Minorities face disproportionate ‘Broken Windows’ enforcement everywhere — especially in white neighborhoods (NY Daily News - 9/08/14) #Harlem, #HarlemEd, Columbia University in the City of New York EXCERPT: Eric Jones, a 40-year-old black sanitation worker, said he felt targeted when cops wrote him an open container ticket near Columbia University, in the 26th Precinct, which had a 40-point spread between the black and Hispanic share of the population and their percentage of summonses. I wasnt actually carrying a cup. It wasnt even in my hand, said Jones. They said I was the closest person to it, so its yours. Theres lots of white folks in my neighborhood; theyll be drinking on their stoops in their brownstones, said Jones. But the tickets are getting written to minorities. The News found blacks and Hispanics received an estimated 87% of the open container summonses in the Morningside Heights precinct, which is dominated by the Columbia and City College of New York campuses. They also received 93% of the summonses for unlawful possession of marijuana. A new summons form was issued in 2010 that removed race entirely. As the old form was phased out, fewer and fewer summonses contained information about the race of the recipients. By last year, only 2% of the forms contained the identifying feature. The disparities jump off the page, but they also make it clear that we need to have a systemic way of gathering complete information about whos getting summonses and for what, said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. We dont know whether the racial disparities persist in the way that they did in the past. Bratton said at the hearing Monday that the summons forms are designed by the state. Theyre not designed by us. So to change the form Im not sure what the rationale was for changing the information field, but we would not be opposed to bringing back to those forms that classification, he said. A class-action lawsuit was filed shortly before the new form was issued, accusing the NYPD of pressuring cops to issue bogus summonses in order to fill quotas, in a practice that disparately impacts minorities. Theyre going to issue summonses to minorities . . . because theres the perception that these groups wont assert their rights, said Gerald Cohen, an attorney in that case. Criminal court summons activity has continued its downward trend under Bratton, with 15% fewer issued this year as compared with last, according to the most recent CompStat report. While still defending broken windows as a crime-fighting strategy, Mayor de Blasio told reporters last week that ensuring efforts are applied fairly and equally will be part of a department-wide retraining. Were going to apply the law equally. We want people in every community to know theyre going to be treated fairly. We have more work to do, de Blasio said.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 11:45:50 +0000
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