Law enforcement is defining the year 2020 in America just as much as COVID-19 is. While the Black community’s calls for long overdue reforms have been going on for decades, the roar was intensified to a point never seen before after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The movement sparked by that incident hit New York City on the foundation of local police killings of unarmed Black men including Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and Eric Garner. The uprising is also built on the negative interactions Black New Yorkers often face with NYPD that don’t make the news.
The movement has led the city to appeal to the powerful call to the NYPD by cutting close to $1 billion in funding to the department. This, as the city is grappling with a spike in violent crime which some community leaders say mirrors levels of the 1990s. The crime and protests have Pres. Donald Trump calling for the infiltration of federal agents to handle things at the resistance of local officials.
The AmNews sat down with NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea for a one-on-one interview on Aug. 3 at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem to discuss these issues along with how the NYPD plans to move forward. This AmNews interview took place prior to this past weekend’s string of shootings throughout the city.
Shea called repairing police/community relations with the Black community “the most important issue.” According to data from the NYPD, Blacks continue to account for almost half of all city arrests in the six years since stop-and-frisk has ended. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 70% of the 125 COVID-19 related arrests from March to May were of Black people. Over the last several months, police officers have been disciplined over a number of video recorded interactions with civilians.
“It’s at the heart of everything that we think about,” Shea said. “Building trust with the community. This is not unique to the New York City police department. It’s really a law enforcement issue across the country. Right now with me as the police commissioner I can tell you that it’s a critical, critical issue. We really are devoted to improving police/community relations. I think at times the relations are not as bad as some people will make them out to be. But that’s not to say we don’t recognize that we have to get better.”
Shea says that conversations have been going on within the department about issues over the fact that Black New Yorkers feel they are treated unjustly by the NYPD. He points out that things must be different and it has to be felt throughout the department starting at the top, with him.
“Ultimately people have to turn discussions and marches and civil disobedience into something positive at the end and I think that’s happening but I think it’s incumbent on all of us. I don’t think this was all about law enforcement,” he said. “It was more about hundreds of years of oppression, injustice, inequality across a spectrum of not just law enforcement but housing, healthcare [and] education.”
Pres. Trump and Attorney General William Barr have threatened to deploy federal police to cities seeing high levels of street violence including New York City for a program called “Operation Legend.” Federal officers have already been sent to Portland, OR where protesters have clashed with the officers and created violent scenes that mirror a war.
With threats of also sending federal police to Chicago and New York, elected officials say Trump’s help isn’t needed and that it’s more a flexing of his political muscles to garner votes for his re-election bid. Commissioner Shea agrees with bringing in federal agents to protect buildings similar to what’s happening in Portland, but the NYPD doesn’t need the assistance of federal officers to control violent crime.
“We have a very robust police department, 55,000 in strength,” Shea said. “We have the resources to protect the buildings, protect people, serve people. I don’t think we need the influx of federal officers. We work hand-in-hand with federal officers whether it’s the drug enforcement agency, the FBI or other agencies on task forces as a normal course of doing business. In terms of dealing with protests, let the NYPD handle it. We’re trained, we know the community and I think we have it under control.”
The city is seeing a sharp rise in violent crimes, particularly shootings. The shooting death of one-year-old Davell Gardner at Raymond Bush Playground in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn last month signaled a serious problem. The weekend before this last, the city saw it’s 1,000th shooting victim of 2020––around the same number of shooting victims the city had in the last two years combined.
“We are going to be policing this city, as I think we have, trying to do it smartly with the community reforming. We always try to keep people safe,” Shea said. “Sometimes we do it in ways that annoy people, to be honest. We recognize that and that’s why we have been reforming a lot of our practices over the last six, seven years. But we have to continue to be transparent, have honest discussions [and] not to have closed meetings with police. Pull the community into that and say what are we doing well, what are we doing that we need to do differently. We also have to have honest conversations with our partners and different government agencies. If we continue to strive to get better, get safer, I have absolutely no doubt that we can drive crime back down.”
Among the rallying calls during the numerous protests is “Defund the NYPD” calling for funding to be cut from the department. Last month, the city council and mayor approved a $1 billion cut to the department and shifted the funds to education and social services. The move received criticism from law enforcement who said the cut was too deep and activists who said the cut was not enough. Shea says, “cooler heads have to prevail.”
“‘Defund the police.’ First, you have to say what does it even mean because people refer it to different things,” he said. “Taking some money from the police and giving it to other agencies? I will take money from our budget and restore money to youth programs because I think that’s critical. I think it was a mistake, some of the budget cuts. I also recognize that we are in unprecedented times and tough decisions have to be made. If we have to add cops I’m sure that the city government will add cops but we make sure that we are using all of our resources wisely and most efficiently at the same time too.”
In his message to Black New Yorkers, Shea said he wants to reassure them that the NYPD is working for them and that he’s not oblivious to what’s going on over issues about race and that work is being done to bring change.
“I’m not naive and shying away from real––not just perceived problems, real problems. But let’s fix them,” he said. “The NYPD, I commit, is going to do our part to fix them. It’s not an overnight. This is long-term, this is roll up your sleeves, stop talking and do things. But let’s do it together. That’s how I think we need to approach this. We are an imperfect police department but at the same time I am really proud of our police department. We support reform. We want to continue to make New York City the safest police department in the world. Keeping crime down is one issue. We can’t keep crime down by going into neighborhoods and then the neighborhoods that we’re protecting feel that they don’t like the police. Let’s get to the better place where we do it with the community.”