded from many prestigious venues because she was Black, but she ultimately triumphed by bringing art education to a huge number of Black children over 45 years.

The Harlem School of the Arts became a treasure. Though tuition was costly for many families, the Harlem School of the Arts was a magnate for families of every socio-economic status in Upper Manhattan and beyond. The school articulated a vision for the future:

HSA is committed to meeting the challenges of the 21st century by expanding its programs to ensure that HSA students have access to new arts education methodologies and cutting edge technology in today's information-driven global society.

But, that future is now very much in doubt.

Harlem School of the Arts Closes

In early April, the Harlem School of the Arts closed. The school had a $2 million surplus in 2003 but now has a multi-million dollar debt and a large annual deficit. The school did not pay payroll taxes or conduct audits for years while fundraising dwindled and a key grant was forfeited because the Harlem School of the Arts failed to meet the basic requirements of that key grant.

The Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, a nonprofit entity that operates with public money, awarded the Harlem School of the Arts a $1.5 million grant in 2005 to hire a chief financial officer and a marketing director to strengthen its fund-raising efforts. But the school failed to meet benchmarks required by the grant, including keeping a marketing director, said Kenneth J. Knuckles, president of the empowerment zone.

To add to its problems, the Harlem School of the arts added to its payroll with both huge raises for senior management and a major hiring spree while its revenue collapsed.

By June 2007, personnel costs had risen $500,000 from the prior year, to $2.8 million, even as revenue rose only slightly, thanks largely to fees collected for its programs. Fund-raising continued its decline, falling to half of what it had been in 2003. To stay afloat, the school borrowed $1 million in April 2007 against the value of its building, on St. Nicholas Avenue near 134th Street. But even as the school’s chances for survival dimmed, the board paid [its executive director,] Ms. Kerina $161,539, nearly 50 percent more than [the executive director who departed in 2005,] Ms. Akeju had been paid, according to tax records.

By June 2008, the last period for which the school has filed a tax return, expenses had climbed to $4.6 million, a jump of more than $1 million in two years. With revenues down, the school recorded a deficit of $1.8 million. And now, the school is shuttered. Five decades of making Harlem stronger have been stopped cold by a few years of world class mismanagement.

The Harlem School of the Arts has stated that it will announce its plans for the future in two weeks.

There is a valuable lesson in the demise of this great institution. Leadership Matters. History is easily overtaken by poor leadership, and challenging circumstances can be overcome by excellent leadership. Our institutions in Upper Manhattan must be defended by re-establishing our commitment to excellence and demanding the best of all of our leaders. Our churches, our hospitals, our cultural institutions, and our schools are all too precious to allow any of them to head in the direction of the Harlem School of the Arts.

Lies, Gowns, and Searches at Rikers

City jails have been engaged in the illegal practice of strip searching New Yorkers accused on misdemeanor crimes, and the Bloomberg Administration has consistently lied in depositions with regard to the continued abuses.

Strip Search Abuse

Courts ruled in 1986 that routine strip searches of those who have been brought to jail based on suspicion of involvement in low-level non-violent crimes were illegal. Nonetheless, New York City continued the practice of illegal strip searches and faced lawsuits in subsequent years.

In 2001, New York City agreed to settle a class-action suit related to the illegal strip search activity in the New York City jails. The settlement cost New York City $43 million. The City continued the practice further and settled another law suit in 2002 while promising to finally end the strip search abuses.

The strip searches continued, however. When faced with yet another law suit, the Bloomberg Administration decided it was better to lie in depositions than to admit that they had been violating the law non-stop for two decades and after multiple law suits and tens of millions of dollars of settlement costs.

Lies

Jim Dwyer of the New York Times provided an excellent summary of what occurred in the latest law suit, which resulted in yet another settlement payment. This time, the price tag was $33 million.

Beyond the cost of the settlement, this case has another striking feature: hard-core dishonesty by officials in the Department of Correction.

“Practically every single person we deposed from the Department of Correction swore that they never have seen a strip-search,” said Richard Emery, whose firm brought the lawsuit. “They all said, ‘We give everyone gowns, they go into cubicles, and we search them like the Queen of England.’ ”

Yet 30 people jailed on Rikers Island told a much different story in their depositions, according to papers filed in the case. They said they had been forced to strip, usually in groups, and to spread their buttocks. Women were required to remove sanitary pads and lift their breasts. They had been arrested on misdemeanor charges, not felonies; they were on Rikers Island awaiting trial because they could not make bail.
In effect, the lawsuit came down to a swearing contest that pitted the testimony of low-income people accused of low-level crimes against officials of nearly every rank in the city jail system.

What was the truth?

Mr. Emery’s law firm demanded that the city show that it had actually bought disposable gowns for all the searches. It took more than a year of haggling before the invoices were produced, with the city at first saying they were irrelevant, and then claiming that they could not be located.

EVENTUALLY, records showed that the city had bought 45,900 disposable gowns for the jails from July 2002 to August 2007, but many of them never left a central warehouse, said Elizabeth S. Saylor of Mr. Emery’s firm. During that time, 145,587 searches were done on people being held on misdemeanor charges. The city didn’t come close to having gowns for each and every one, as the jail officials had sworn. Shortly after turning over these records, the city conceded that there had been a “pattern and practice of strip-searches.”

Why did they continue when the Bloomberg administration promised that they would end? Has anyone in government been held accountable for not complying with the 2002 promises, or for denying under oath the plain truth of what was going on?

History has taught us that illegal activities, unethical activities, and lies are tolerated in the Bloomberg Administration. The stop-and-frisk abuses continue. The racial discrimination in the Fire Department was never acknowledged or redressed. The Mayor's mysterious and apparently illegal contributions to the Independence Party have not been thoroughly investigated.

No one should expect that anyone will be held accountable for the years of strip search abuse or for the lies told during the law suit. But, all of us should demand accountability and demand that the Bloomberg Administration commit itself to higher standards. The Bloomberg Administration has nearly 4 more years in power, and we cannot tolerate 4 more years of abuses and lies.