In the NYPD’s Harsh Tactics Under Adams, critics see a broken promise

Edwin Raymond doubted he would ever be promoted to sergeant after suing the New York Police Department over arrest quotas that fell most heavily on black and Latino men. But he had a prominent ally.

“What you’re going through is what a warrior goes through,” Eric Adams, then the Brooklyn borough president, wrote to him in a text message, Mr. Raymond recalled.

When Mr. Adams became mayor in January 2022, Mr. Raymond — who was eventually promoted and later rose to lieutenant — hoped the city’s new leader would put an end to the tactics that had brought civil rights lawsuits and federal scrutiny. Instead, the mayor hugged them.

Since Mr. Adams came to power, police have stopped disproportionate numbers of black and Latino drivers. This was reported by the New York Civil Liberties Union. Officers stopped and searched 41 percent more pedestrians in 2022 than in 2021. And in June, a federal monitor said anti-crime units activated by Mr. Adams were conducting too many unlawful stops, searches and searches.

Also up: the number of complaints filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the independent body that investigates misconduct. In the first half of 2023, the board reports, 40 percent more complaints were received than in the same period last year.

Mr. Adams, a former police commissioner who campaigned on fighting crime while protecting the rights of New Yorkers, was unapologetic about his approach.

“Every time I crack down on them, everyone says, ‘OK, here’s Mayor Po Po going to crack down on everyone again,’” Mr. Adams said at a recent meeting with residents in southeast Queens, one of his political leaders. strongholds. “You can no longer just do whatever you want in this city. Those days are over.”

Interviews with half a dozen current and recently retired officers revealed a duality in the way they view this change: After years of feeling undermined following protests against brutality and calls to defund the police, many said agents that Mr.’s new tone Adams felt supportive. Others worried whether support would last if officers were accused of misconduct.

And then there are officers like Mr. Raymond, who was one of 12 police officers who sued the department in 2015 over arrest quotas that the department says don’t exist. He had hoped an Adams administration would promote a different style of policing. His disappointment was partly the reason he left the department in May.

“New York has the opportunity to be the model and leadership for reform and we are completely dropping the ball,” Mr. Raymond said. “The irony is that it’s happening under Mayor Adams.”

In a statement, Charles Kretchmer Lutvak, a spokesman, said police have taken more than 12,200 illegal guns off the streets since Mr. Adams took office. The number of shootings fell by more than 34 percent in September 2023 compared to the same month a year earlier.

The police speak of murders, rapes, robberies and burglaries had fallen across the city thanks to “committed and focused” officials. That continues a decades-long decline in crime in New York.

“They are eradicating violence and writing more citations, while improving our community engagement,” the department said in a statement.

In southeast Queens, where Mr. Adams has roots, Roslin Spigner said she trusts her precinct commander and knows who to call when she sees beat-up cars with fake license plates and illegal smoke shops selling marijuana.

Mr. Adams’s police department, she said, is attuned to her neighborhood.

“He’s doing a great job,” Ms. Spigner said of the mayor. “He knows I will hold him accountable for everything he does.”

Ms Spigner, who demonstrated with her fraternity in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, said she was concerned about officers abusing their authority, adding that they must “treat people with respect”. But she also feels alienated from progressive New Yorkers who express concern about police activity in their neighborhood.

“You get the more liberal side of New York, which believes no one should live in a police state,” Ms. Spigner said. “And then you’re going to kind of have people from Queens saying, yeah, check the state.”

In Brownsville, Brooklyn, Rashaan Brown, who works for an anti-violence grouphad a different perspective on recent community-police relations.

He was sitting in the back seat of a car on Labor Day when two officers pulled him over and noticed that Mr. Brown was not wearing a seat belt. Mr. Brown got out but refused to lean against the car.

“Do what you have to do,” he told the officers. They pulled him to the ground and handcuffed him and his two friends.

“You’re not in charge. That’s us,” one of the officers said, according to a video Mr. Brown filmed of the encounter. Another official, a deputy inspector, could be heard saying: “Do you know who you are talking to?”

The men were held at a county jail in Brownsville for two hours before being released with a citation for having an open container of alcohol, which was later dismissed.

Mike Souffrant, a 38-year-old post office supervisor who was driving the car, said the encounter made him “feel like an animal.”

The mayor’s office said in a statement that Mr. Adams’ personal experience with police brutality had made his administration vigilant in protecting against such abuse. “As a young person, Mayor Adams was beaten by police, so he has personally experienced abuse from police and has fought against it throughout his career,” Mr Lutvak said.

More than 15,000 pedestrians were stopped by police last year, well below the nearly 686,000 stops recorded in 2011, at the height of the ‘stop and frisk’ era. Still, political and civic leaders said such arrests — and experiences like what happened to Mr. Brown and Mr. Souffrant — threaten to undermine the mayor’s stated goal of building trust among citizens and police.

Mr. Adams has “the ability to do things with the NYPD that perhaps no other mayor has ever had,” said David R. Jones, president and CEO of the NYPD. Volunteer Association of New York. But, he said, “in an effort to reduce crime, they do over-policing and the use of techniques that could very well alienate the very audiences they are trying to serve.”

Kim Best, president of the 79th Precinct Community Council in Bedford-Stuyvesant, said teens told her that during the height of the stop and frisk, they would come out of the subway with their hands up, waiting to be stopped by police. She doesn’t want to go back on that, but she said young people need to learn to stay out of trouble.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said it was difficult to reconcile the mayor’s recent rhetoric and policies with the “scruffy, justice-seeking” captain she once knew.

“He used to be our ally, and now he is our adversary,” Ms. Lieberman said.

As a candidate, Mr. Adams promised to do that publish a list of officers guard against bad behavior, strengthen programs that keep youth out of jail and give communities veto power over the choice of district commanders.

But the promises have gone unfulfilled or been undermined by budget cuts.

The list was never published. The city touts summer job programs to help youth, but the probation department is coming in August halt a nine-month initiative connecting problematic 16 to 24-year-old New Yorkers with mentoring and therapy. The city explained that other programs provide similar services.

The mayor “understands that public safety means more than just policing,” Mr. Lutvak said.

And while finalists for district commander positions go to district councils for feedback, the department head and other leaders ultimately make the selections.

Julio Peña, president of Community Board 7 in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, heard about a meeting to question two 72nd Precinct finalists just 30 minutes in advance. “This was a perfect opportunity to implement this policy, but instead it was a kind of sham,” Mr. Peña said.

Alexa Avilés, the councilor representing the neighborhood, said the government’s last-minute approach risks alienating people like Mr. Peña, who could be the department’s biggest boosters and who “we are very proud to be that contact person.”

“If those people say, ‘This is a sham’ and ‘I feel used,’ what’s the point?” she said.

The city said 35 district commanders were chosen after “very successful” discussions with residents. Jeffrey Maddrey, department chief, said in an interview that police administrators used an “internal process” to select commanders but promised changes to give the community a “fair opportunity” to participate.

Even as community leaders begged for a commander they admired, police leaders went in a different direction.

Over the summer, the department considered where to place Captain Derby St. Fort, a former Brooklyn precinct commander who once co-wrote op-eds with Mr. Adams and pushed for innovations such as paying troubled teens to participate in group therapy. Mr. Adams did praised his work before taking office.

Several city council members and leaders of a dozen community groups asked the department to promote Captain St. Fort or transfer him to another high-crime district. Instead, the department sent him to the transit agency.

Jarrell Daniels, program director of Columbia University’s Center for Justice who worked with Capt. St. Fort, said it was disheartening to see him “blackballed.”

“It’s sad that he’s a black man in uniform and has to go through this while he’s really trying to make a difference,” Mr. Daniels said. “It can be sour for the people who want to do this work.”

Captain St. Fort said in a statement that he was determined to “do his very best” in his new role.

“The critical work of police reform,” he said, “will occur primarily during my personal time.”

Hurubie Mekoreporting contributed.