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**Police  Practices and Civil Rights in New York City**

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**Statement of Chairperson Mary Frances Berry, Vice Chairperson  Cruz Reynoso, and Commissioners Christopher F. Edley, Jr., Yvonne Y. Lee,Elsie M. Meeks, and Victoria Wilson  **

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ThisCommission report, *Police Practices andCivil Rights in New York City,* carefully balances the sworn testimony ofselected witnesses with an analytical review of subpoenaed data and documents.It is our hope that elected and appointed officials will examine the evidence inthis report and accept its invitation to reject the status quo and to improvepolice-community relations in New York City. 

Thereport acknowledges that the work of police officers is hard and dangerous. Mostpolice officers perform their jobs in accordance with the rule of law and with areasonable expectation that their work will be honored by the community theyserve. The report also acknowledges an appreciable decline of both crime in thecity and fatal shootings by the NYPD. If this report only addressed lawenforcement accomplishments, the report would simply hone in on these salutarystatistics and conclude with praise for a department that has achieved much inthese two categories. Instead, the focus of this report is on the issues thatreflect the mandate of this Commission, including an examination of the extentto which there are strategies and systems in place for ensuring that civilrights are protected while the NYPD is implementing strategies and systems forreducing crime.

TheCommission had a strong interest in studying the methods used by the city tobalance crime fighting with the exercise of appropriate restraint, particularlyfollowing the highly publicized tragedies involving Abner Louima and AmadouDiallo. Abner Louima was brutally sodomized with a toilet plunger by an NYPDofficer. Amadou Diallo, an unarmed person of color standing in the vestibule ofhis home, was tragically shot and killed by four plainclothes officers from theNYPD�s Street Crime Unit. Although these incidents are not the focus of thisreport, the Commission cannot dismiss or deny the significant impact that theyhave had on police-community relations in New York City. 

Atthe same time, a number of additional concerns had been raised regarding NYPDpolicies and practices, including its �stop and frisk� tactics, which havesignificantly and disproportionately affected people of color on city streets.We acknowledge that officials and experts will differ on the best lawenforcement strategies to reduce crime while ensuring that civil rights areprotected. However, there are police departments that have demonstrated thecapacity to maximize public safety through professional police conduct withoutendangering the civil rights of members of the community. The Commissioncontinues to spotlight these �best practices� and will update its historicpublication *Who Is Guarding the Guardians?*later in this year.

Thishearing report is legally and logically supported by facts secured from thesworn testimony of witnesses who appeared before the Commission at its publichearing. The witness testimony is bolstered by written evidence contained inmore than 32,000 pages of subpoenaed documents and a statistical overlaypresented with charts and graphs reflecting information contained in more than100,000 individual records regarding stop and frisk encounters stored on CD-ROMby NYPD officials. The witnesses included the mayor, the police commissioner,the chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, other public officials,religious leaders, representatives of civic and civil rights advocacy groups,New York Police Department officers, and individuals describing personalencounters with the NYPD. 

Beforethis report was approved by the Commission, it received extensive internal andexternal scrutiny during several levels of review. Following the standardoperating procedures of the Commission, the staff made necessary corrections,where appropriate, and added substantive new information to the initial draftsof this report in light of legal sufficiency reviews, editorial policy reviews,and affected agency reviews. 

Wemust emphasize that the Commission�s findings and recommendations regardingstop and frisk practices by the NYPD are built upon a strong foundation of dataprovided by the NYPD and from testimony provided under oath by some of its ownofficers. The combination of the sworn testimony and the analysis of the NYPDdata could lead a reasonable, objective observer to conclude that racialprofiling has been a factor in the stop and frisk practices of the NYPD,including its specialized units. For example, according to witness testimony,these units do not consistently receive or rely upon descriptions of assailantsby crime victims before engaging in stop and frisk practices. Moreover, theassertion that there are alternative explanations for the disproportionatenumbers of African American and Latino persons who are stopped, but not arrestedby NYPD officers, is not backed by any data provided by the NYPD or any recordsof profiles. 

Thistargeted inquiry into police practices was not intended to look broadly anddirectly into prosecutorial practices and successes. We would not and could notcriticize any district attorney without a formal and focused review of his orher office. Instead, the report offers a recommendation for addressing thesensitive and delicate interrelationship of separate law enforcement agencies incases where an independent entity could increase public confidence in theoutcome of highly sensitive cases. We expect that the public will understandthat an independent counsel for high-profile cases only will serve the bestinterests of the NYPD, the community, and local prosecutors. 

Thetimeliness of the report�s discussion of monitoring and disciplinary systemsis underscored by the recent revelations of the Commission to Combat PoliceCorruption, which was created in 1995 by the mayor after he successfully blockeda City Council attempt to create an independent agency with wide-rangingauthority to investigate police corruption. According to news accounts, the mayor�scommission has strongly confirmed in its draft report that the current internalsystem for disciplining officers is slow and ineffective. The mayor�scommission recommends that some internal disciplinary cases should no longer beprosecuted by NYPD lawyers. The points raised in that draft report appear to beconsistent with the findings and recommendations found in our report. In orderto ensure viable community support for the NYPD�s crime-reduction strategies,it is crucial that a credible, independent monitoring and disciplinary mechanismbe substituted for the current system.

Webelieve that this report will help the city and its police department to refocustheir attention on strategies and systems that will uncover and discouragepolice misconduct and encourage community support. Professionalism is the key toeffective police strategies. Police officers must be willing to remainprofessional and uphold the duties of their office, even in the face of mountingpublic criticism. The Commission is concerned, therefore, that at the time thisreport was being approved, the NYPD was facing new allegations that in June2000, several officers failed to respond to calls for help from women who werebeing sexually attacked at an event in Central Park. It is our hope that theseallegations against a few officers are not a sign, as some critics havesuggested, of a frustrated force, weary of official scrutiny. 

Thisreport should help law enforcement officials to better understand that policeofficer professionalism and stronger ties with the community are inextricablyconnected.