[Disclaimer: Due to my Department's restrictive internal disciplinary policies regarding their personnel's expression of personal opinion, certain details and aspects of my background have been intentionally redacted from this story.]
I am a New York City Police Officer.
Back in the 2000s, I was a freshly minted rookie. New equipment, shiny handcuffs; I can still recall the smell of my brand new leather gun belt. I was, as I still remain, an idealist. During my 6 months in the Police Academy, I learned about different aspects of law, psychology, and police ethics. I was shown how to properly write a summons, how to recognize an "arrest situation", and how to approach intimate family disputes that had escalated to the point of police intervention. Curiously, I was never taught about arrest and summons quotas.
At this point, I'd like to veer this discussion and incorporate some of Plato's insights from his famous masterpiece, "The Republic". Plato theorized that a society can only achieve a pure state of justice when its citizenry, whom he divided into three subsets (The Producers, The Auxiliaries, and The Guardians), work and live cohesively while simultaneously pursuing their own purposes and goals. Therefore, according to Plato, social justice is only equal to the sum of its parts. If one of these parts is missing or inadequate, social justice cannot exist.
After graduating the academy, I was assigned to a foot post in East Harlem patrolling Housing Developments. Upon walking into my assigned precinct on the first day, I was approached by the Training Officer, who said, "Two and Five". No introduction, no advice, just a quota and an expectation; two arrests and five summonses. He briskly walked away before I could even open my mouth. Immediately, I had been confronted with a moral dilemma from the most unexpected source; the very Department I had joined to "make a difference" and "help people". After officially being assigned to "Operation Impact", and having absolutely no policing experience whatsoever, I was ordered out to my nightly foot post (with my rookie partner) and ordered to write as many summonses as possible.
East Harlem was, and still is, an overwhelmingly African American Community. And, as I'm sure you've gathered from the news during the past five years, communities like this one reached an irrevocable point of being over-policed, especially when it came to petty offenses (which have a tendency to be overlooked in more affluent neighborhoods). Sixteen and seventeen year-old kids were arrested for trespassing in their own housing developments, or for drinking a beer outside without proper identification. There was even a point in the late 2000s and early 2010s when residents were being stopped daily or weekly by the police in their own buildings. Driven by the NYPD's Compstat program (1), "Operation Impact" was, in the end, a huge contributor to the current state of backlash the law enforcement community is now privy to on multiple fronts. Moreover, it was during this time of increased scrutiny on arrest and summons quotas when, I believe, the NYPD lost sight of what its mission actually was(or should have been): protecting the public and responding to emergencies.
During my time in Operation Impact, I quickly grew used to the routine harassment I'd receive from certain supervisors if I had failed to make an arrest that particular month, or failed to write the expected number of summonses. It's not that I didn't want to do my job, it's just that I refused to accept that I couldn't use my discretion to deal with petty offenses and minor infractions as I saw fit. The job wanted "activity", otherwise known as arrests and summonses. All I wanted was to do my job to the best of my ability and be able to look at myself in the mirror at the end of everyday. So I did just that.
The NYPD's leadership clearly became obsessed with quantitative policing; the concept of evaluating a Police Department's efficacy by its production of arrests and summonses. It was a system setup for failure. And fail it did. Therefore, being that we now know that quantitative policing simply does not work under most circumstances, it is therefore imperative that it be replaced by a much more qualitative approach. While arrests and summonses will always be part of the law enforcement profession, they should be much further down the list than say, community involvement, deterrence, and actual prevention of crime. I, for one, think that many Departments around the country have started to gravitate in the qualitative direction, leaving the quantitative model behind. The NYPD, being an antiquated bureaucracy with approximately 30,000 uniformed members, may take longer than most. This is not to say that the efforts currently underway do not show promise, such as the "Neighborhood Policing Program", a program that depends heavily on the community's investment in improving their own streets. Only time will tell.
This brings me back to Plato and his definition of social justice; we as a society are only as good and just as the sum of our parts. Operation Impact failed. Quantitative policing has also failed. While I am cautiously optimistic that we are heading in the right direction, there are still so many issues that need to be addressed (that will be discussed in further articles).
Credit for photographs to Antonio Bulfo. Thanks for reading.
"Let's keep this on the low-down."
"You mean the down-low."
"No doubt".
(1) Compstat Program- Conjunctive name for "Computer Statistics", adopted during the late 1990s in New York City as a way of keeping track of and attempting to combat crime throughout the five boroughs.
Great post, thank you.
This part hit home with me:
Glad it did! Thanks for reading!
What a great piece. When an institution is no longer capable of criticizing itself and it's performance, it's dire straights indeed. It is probably no surprise to you that the "thin blue line" mentality is seen by many of us civilians as detrimental, not because of the solidarity it provokes, but because of the complete insulation from criticism it engenders.
My father in law was an officer here in the Midwest until he fell through a roof, shredding his hamstring and forcing early retirement. And he was a good cop. He is genuinely a decent person, and was a great example of a public servant. But he can sit there now, and watch/absorb accounts of obvious police wrong doing, and argue with you until he is blue in the face about how they took all proper steps, and that the danger they face necessitates whatever action is in question. I mean, it'll be totally obvious to everyone else in the room, but you will pretty much never ever catch him admitting any wrongdoing or negative behavior by police ever.
That steadfast refusal to be introspective, and critical of the institution is frightening to us civilians. So I recognize, and greatly appreciate your critical review of the institution.
I sincerely hope you stay on the job, and continue to work within the system to enact some of the reforms the system so badly needs. Thank you, for your service, and for your insight.
Thank you for this feedback, it is greatly appreciated. And glad you enjoyed the piece. I have to admit as well, that sometimes it is difficult for even the most educated and experienced of cops (including myself) to evaluate a situation from a perspective other than our own. Please feel free to leave more meaningful feedback down the road, I enjoyed reading your comment.
I am happy to see this kind of post, we need more of them. It has become trendy to hate on cops just because they are cops. I understand where the hate comes from, but they need to understand they SYSTEM is more of a problem than the police themselves. Sure there are some hardons who enjoy violating peoples rights etc, but the vast majority of them are just regular people stuck in a machine that forces them to do as they are told or find a new job.
Agreed. Empathy is a two-sided coin for sure. Part of the reason I felt inclined to start posting here.
BTW, I would love to see you write something about civil asset forfeiture.
Just put it on the list! Thanks for reading.
Really interesting read, it's crazy to hear this kind of stuff from a first hand source like yourself. I'll be following you and looking forward to your future posts!
Thanks I'm glad you enjoyed reading. More to come!
To have one of NYPD officer's here in the community could be very fascinating. Keep doing a good job and become the guardian that Plato describes. Resist doing quotas. Just be a good and trustworthy guardian.
Will continue trying to do so, thanks for reading.
Plato was the best in history to speak about social structure, justice and social values, great you acknowledged him in your post !
This was an absolutely riveting read. A lot of times I just end up skimming the article, but this I read from top to bottom. Thanks for sharing your perspective and I look forward to hearing more of what you have to say on the subject of policing and in general! Upped and Followed.
Thanks! More content to come!
That was interesting. Thx for sharing.
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Very nice ~.~ thank you for sharing + follow up
Law-enforcement and security need considerable reforms. It's a shame that Black Lives Matter is always ignored when it proposes positive reforms and makes valid criticisms of police departments.
I think that enforcement of positive law (arbitrary rules set by the community) should be divorced from rights protection/security (enforcement of natural law). There should be two separate and distinct entities for dealing with these different things which are currently both wrapped under the heading of "policing". Communal police forces should deal with writing tickets for speeding, etc. Communal security forces should deal with responding to violent crimes and violations of people's rights. And security should be linked to insurance. Communal security agencies should provide insurance against crime, reimburse the victim, then try to catch and prosecute the criminal (and get the criminal to reimburse the department to whatever extent possible). This would probably need to be done with a national insurance fund.
People generally don't trust cops. I have friends that have been arrested for feeding the homeless and for attending non-violent protests... And people don't approve of cops doing that sort of thing. Also, a lot of people don't think smoking pot or growing it should be illegal. Cops enforcing unjust laws creates animosity towards police. So, divorce enforcing positive law, which can be either just or unjust, from the protection of persons and property, then the problem will gradually go away.
I generally like the post, but have mixed feelings. I do think that the entire institution of policing, in its current form, is fundamentally unjust, and in need of radical changes.
Thank you for your reply. I agree with you on many fronts. There are many, many petty offenses that need to be decriminalized, including the possession and distribution of marijuana. Not only is it indefensible from a moral perspective, it ends up costing tax payers tons of $ every year to process unnecessary arrests.
There also needs to be more democracy in policy-making and legislating. I think we need to transition to delegative democracy with more direct democracy when possible. Representatives/delegates should be subject to recall by popular vote. Perhaps it could be linked to popularity polls among their constituents. If the majority of a representative's constituents have an unfavorable opinion of them, they should automatically be recalled and replaced. Digital democracy is a good idea. Possibly we could create a system that allows direct popular votes via internet or phone apps to veto laws passed by legislators. Candidates for public office should be chosen via sortition/lottery, eliminating career politicians. And the voters should chose from the randomly-selected candidates. And voting should be done by "ranked-choice voting" or "instant-runnoff voting", so that people can choose their first, second, and third preferred option...that way we can avoid the dilemma of the wasted vote and the tragedy of always having to vote for the "lesser of two evils." We need to update our republican system to something more republican. That would help a lot. Because we really should not have laws that are not agreed with by the majority of the populace.
I hope you'll write more on the topic of policing. Do you happen to have any ideas about particular reforms or changes that you would like to see implemented? If so, I'd really like to see a post on that topic.
Thanks for the incredible feedback. I have plans for a few posts pertaining to the decriminalization of marijuana and certain narcotics, and a post about subpoenas that many people would find interesting, I think.
What a great blog. Thank you for writing it and putting in your training and experience. I look forward to reading more from you. Thank you for what you do :)
Thanks @creativeusername! More to come.
Thank you for the feedback and response. Educational standards are certainly an issue that need to be addressed.
Again, your feedback appreciated. It doesn't sound like there is anything I can say to alter your opinion. Thank you for taking the time to read anyway!