Two surprising but related announcements recently rocked the metropolitan area. The first was the news that Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was leaving his post after a two-year tenure at the end of the month. Secondly, and equally stunning was an apology from the New York Daily News that their editorial supporting stop and frisk was wrong.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the connection between these two events. Stop and frisk, the Daily News confessed, was an outgrowth of their fear that eliminating the policy “could seriously harm public safety.” In effect, they opposed Manhattan Judge Shira Scheindlin’s ruling three years ago that stop and frisk was unconstitutional.
Rather than recounting what the Daily News concluded about that decision in 2012, we cite what they wrote in last Monday’s editorial: “Make no mistake—Scheindlin has put New York directly in harm’s way with a ruling that threatens to push the city back toward the ravages of lawlessness and bloodshed.”
“In other pieces,” the paper continued, “we predicted a rising body count from an increase in murders. We are delighted to say that we were wrong.”
It is refreshing to have a newspaper admit it was wrong about a policy so vital to Bratton’s “Broken Windows” initiative. In many respects, the community should be overjoyed that we may see the end or at least reform of Bratton’s strategy, but he leaves with so much to be resolved in police and community relations.
We are still waiting for results of the investigation into the chokehold death of Eric Garner, and although the family has received a settlement, the officer who applied the hold, Daniel Pantaleo, continues to work at a desk in the 120th Precinct on Staten Island.
The legacy of Bratton’s aggressive policies is writ large across the nation, and we are pleased that the city of Baltimore and the Justice Department have agreed in principle to identify “categories of reforms … that must be taken to remedy the violations of the Constitution and federal law.” The report stops short of recommending a consent decree on the Baltimore Police Department, but it may provide a modicum of relief to the family of Freddie Gray whose death while in police custody has brought no convictions to the several officers involved.
We are also pleased to learn that the Justice Department is moving forward with a better plan to track killings by police officers. Of course, tracking provides no relief from the deaths. Soon, rather than relying on data supplied by individual law enforcement agencies and the medical examiner’s office, they will have to fill out forms in every incident in which a person dies in police custody.
This step is just one of many necessary if there’s to be transparency and improvement between the police and the communities they serve.
Along with these measures, we think that it’s time for the police to get out of their squad cars and walk the beat. It’s hard to get a feel for a community and its residents from inside a patrol car. Cruising through a neighborhood and suddenly swooping down on what they perceive as an “unlawful assembly” is not the kind of policing we deserve.
Yes, we need more videocameras on officers, more residency requirements and certainly more courtesy, respect and professionalism from our police.
At the same time, we totally abhor the news about the possible retaliation against police in the killing of unarmed Black men and women. Such retaliation is unwarranted and will only exacerbate situations that cry out for calm and reason.
Judge Scheindlin’s ruling and the reduction of stop and frisk, may or may not have had something to do with the falling crime rate, and Bratton’s “Broken Windows” policy may soon be a thing of the past. These issues are just two of the many that the new commissioner will face.
And these questions also loom for the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies across the nation.