NYPD, Stop-and-Frisk, and a Rock Star Police Chief

I've written a couple columns
recently about NYPD's broken windows crime policy, which
along with the statistics-driven CompStat reporting system has
created some twisted incentives. The two policies seem to be
driving NYPD's patrol officers to harass New Yorkers for non-crimes
through an aggressive stop-and-frisk policy, while at the same time
encouraging the under-reporting of actual crimes.

The Village Voice
has been publishing and reporting on a series of audio
recordings taken by a NYPD officer that seem to confirm both
policies. Earlier this month, the Voice published
an alarming interview with NYPD Detective Harold Hernandez, who
says pressure the pressure to reclassify sexual assaults as
misdemeanors left a rapist free to commit more assaults.

Responding to the ongoing Voice series "NYPD Tapes,"
Hernandez reveals publicly for the first time that the downgrading
of crimes to manipulate statistics allowed a man to commit six
sexual assaults in a Washington Heights neighborhood in 2002 before
he was finally caught after his seventh attack.

The initial six crimes, committed over a two-month period, went
unnoticed by 33rd Precinct detectives, Hernandez says, because
patrol supervisors had improperly labeled most of them as
misdemeanors. It was only through a lucky break—an alert neighbor
spotted the suspect pushing his seventh victim into her
apartment—that the rapist, Daryl Thomas, was finally captured.

After his arrest, Hernandez persuaded Thomas to detail his
earlier crimes. The detective then combed through stacks of crime
complaint reports to identify the pattern of violence.

Hernandez learned that most of the victims' complaints in the
prior assaults had been classified as criminal trespassing, so the
incidents never reached the detective squad and, in turn, were
never declared a pattern, which would have triggered an intense
campaign to capture the perpetrator.

In today's Voice, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff slags
NYPD Chief Ray Kelly, pointing to new lawsuits estimating that more
than 90 percent of the people harassed in stop-and-frisk operations
are never fined or arrested. (Many of those arrested are also never
charged.) Hentoff notes that Kelly is fawned over in the press as a
"rock star" chief who "radiates power" (and likely running for
mayor). Hentoff points to a New Yorker profile of Kelly
which asks, "The long-serving NYPD Commissioner is autocratic,
dismissive of civil liberties concerns—and effective. Is that a
reasonable trade?"

Given mounting evidence that at least part of New York's
perpetually declining crime stats may be due to underreporting,
it's probably time to start asking questions about the "effective"
part, too.

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