City Council Holds Hearing On Police-Community Relations
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The New York City Council is holding hearings on how to improve relations between NYPD officers and residents of the city's minority neighborhoods.
Those relations have been strained in the wake of last year's apparent police chokehold death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, which was followed by months of protests and the murders of two city police officers. The rank-and-file police also appeared to be in open revolt against Mayor Bill de Blasio.
A tentative truce between the mayor and police unions has taken hold and the protests have died down, but the underlying issues of the tension are at the heart of the Public Safety Committee hearings that began Tuesday.
"The City Council is proud to support our police officers who already do tremendous work,'' City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said in a statement to The Associated Press ahead of the hearings. "And by identifying strategies and tactics which build trust we can continue to keep crime low and New Yorkers safe while also building a more fair and just city.''
The hearings focus on improving the relations between police and communities of color, which have felt for years that they drew an inordinate amount of NYPD attention even as crime continued to fall. Many who lived in those sections of the city felt victimized by years of the police tactic known as stop-and-frisk, which allowed police to stop anyone believed acting suspicious.
Neighborhoods in Washington Heights, Inwood and the Rockaways will be the first to see more community policing under a new pilot program that is about to get underway, 1010 WINS' Mona Rivera reported.
"It will likely begin next month after the officers receive smartphones and tablets along with the necessary training," NYPD Deputy Commissioner Susan Herman told the committee Tuesday.
Four precincts will be divided into neighborhood sectors. Assistant Chief Terrence Monahan said from a police perspective that means, "Taking ownership, allowing our cops to have ownership of a neighborhood. Working in partnerships with everyone there. The guys who ride in the radio cars are going to be in the same sectors every single day."
Monahan said the goal is to have free time for the officers in the radio cars to interact with the community so they can help to solve problems in their sectors, WCBS 880's Rich Lamb reported.
Vanessa Gibson, the chair of the Public Safety Committee, said Monday that "community policing provides a bridge for officers to better understand the neighborhood and people they have been sworn to protect'' but acknowledged that there is a "wide spectrum of opinions'' on how to dissipate the current tension.
Aides to council members said the hearings will also discuss some of the criminal justice reforms proposed by Mark-Viverito in last month's State of the City address, including creating a citywide bail fund to assist low-risk, non-violent offenders pay small bail amounts, and the creation of a new Office of Civil Justice to make certain that low-income New Yorkers have access to legal representation.
She also proposed that some low-level violations, like jumping a subway turnstile, should warrant only summonses or desk appearance tickets instead of time in jail, a punishment she said falls disproportionally on black and Latino men. And the council also will discuss its proposal to hire 1,000 new officers, an idea de Blasio has yet to embrace.
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