A joint investigation published today by ProPublica and the New York Daily News shines light on the NYPD’s enforcement of a little-known law that allows the department to kick people out of their apartments without charging them with a crime or even arresting them. The process, known as nuisance abatement, is used almost exclusively against people of color.
A pair of New York City police officers were shot at a public housing complex in the Bronx Thursday night, according to authorities.
Bill Bratton, the head of the NYPD, presides over an army of 35,000 officers and dictates law enforcement policy for a sprawling metropolis. He is also scared of riding the subway.
Eduardo Cornejo, a 10-year veteran of the NYPD, was fired last month for failing a random drug test. He was also, however, being investigated by the FBI and the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau for running a prostitution ring out of various area motels. On Tuesday, Cornejo was charged with transporting women in interstate commerce to engage in prostitution (a federal offense).
On Thursday, a former New York City police officer, Arthur Lomando, pleaded not guilty in the stabbing death of his ex-girlfriend, Suzanne Bardzell. Authorities say that just a few hours after the murder, Lomando threw himself in front of a train.
Ever since commissioner Bill Bratton took command of the NYPD in 2014, the department has placed special focus on arresting people who commit small crimes like public urination and panhandling. If a widely supported new legislation package in City Council is any indication, that may soon change. Get your pee on! Because this is excellent news.
In April 2015, the New York City television station NY1 filed a open-records request for “unedited video files from the NYPD’s body camera program” captured during five specific weeks in 2014 and 2015. Four months later, the New York City Police Department agreed to review and release the footage—but only after NY1 paid a $36,000 “copying fee.” NY1 appealed the N.Y.P.D.’s decision and, in a letter dated September 16 of last year, was once again denied by the N.Y.P.D.’s deputy commissioner of legal matters.
The ultimate joke of Ray Kelly and Bill Bratton’s blustery war over the manipulation of crime statistics is that both men have done it. That isn’t speculation: the NYPD under Kelly and the LAPD under Bratton were both shown, through rigorous reporting, to have massaged stats with the presumable intent of making their cities look safer. But if the fight isn’t really about the stats, what could it possibly be about?
NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton and his predecessor Ray Kelly have not been getting on of late. Last week, Kelly—who is promoting his book—accused Bratton of manipulating crime statistics. “Shame on him,” Bratton said at a press conference Tuesday. “Let him back up that accusation.” Aw yeah, back that thing up.
New York City police officer Jonathan Munoz was charged yesterday in connection to a March 12, 2014 incident in which he arrested a man for trying to film him outside a Washington Heights bar. As the surveillance video above shows, the incident played out very differently than Munoz originally claimed, and the officer has now been charged with official misconduct and lying on a criminal complaint.
In February 1999, four plainclothes NYPD officers fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 22-year-old Bronx resident, peppering his body with bullets and killing him. Sixteen years later, one of those cops is getting a promotion.
