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**PolicePractices and Civil Rights in New York City**

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**ExecutiveSummary**

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In the world-class City of New York,the twin fears of street crimes and ugly episodes of police misconduct havecreated an uneasy tension between a police force compelled to lower crime ratesand a concerned community that openly questions the fairness of aggressivepolice strategies. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has a long history ofexamining police practices and civil rights under its responsibility to appraiselaws and policies governing the administration of justice. This commitment toinvestigating police conduct has involved a meaningful discourse on the duty oflaw enforcement to enforce the laws while respecting the civil rights ofindividuals.

The discourse, in turn, has produceda solid set of recommendations to meet the challenges posed by these relatedobjectives. The Commission has in recent years completed reports onpolice-community relations in Chicago, the Mount Pleasant area of Washington,D.C., among Native Americans and police in South Dakota, and in Sonoma County,California. Just last year the Commission published a report on the Los AngelesPolice Department (LAPD) and the Los Angeles Sheriff�s Department. The reportpointed to many of the problems that have just received renewed attentionconcerning the LAPD. The Commission will use the information it continues togather to update its 1981 publication, *WhoIs Guarding the Guardians? A Report on Police Practices,* in a nationalreport this year.

The Commission conducted a day- andevening-long hearing in New York City almost a year ago and received hundreds ofpages of sworn testimony from the mayor, the police commissioner, the chair ofthe Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), other state and city officials,religious leaders, representatives of civic and civil rights advocacy groups,and a large host of individuals who testified that they were victimized bypolice misconduct. Over the last year, that testimony was analyzed by Commissionstaff along with more than 32,000 pages of other supporting documents secured bysubpoenas from the agencies that testified at the hearing.

Among the documents are ordersconcerning the Internal Affairs Bureau of the police department; reports oncomplaints substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board; materials usedin the training and recruitment of police officers; forms used to processcivilian complaints; documents concerning officers with excessive CCRBcomplaints and the use of performance monitoring systems to address the use ofexcessive force; information on cultural diversity training; use of forcecurricula; training guides and manuals used at all levels from the academy toprecinct guides; all complaint procedures and practices; all dispositions by theCCRB; and statements, memos, and instructions generated by the departmentconcerning crime reduction strategies. Additionally, thousands of individualUF-250 forms, which are designed to record important descriptions of �stop andfrisk� encounters, were reviewed. Staff has also received more informationfrom city agency representatives since the hearing. The hearing report has beenreviewed and commented upon by affected agencies, including city agencies andofficials in New York who testified at the hearing.

The report makes a number ofimportant findings and recommendations. Most importantly, the New York PoliceDepartment (NYPD) has not involved affected communities sufficiently in theplanning and implementation of strategies that could reduce tensions whilecontrolling crime. The report recommends that the city should establish anindependent monitor to monitor the police in New York City and that there shouldbe an independent prosecutor who would be appointed to handle high-profile casesinvolving allegations that deadly force has been used inappropriately. Thereport notes that there is a proposal passed by the City Council that is underlegal challenge at this time.

**Recruitment**

The NYPD continues to be largelyunrepresentative of the diverse population of New York City. In fact, since 1994African American hires have decreased; from recruitment to application there aremajor problems. This year�s experience of half the number of 1996 applicantsfor the April exam portends worsening of the problem. The department does notutilize a number of community organizations and leaders who are willing to helpin recruitment. Further, the department needs more officers to live in theboroughs they police. 

Civilian Complaint Review Board datashow that police with less than an associate degree are more likely to havesubstantiated misconduct complaints. The department ought to encourage newofficers to have a baccalaureate degree and give officers time off to work oncollege credits to help professionalize the force. The promotions process needsrevaluation from top to bottom to address the paucity of high-ranking officersof color.

**Training**

The diversity training offered bythe department reinforces stereotypes instead of undermining them. There iscontroversy about whether diversity training works, but bad training cannotwork. Further, high-level officials do not involve themselves, therefore it doesnot appear to be a priority from the perspective of the rank and file officers.

**Police-CommunityRelations**

The NYPD seems to have avoidedlearning from the experiences in San Diego and Boston and in other places whereofficials employ approaches to policing that reduce crime and minimize racialtensions. Community involvement seems to be a key. The mayor and policecommissioner need to release specific information to the public on compliancewith the Mayor�s Task Force on Community Relations recommendations. What hasbeen released is spotty and incomplete, and the impression is they have beenmostly ignored.

**TheCivilian Complaint Review Board and Internal Affairs Bureau**

The CCRB has much improved in thelast 2 years, in staffing and resources, but is given little credit because itstill needs a lot of work and crises keep occurring. The rate of increase indiscipline by the police when the CCRB substantiates a claim has risen from 20.7percent in 1996 to 52.6 percent in 1999. The NYPD does not help to inspirepublic confidence by refusing to say what discipline was imposed upon a CCRBfinding. CCRB semiannual reports on its own operations include major weaknesses.There are no reports on the type of misconduct alleged or why it wasunsubstantiated for example. Further, the reports should include the officer�scommand to make it possible to monitor specific problem areas in the city. Thereshould be monitoring by an independent watchdog that will review and report onNYPD disposition of substantiated complaints. CCRB needs more outreach, townhall meetings, and forums on a regular basis to inform the public and providefor an airing of public views on the police. High-level officers should berequired to attend. The police union agreed that the 48-hour rule could bebargained away in collective bargaining. It should be abolished. Further, NYPDofficers testified that no one ever asks or rewards them for enforcing the lawwhile maintaining a record of no complaints filed and being a protector of thecivil rights of civilians. In the evaluation of officers, complaint avoidanceshould be rewarded. There should also be some mechanism for prosecuting the mostserious cases. This may include the alleged, unnecessary shooting of anindividual. The idea is not that local prosecutors lack devotion to their dutiesbut to reduce concern when prosecutors must work with the police on a routinebasis.

**�Stopand Frisk�**

New Yorkers have stronger legalprotection under state law against an unlawful stop and frisk than is availableunder the federal Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court. Thisprotection is not abrogated because the police use a special unit such as theStreet Crime Unit or a drug crime unit. NYPD policy is that a UF-250 form shouldbe filed by an officer when a person is stopped forcibly or is frisked andsearched, and is arrested or refuses to identify himself or herself. The officeris to submit the form to his desk officer. According to NYPD officials, thisform was introduced in 1964 and amended to its present version in 1973. It wasmandated as a rigorously enforced priority by Police Commissioner Howard Safirin 1997. However, testimony at the Commission�s hearing indicated that perhapsonly in 1 out of 30 stop and frisk encounters resulted in a filed UF-250 form.This criticism was echoed recently in a preliminary report by the CCRB, whoseinvestigators have determined, based on a study of hundreds of instances inwhich people had been stopped and frisked, that NYPD officers routinely fail tofile the required paperwork after stopping and frisking people on the streets ofthe city.

The UF-250�s examined by theCommission were for the year 1998; 139,409 forms were completed. Everywhere,African Americans were stopped far out of their proportion in any of thecommunities policed. So were Hispanics but at somewhat reduced levels. Whitesand Asians were stopped at far below their representations of the population ineach area policed. While the mayor and the police commissioner attributed thesedisparities to suspects� profiles as reported by crime victims, this claim isbelied by police testimony that the Street Crime Unit and other specializedunits root out crime by scouring neighborhoods and making stops with nocomplaints and no victim. They simply stop who they think they should stop. TheNYPD needs to be careful not to engage in racial profiling of this sort, whetherin regular or specialized units. It not only violates the law but underminesrespect for the police and can cause deadly altercations, as in the tragic andunnecessary police shooting of Amadou Diallo.

The City of New York must maintain aworld-class police force that provides protection******against illegal activities, including civil rights violationsby its own officers, for all of its diverse populations.