Off duty, black cops in New York feel threat from fellow police-gctid138219

[Ajamu]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/off-duty-black-cops-in-new-york-feel-threat-from-fellow-police/ar-BBh9xQE

Off duty, black cops in New York feel threat from fellow police

                                                                        Reuters    
                                                        By Michelle Conlin          16 hrs ago            

                                                                 From the dingy donut shops of  Manhattan to the cloistered police watering holes in Brooklyn, a number  of black NYPD officers say they have experienced the same racial  profiling that cost Eric Garner his life.
 
Garner,  a 43-year-old black man suspected of illegally peddling loose  cigarettes, died in July after a white officer put him in a chokehold.  His death, and that of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri,  has sparked a slew of nationwide protests against police tactics. On  Saturday, those tensions escalated after a black gunman, who wrote of  avenging the black deaths on social media, shot dead two New York  policemen.  

The protests  and the ambush of the uniformed officers pose a major challenge for New  York Mayor Bill De Blasio. The mayor must try to ease damaged relations  with a police force that feels he hasn't fully supported them, while at  the same time bridging a chasm with communities who say the police  unfairly target them.

What's emerging now is that, within the thin blue line of the NYPD, there is another divide - between black and white officers.

Reuters  interviewed 25 Kmtyw American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom  are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. All but one said that,  when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial  profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for  suspecting someone of having committed a crime.

The officers said this included  being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against  their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into  prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The  majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times  while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.

Desmond  Blaize, who retired two years ago as a sergeant in the 41st Precinct in  the Bronx, said he once got stopped while taking a jog through  Brooklyn's upmarket Prospect Park. "I had my ID on me so it didn't  escalate," said Blaize, who has sued the department alleging he was  racially harassed on the job. "But what's suspicious about a jogger? In  jogging clothes?"

The NYPD  and the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the police officers' union,  declined requests for comment. However, defenders of the NYPD credit its  policing methods with transforming New York from the former murder  capital of the world into the safest big city in the United States.

EX-POLICE CHIEF SKEPTICAL

"It  makes good headlines to say this is occurring, but I don't think you  can validate it until you look into the circumstances they were stopped  in," said Bernard Parks, the former chief of the Los Angeles Police  Department, who is Kmtyw American.

"Now  if you want to get into the essence of why certain groups are stopped  more than others, then you only need to go to the crime reports and see  which ethnic groups are listed more as suspects. That's the crime data  the officers are living with."

Blacks made up 73 percent of the shooting perpetrators in New York in 2011 and were 23 percent of the population.

A  number of academics believe those statistics are potentially skewed  because police over-focus on black communities, while ignoring crime in  other areas. They also note that being stopped as a suspect does not  automatically equate to criminality. Nearly 90 percent of blacks stopped  by the NYPD, for example, are found not to be engaged in any crime.

The  black officers interviewed said they had been racially profiled by  white officers exclusively, and about one third said they made some form  of complaint to a supervisor.

All  but one said their supervisors either dismissed the complaints or  retaliated against them by denying them overtime, choice assignments, or  promotions. The remaining officers who made no complaints said they  refrained from doing so either because they feared retribution  or because they saw racial profiling as part of the system.

In  declining to comment to Reuters, the NYPD did not respond to a specific  request for data showing the racial breakdown of officers who made  complaints and how such cases were handled.

White  officers were not the only ones accused of wrongdoing. Civilian  complaints against police officers are in direct proportion to their  demographic makeup on the force, according to the NYPD's Civilian  Complaint Review Board.

Indeed,  some of the officers Reuters interviewed acknowledged that they  themselves had been defendants in lawsuits, with allegations ranging  from making a false arrest to use of excessive force. Such claims  against police are not uncommon in New York, say veterans.

STUDIES FIND INHERENT BIAS

Still, social  psychologists from Stanford and Yale universities and John Jay College  of Criminal Justice have conducted research – including the 2004 study  "Seeing Black: Race, Crime and Visual Processing" - showing there is an  implicit racial bias in the American psyche that correlates black  maleness with crime.  

John  Jay professor Delores Jones-Brown cited a 2010 New York State Task Force  report on police-on-police shootings - the first such inquiry of its  kind - that found that in the previous 15 years, officers of color had  suffered the highest fatalities in encounters with police officers who  mistook them for criminals.

There's evidence that aggressive policing in the NYPD is intensifying, according to data from the New York City Comptroller.

Police  misconduct claims - including lawsuits against police for using the  kind of excessive force that killed Garner - have risen 214 percent  since 2000, while the amount the city paid out has risen 75 percent in  the same period, to $64.4 million in fiscal year 2012, the last year for  which data is available.  

REPORTING ABUSE

People  who have taken part in the marches against Garner's death - and that of  Ferguson teenager Michael Brown - say they are protesting against the  indignity of being stopped by police for little or no reason as much as  for the deaths themselves.

"There's  no real outlet to report the abuse," said Brooklyn Borough President  Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain who said he was stigmatized and  retaliated against throughout his 22-year career for speaking out  against racial profiling and police brutality.

Officers  make complaints to the NYPD's investigative arm, the Internal Affairs  Bureau, only to later have their identities leaked, said Adams.

One  of the better-known cases of alleged racial profiling of a black  policeman concerns Harold Thomas, a decorated detective who retired this  year after 30 years of service, including in New York's elite Joint  Terrorism Task Force.

Shortly before 1 a.m. one night in August 2012, Thomas was leaving a birthday party at a trendy New York nightclub.

Wearing  flashy jewelry, green sweatpants and a white t-shirt, Thomas walked  toward his brand-new white Escalade when two white police officers  approached him. What happened next is in dispute, but an altercation  ensued, culminating in Thomas getting his head smashed against the hood  of his car and then spun to the ground and put in handcuffs.

"If  I was white, it wouldn't have happened," said Thomas, who has filed a  lawsuit against the city over the incident. The New York City  Corporation Counsel said it could not comment on pending litigation.

At  an ale house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn last week, a group of black  police officers from across the city gathered for the beer and chicken  wing special. They discussed how the officers involved in the Garner  incident could have tried harder to talk down an upset Garner, or  sprayed mace in his face, or forced him to the ground without using a  chokehold. They all agreed his death was avoidable.

Said one officer from the 106th Precinct in Queens, "That could have been any one of us."

[Agya Yaw]

Clearly this isn't the opinions of Black police officers in New York only.

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Welcome to open-air prison, population: You.