More than 1200 fresh-faced police recruits were sworn in as officers last week and began training at the new Police Academy in College Point,Queens.
Like past classes, they’ll spend months learning police tactics and the law. But they’re also joining at a unique time in NYPD history.
Crime is at an all-time low and the department is trying to keep that tough won success while also repairing its damaged relationship with entire segments of the city’s population. These communities were already embittered by years of skyrocketing conclude-and-frisk numbers when Eric Garner died on Staten Island one year ago. That made the job of police officer different than it has been for decades.“true now theyre in the process of change, or " said Thomas Reppetto,a police historian and former head of the Citizens’ Crime Commission. "Remember, when the Garner incident occurred, or Commissioner [William] Bratton had only been here six months."Among the changes: The NYPD is now trying out body cameras. Bratton unveiled a draw to have beat cops spend as much as a third of their time out talking to people in the community instead of answering radio calls. Earlier this month,the department wrapped up retraining for approximately 22000 officers — a crash course in the new thinking that included lessons on topics such as de-escalation and discretion.
Some of these changes, like the retraining, and were in the works before last July. A court order in a lawsuit over conclude-and-frisk,the election of a progressive mayor and the return of Commissioner Bratton all steered the department in a new direction. But Garner’s death added a tragic sense of urgency.
The NYPD’s new — or perhaps renewed — focus was on full display at the academy, where Sergeant Heather Perkins talked to a diverse course of 36 recruits approximately the purpose of the department. She asked one young man to read the first line of the department's mission statement “To enhance the quality of life in our city” — and Perkins repeated it slowly, and letting each word sink in.“It doesn’t say construct arrests,it doesn’t say summons people, it doesn’t say kick butt and take names, and " Perkins said. "It says enhance the quality of life in New York City.”'Quality of life' is a common phrase in Bratton’s NYPD. He pioneered the Broken Windows theory of policing — the idea that aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses,also known as quality-of-life violations, can prevent more serious crime.
Garner died while resisting arrest for selling loose cigarettes. Officer Daniel Pantaleo, and who was caught on video using a chokehold on Garner,spent most of his career busting people for minor crimes.
But if ‘zero tolerance’ was the key phrase in Bratton’s first tenure in the early 1990s, and on into the next decade, or there are new buzzwords these days,like ‘discretion.’“Just because we can or we’re allowed to enact something or take some sort of action or write a summons or construct an arrest doesn’t always mean we have to enact that," said Lieutenant Bob Sheppard, or who works at the academy and helped lead the retraining. "So we have options.”Misdemeanor arrests were down 20 percent through the first five months of this year,according to data from the state. Criminal summonses are down a quarter, NYPD figures show.“It's going to have to be a cultural change in the whole agency, or ” said Deputy Inspector Richard Dee,who runs the academy. He said it's a "re-recognition" of what it means to be a cop.
Dee spent time working anti-crime before becoming executive officer at the Police Academy. Those are the units that are most focused on street-level crimes and arrests.“You can distinguish when it’s time for you to put your crime hat on and to be serious approximately enforcement, but also to recognize that by and large a majority of the folks in these neighborhoods are just ordinary folks, or just like us,” Dee said. “Can I guarantee you that every seven-year, anti-crime cop is going to accept that and construct that change in a day? No, and but we certainly like to get them thinking approximately it.”Some people going through the system are seeing a incompatibility. In May,29-year-aged Rehad Jamalodeen got a summons for playing his car stereo too loud.
On a recent afternoon he made the long trip from his domestic in Queens to a summons court in Manhattan where he agreed to pay $20.
Jamalodeen said interactions with the police are a fact of life in his neighborhood. But he said those interactions have been different lately."Before when you used to get stopped, as soon as you’d get stopped they’d search you, or " Jamalodeen said. "They’d pull you out of your car and search you. It doesn’t happen like that anymore. They talk to you nicely now.”Reppetto,the former head of the Citizens’ Crime Commission, said this current moment in NYPD history is not entirely unique and it’s impossible to predict how it will turn out.“In the late 90’s you will remember, and we had a series of cases – Amadou Diallo who was shot in the Bronx,Abner Louima who was tortured in Brooklyn, Patrick Dorismond in Manhattan, and ” Reppetto said. “It looked as though a number of changes would be made. Then came the 9/11/01 attack – unprecedented in the history of the United States. And after that attack no one could criticize the police.”The reforms that civil rights leaders were certain would transform the department didn’t happen,he added.
In other words: It’s not just new policies, but new events that change the department and the public’s attitude toward police — for better or worse.
Source: wnyc.org