Quotas have been near the center of the debate about stop-and-frisk since the federal trial of the controversial NYPD practice began. If commanding officers are enforcing numerical goals for arrests, tickets, and stops (and they are), goes the plaintiffs’ line of argument, then that would incentivize officers on the street to stop a person even […]
Patricia Ratz and Pat Guglielmo were walking their three pit bulls in Staten Island’s Schmul Park when two of the dogs got into a scuffle, biting Ratz as she tried to settle them. According to Ratz, Baby Girl–the third, non-fighting dog–started to run off just as a police officer opened fire, unloading 10 shots on the animals […]
For some reason, it’s often in the dead of night — when most subway trains are virtually empty — that the NYPD enforces the MTA’s one-seat-per-passenger rule. A 24-year old waitress from Sunset Park learned this the hard way, when a late-night commute from her East Village restaurant resulted in a $50 fine and a […]
The popular Five Boro Bike Tour narrowly avoided having to pay the NYPD nearly $1 million in traffic control costs this week. The police department had claimed that the event isn’t in fact charitable, because its proceeds benefit Bike New York, its own operating body. The court disagreed. “Some issues in promoting this tour may […]
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly is issuing an edict limiting police officers’ social media use, because the NYPD likes to focus on the important things. Cops will no longer be able to make reference to their jobs on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Friendster, or BlackPlanet, or post pictures of themselves in uniform, as “Members of the service […]
Hearings in the federal case against stop-and-frisk will include pretrial testimony from officers Michael Noboa, Kha Dang, and Edgar Gonzalez, three of the four cops responsible for the most recorded stops in a three-month period in 2009. The Times obtained hundreds of pages of the testimony, much of which focused on the reasons the officers might stop a particular […]
The NYPD has created a new facial recognition unit, which specializes in identifying subjects using photographs, according to a DNAinfo report. Established late last year, the eight-officer unit uses software to scan for faces in Facebook, Instagram, and surveillance camera images, then match them against the mugshots of known criminals. Thankfully, a facial match doesn’t […]
Evindence presented by the plaintiffs in the federal class-action lawsuit against stop-and-frisk points to institutionalized racial profiling in one NYPD precinct. Recorded by officer Pedro Serrano, the tape contains a heated exchange with commanding officer Christopher McCormack in which Serrano presses McCormack on what types of people officers should be stopping. McCormack continually uses the term […]
An independent office to oversee the NYPD’s operations would “make our city less safe,” according to Mayor Bloomberg, who vowed to veto the proposal to create such an office it gets to his desk. The bill, supported by mayoral candidates Christine Quinn and Bill de Blasio, as well as groups like the NYCLU, would create […]
As stop-and-frisk goes on trial at Manhattan Federal Court, another hearing on the state of the police department happened in Jamaica, Queens last night. At a mayoral debate, seven candidates discussed the NYPD, focusing on stop-and-frisk, commissioner Ray Kelly, and the proposal to create an independent inspector general to oversee the department’s operations. The highest-profile […]
