But one of the highest-ranking officers in the New York police department is a Latino. Perhaps if we had more officers in New York’s police who viewed the old stereotype of the Irish cop speaking in a brogue as something to aspire to, we’d be better off.
AT STAKE ARE a pair of actions taking place this week that tell us the current state of the police in New York, although the situation isn’t one that is unique to New York or alien to other cities.
The NAACP is cooperating with a lawsuit filed Friday against New York city government and the city’s housing authority, all relating to the behavior of police officers when they are in or near public housing complexes in the city’s five boroughs.
City ordinances give the police authority to stop people when they are on the grounds of public housing to do checks of whether those people have legitimate business to be there.
In theory, it lets the police keep people who don’t live in public housing away from the property, which is supposed to work to the protection of the residents. But all too often, the people who have been getting checked by police (and often harassed) are the residents themselves.
THE LAWSUIT FILED in U.S. District Court for southern New York claims that residents often are the ones who get picked up and arrested by police when they are in or near their official residences. Aside from the harassment factor, those people suffer financial losses if they have to get legal representation to square away the confusion or if they lose jobs because they couldn’t show up for work because they were in jail trying to post bail for the pending charge.
What with the disproportionate share of African-American and Latino people who live in these public housing complexes, it means that the bulk of the people who get harassed by the police due to these laws are non-Anglo.
The groups behind this legal action say that the number of black people arrested due to these trespass laws is 10 times higher than the number of white people – even in cases where a public housing complex is located in or near a “white” neighborhood.
“Our clients are New Yorkers stopped and arrested while gtrying to go about their everyday lives,” said Legal Aid Society attorney Steven Banks said, in a prepared statement. “They are visiting friends, dropping off children or caring for elderly or sick relatives.”
NEW YORK CITY Housing Authority “building residents do not surrender their rights when they sign a lease, and they should not be arrested and drive up the cost of the criminal justice system,” Banks said.
Now I’m not about to come out and declare the lawsuit – which seeks a halt to enforcing the trespass ordinances, along with unspecified financial awards paid to those people who have been harassed throughout the years – a winner. I’m fully aware of the fact that many judges are political “animals” just like any other elected official.
This case is ever so likely to get tangled up in the partisanship of politics in New York, and it is not impossible that it will wind up in the hands of a judge who will be either unsympathetic to the needs of those public housing residents – or perhaps eager to show a “law and order” attitude of support for the police.
If there is a need for some change, it most likely needs to come from the police themselves. Because I have no doubt that many of the officers involved in these cases are merely reflecting their life’s experiences in terms of determining who, and what, constitutes a problem.
AFTER ALL, I’M sure every single cop who made an arrest under this ordinance is going to claim he had adequate “probable cause” to justify his behavior. This is a case where larger numbers of officers who aren’t going to automatically view those public housing residents as a “problem” is the solution to the problem.
That is where I notice the promotion of Rafael Piniero, who on Wednesday was named first deputy commissioner. He’s the highest-ranking Latino (of Spanish ethnicity whose family came to the United States through Cuba) to ever serve in the New York Police Department.,
He also has worked his way up through the department, having served in New York for nearly 40 years.
But looking at the New York police ranks makes me wonder just how much it resembles the composition of its city – 53 percent white, 16 percent black, 4.5 percent Asian and 25 percent Latino.
I’M SURE SOME people look at that “25 percent Latino” figure and wonder how it got to be so high. There are some cities in this country where such a figure would be considered exceptional.
I can’t help but wonder if it is overdue, and if a continued increase in all the figures is ultimately the long-term solution to solving the problem of the public housing “harassment” allegedly taking place these days in New York.
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EDITOR’S NOTES: The federal courts for New York will be asked to determine whether or not the public housing (http://www.hispanicprwire.com/News/in/16426/18/nyc-sued-over-unlawful-and-discriminatory-policing-in-public-housing-) trespass ordinances are improper, or legitimate.
New York’s second-highest ranking cop (http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100127/FREE/100129891) is a Latino.
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