(from Newsday 4/15/99)
by Joseph D. McNamara.
Joseph D. McNamara, former police chief of Kansas City, Mo., and San Jose, Calif., is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
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WHEN AMADOU DIALLO died, so did quality-of-life policing.
My older brother and father served with the New York Police Department for more than 25 years, and I retired from the department as a deputy inspector. None of us would have fired at Diallo. During our years on the force, cops were trained to believe that we were part of the neighborhood we patrolled, not an armed group determined to impose our sense of "order." The four white police officers who fired 41 shots at the unarmed African immigrant are not murderers. They, like the defenseless man they killed in his own hallway, are victims of an errant style of policing promulgated by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the two police commissioners he appointed, William Bratton and Howard Safir.
The four policemen indicted on murder charges, and their fellow officers, have been conditioned to believe that quality-of-life policing - cracking down on minor violations by aggressively confronting people walking the streets of New York - is the way to reduce crime. In the context of this approach, everyone is suspect. And therefore, like Diallo, everyone is potentially an enemy of cops.
…But far more worrisome is that a zero-tolerance philosophy reinforces a growing view among police officers that the public is teeming with predatory criminals, and that petty arrests constitute effective crime control.
The NYPD also clings to the notion that computerized crime analysis alone enables the department to hold commanders accountable. Those who bring about more arrests and lower crime rates are presented with rewards and commendation. The resulting pressure on commanders to deliver on expectations flows down to street cops.
… The NYPD is trying to "export" this aggressive policing model to the rest of the country. But what mayor would want to be in Giuliani's position now? New York has been the site of a string of police scandals: A cop in the Bronx choked a teenager to death after his football bounced off a police car; a Haitian immigrant was tortured in a police station with a toilet plunger, and an off-duty cop shot a squeegee person to death. Such incidents make it unlikely that other cities will follow New York's lead.
…Nor is it clear that cracking down on minor offenses is responsible for lower crime in the Big Apple. Crime has decreased in other cities practicing far different policing, such as community partnership models.
Crime also decreased in Los Angeles following the police beating of Rodney King when the LAPD cops did little except respond to calls.
Such factors as a booming economy, plentiful jobs and the decline of the crack cocaine trade have lowered crime regardless of what local police were doing.
…police atrocities will persist in New York unless the mayor and police department recognize that they can succeed only with the consent and cooperation of the people they serve.
After all, citizens are the ones who report crime to the police, give evidence, provide testimony, and sit on juries. Those who hate and fear the police will not provide such essential help in reducing crime.
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics), (718) 369-2111
Email: ARTISTpres@aol.com
Website: http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html