For a federal judge to appoint an unelected, unaccountable group of individuals without a scintilla of policing experience to impose citywide rules and restrictions from on high — completely disconnected from the hard truths that cops and the people they serve in neighborhoods live with every day — is as dangerous as it is momentous.
Police motivation and morale has plummeted to unparalleled levels, heavy damage to policing already facing the fallout from the often noxious debate about the NYPD’s role in the city.
Whether or not shootings will escalate over the long haul — shootings are trending upward at the moment. New Yorkers need to know that the NYPD has already been damaged and demoralized in ways that may not be reparable.
To effectively place the NYPD into a federal receivership because you disagree with policy choices made by elected officials is a drastic remedy indeed. The cops and the people who depend on them will have their voices silenced in this process. This is not to say there were not some excesses in using stop-and-frisk — there clearly were.
Many, but by no means all, New Yorkers live in a cocoon of safety. Most of our fellow New Yorkers spend no time in their busy days calculating the times they can walk around their own neighborhoods, the routes they must take (or avoid) and the risks they and their families must constantly be vigilant about.
Of course, there are still many New Yorkers who shudder when they hear footsteps from behind, who pause at traffic lights only after performing meticulous visual sweeps.
There are still New Yorkers who report going to sleep to the sounds of gunfire, and if asked, will say they know someone who is carrying around a gun who shouldn’t be and who has little fear of the consequences.
Scores of American cities of various sizes have been hollowed out by the collapse of public safety where residents lose all faith in public institutions to protect them and their loved ones.
You can still be a successful “progressive” mayor in too many places when your citizens are being murdered: All you need do is express your condolences.
There have been disgraceful attacks on the most diverse NYPD by many people who should know better. The NYPD has, this spring and summer, been compared to Bull Connor’s goon squad of the 1950s, labeled institutionally racist by a federal judge based on the flimsiest evidence, falsely accused of maliciously shooting innocent people (even though it is the most restrained police department in the US).
Candidates for public office have made absurd suggestions that stop-and-frisk be abandoned altogether which, the cops will tell you, means you would not stop people carrying guns or preparing to mug people, you would wait until victims were shot or mugged and THEN you would intervene — perhaps at the emergency room or morgue.
The department has been made into a political football: It seems, at times, there will soon be 10 overseers for every cop working in our neighborhoods (in a department getting smaller each day). Alleged police misconduct can be reported to federal prosecutors, state prosecutors, private lawyers, internal affairs, civilian review boards, inspector generals and now, it appears, a group of law-school professors are also on the case.
It you guessed this is all causing a collapse in police motivation and morale you would be right.
This morning, a former student now in law enforcement e-mailed me with these wonderful words: “I’m convinced that the only way to have good government is to have good people in it.” Those who bash the proud policing profession with abandon should think hard about the costs and consequences of their indiscriminate, demonizing attacks.
Eugene O’Donnell is a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan and a decorated former NYPD cop who served in Brooklyn.