Bill Slanders His Cops

Mayor de Blasio's suggestion that NYPD racism killed Eric Garner – and fuels police-community tension – is baseless and odious

It is impossible not to be heartbroken and horrified by the video of Eric Garner's death. Yes, he was a chronic lawbreaker. Yes, he was resisting arrest, a profound violation of the rule of law. But that resistance was more exasperated than vicious (though, to be sure, such low-level resistance can unpredictably escalate into more dangerous behavior).

Still, no one deserves to die for such petty law-breaking — as the officers who tried to arrest Garner would undoubtedly agree.

But Mayor de Blasio has made a tragic situation worse by racializing Garner's death. His public rhetoric following the grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for that death has painted a demagogically false picture of the New York Police Department, one that will make his stated goal of improving police-community relations harder to achieve.

The ultimate result — albeit one not yet evidenced in still-dropping numbers — could be a reversal of New York's stupendous crime decline.

“People are saying: ‘black lives matter,'” de Blasio announced on Wednesday after the grand jury concluded its work. “It should be self-evident, but our history requires us to say ‘black lives matter.' It was not years of racism that brought us to this day, or decades of racism, but centuries of racism. That is how profound a crisis this is.”

It is not clear precisely who or what de Blasio means to indict with his “centuries of racism” accusation, a phrase that he was bandying about before the jury decision and has continued to use since then.

But one thing is clear: There is no institution in New York more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the NYPD.

Every commander in a high-crime neighborhood is under daily, relentless pressure from top brass to save black lives. The weekly crime analysis meetings at One Police Plaza, known as Compstat, focus intensely on what precinct commanders are doing to prevent victimization in their jurisdictions, victimization that takes its greatest toll on blacks.

Thousands of minority males are alive today who would have been dead had homicide rates remained at their early 1990s highs. New York homicides plummeted thanks to the NYPD's proactive efforts to stop crime before it happens.

These facts — crucial ones, that should be the starting point of any discussion about crime and policing — rarely frame the conversation when de Blasio is leading it.

De Blasio invoked his biracial son Dante yet again both before and after the Garner verdict to show his racial bona fides. The mayor worries “every night,” he said, about the “dangers [Dante] may face” from “officers who are paid to protect him.”

In fact, blacks in New York are less likely than whites to be killed by the police when their higher rates of using mortal force against the police are taken into account.

In 2011, for example, New York officers fired at 41 suspects and killed nine of them — an astonishingly low number in light of New York's population and the size of its police force. Virtually all of these shootings were justified.

Blacks were 22% of those fatalities; whites were 44% of them. Yet blacks were 67% of all suspects who fired at the police; no white suspect fired at the police.

Moreover, blacks made up 73% of all shooting perpetrators in the city in 2011, according to the victims of, and witnesses to, those shootings, though they are only 23% of the population. Whites committed less than three percent of all shootings, though they are close to 35% of the city's population.

This pattern holds nationally. The black percentage of suspects killed by the police, historically around 29%, is lower than one would expect based on the best available data on those who represent a mortal threat to the police, according to Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University.

In 2013, for example, blacks made up 42% of all cop killers whose race was known, even though they are only 13% of the nation's population.

(Needless to say, any given police action must be based on individualized suspicion.)

Blacks in New York are also far less likely to be stopped and questioned by the police than their crime numbers would predict. So far this year, whites have made up 12% of all stop subjects and blacks 54%.

But according to crime victims and witnesses, whites commit only 5% of the city's violent crimes, whereas blacks commit roughly two-thirds of those crimes, including about 70% of all robberies and three-quarters of all shootings.

Perhaps de Blasio meant that “centuries of racism” lay behind the NYPD's enforcement of quality-of-life laws on Staten Island. Garner was accosted for selling untaxed loose cigarettes, an offense for which he had been arrested numerous times previously, along with arrests for other petty offenses such as marijuana possession and driving without a license.

Was it racist to enforce such laws? Some anti-cop activists are saying so now, a dangerous argument should it prevail.

But when officers pulled back on misdemeanor policing in the Staten Island neighborhood where Garner was killed, crime and disorder skyrocketed, leading to complaints from business owners and residents about police inaction.

In fact, there is not a single precinct commander in a low-income jurisdiction who doesn't hear constant demands from his constituents to crack down on quality of life offenders, including illegal vendors. And according to department records, officers used force (which often merely means putting hands on a subject) in only 0.6% of quality-of-life arrests (or 21 times) in the first half of 2014, suggesting how anomalous the Garner incident was.

Were the tactics the officers used to arrest Garner racist? Had a 300-pound white man resisted arrest just as Garner did, it is likely the officers would have responded the same way.

Maybe de Blasio meant that “centuries of racism” lay behind district attorney Daniel Donovan's presentation of the Garner case to the grand jury. Such a judgment would seem wildly premature, given that de Blasio has no idea what transpired in the grand-jury room

Donovan wanted to release more of those proceedings to the public than the law normally allows, not the behavior of someone worried about being accused of biased behavior.

Perhaps de Blasio meant that members of the grand jury themselves were racist. He would have no basis for such an insult. Their judgment most likely stemmed from the lack of evidence of any criminal intent on the officer's part and from the fact that the tactics used in Garner's takedown would not likely have been lethal absent Garner's asthma, heart condition and obesity.

To say this is not to insult Garner. It is simply to state a complicating legal fact.

President Obama at least paid lip service last month to the need to respect the grand jury's decision after the Ferguson, Mo., grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson for notoriously killing Michael Brown in August.

De Blasio has not deigned to offer any support to the idea that the workings of our criminal justice system deserve respect, remaining silent on that matter.

Every instance of an unarmed innocent person being killed by the police is an unspeakable horror. De Blasio is right to lead the city in mourning Garner's death.

But de Blasio is betraying his position as the city's most prominent representative of the law by suggesting that Garner's death is emblematic of a systemic problem in law enforcement throughout the country, much less in the NYPD.

Dante de Blasio faces almost zero risk that he will be killed by an officer. Any homicide risk that he does face comes overwhelmingly from black civilians. It is to stem black-on-black violence and save black lives that the NYPD focuses its enforcement effort on minority neighborhoods.

The NYPD's retraining effort, announced in the wake of Garner's death, is welcome. Officers work in more challenging environments than de Blasio can possibly imagine, as a result of which they need constant reinforcement in courtesy and in how to de-escalate tense encounters.

But de Blasio's embrace of the conceit that law enforcement is racist in the way it does its job will set back the cause of better community relations. De Blasio should have put the facts about the NYPD into the public realm, facts that show that it is easily the most restrained, professional big-city department in the country.

Instead he chose urban myth. Young minority males are now reinforced in their belief that they face a predatory police force, a belief that results in more resistance to lawful arrest.

Since taking office, the mayor has maintained an uneasy détente between the needs of the city regarding public safety and the demands of his base. With his response to the Garner verdict, he has thrown the city overboard and fully returned to his activist's identity.

And the cops, hearing from the mayor that they represent “centuries of racism,” may decide that it is simply not worth enforcing the law in high-crime areas. If they do, thousands of law-abiding residents of those areas who support and need the cops will suffer the most.

It is impossible not to be heartbroken and horrified by the video of Eric Garner's death. Yes, he was a chronic lawbreaker. Yes, he was resisting arrest, a profound violation of the rule of law. But that resistance was more exasperated than vicious (though, to be sure, such low-level resistance can unpredictably escalate into more dangerous behavior).

Still, no one deserves to die for such petty law-breaking — as the officers who tried to arrest Garner would undoubtedly agree.

But Mayor de Blasio has made a tragic situation worse by racializing Garner's death. His public rhetoric following the grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for that death has painted a demagogically false picture of the New York Police Department, one that will make his stated goal of improving police-community relations harder to achieve.

The ultimate result — albeit one not yet evidenced in still-dropping numbers — could be a reversal of New York's stupendous crime decline.

“People are saying: ‘black lives matter,'” de Blasio announced on Wednesday after the grand jury concluded its work. “It should be self-evident, but our history requires us to say ‘black lives matter.' It was not years of racism that brought us to this day, or decades of racism, but centuries of racism. That is how profound a crisis this is.”

It is not clear precisely who or what de Blasio means to indict with his “centuries of racism” accusation, a phrase that he was bandying about before the jury decision and has continued to use since then.

But one thing is clear: There is no institution in New York more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the NYPD.

Every commander in a high-crime neighborhood is under daily, relentless pressure from top brass to save black lives. The weekly crime analysis meetings at One Police Plaza, known as Compstat, focus intensely on what precinct commanders are doing to prevent victimization in their jurisdictions, victimization that takes its greatest toll on blacks.

Thousands of minority males are alive today who would have been dead had homicide rates remained at their early 1990s highs. New York homicides plummeted thanks to the NYPD's proactive efforts to stop crime before it happens.

These facts — crucial ones, that should be the starting point of any discussion about crime and policing — rarely frame the conversation when de Blasio is leading it.

De Blasio invoked his biracial son Dante yet again both before and after the Garner verdict to show his racial bona fides. The mayor worries “every night,” he said, about the “dangers [Dante] may face” from “officers who are paid to protect him.”

In fact, blacks in New York are less likely than whites to be killed by the police when their higher rates of using mortal force against the police are taken into account.

In 2011, for example, New York officers fired at 41 suspects and killed nine of them — an astonishingly low number in light of New York's population and the size of its police force. Virtually all of these shootings were justified.

Blacks were 22% of those fatalities; whites were 44% of them. Yet blacks were 67% of all suspects who fired at the police; no white suspect fired at the police.

Moreover, blacks made up 73% of all shooting perpetrators in the city in 2011, according to the victims of, and witnesses to, those shootings, though they are only 23% of the population. Whites committed less than three percent of all shootings, though they are close to 35% of the city's population.

This pattern holds nationally. The black percentage of suspects killed by the police, historically around 29%, is lower than one would expect based on the best available data on those who represent a mortal threat to the police, according to Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University.

In 2013, for example, blacks made up 42% of all cop killers whose race was known, even though they are only 13% of the nation's population.

(Needless to say, any given police action must be based on individualized suspicion.)

Blacks in New York are also far less likely to be stopped and questioned by the police than their crime numbers would predict. So far this year, whites have made up 12% of all stop subjects and blacks 54%.

But according to crime victims and witnesses, whites commit only 5% of the city's violent crimes, whereas blacks commit roughly two-thirds of those crimes, including about 70% of all robberies and three-quarters of all shootings.

Perhaps de Blasio meant that “centuries of racism” lay behind the NYPD's enforcement of quality-of-life laws on Staten Island. Garner was accosted for selling untaxed loose cigarettes, an offense for which he had been arrested numerous times previously, along with arrests for other petty offenses such as marijuana possession and driving without a license.

Was it racist to enforce such laws? Some anti-cop activists are saying so now, a dangerous argument should it prevail.

But when officers pulled back on misdemeanor policing in the Staten Island neighborhood where Garner was killed, crime and disorder skyrocketed, leading to complaints from business owners and residents about police inaction.

In fact, there is not a single precinct commander in a low-income jurisdiction who doesn't hear constant demands from his constituents to crack down on quality of life offenders, including illegal vendors. And according to department records, officers used force (which often merely means putting hands on a subject) in only 0.6% of quality-of-life arrests (or 21 times) in the first half of 2014, suggesting how anomalous the Garner incident was.

Were the tactics the officers used to arrest Garner racist? Had a 300-pound white man resisted arrest just as Garner did, it is likely the officers would have responded the same way.

Maybe de Blasio meant that “centuries of racism” lay behind district attorney Daniel Donovan's presentation of the Garner case to the grand jury. Such a judgment would seem wildly premature, given that de Blasio has no idea what transpired in the grand-jury room

Donovan wanted to release more of those proceedings to the public than the law normally allows, not the behavior of someone worried about being accused of biased behavior.

Perhaps de Blasio meant that members of the grand jury themselves were racist. He would have no basis for such an insult. Their judgment most likely stemmed from the lack of evidence of any criminal intent on the officer's part and from the fact that the tactics used in Garner's takedown would not likely have been lethal absent Garner's asthma, heart condition and obesity.

To say this is not to insult Garner. It is simply to state a complicating legal fact.

President Obama at least paid lip service last month to the need to respect the grand jury's decision after the Ferguson, Mo., grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson for notoriously killing Michael Brown in August.

De Blasio has not deigned to offer any support to the idea that the workings of our criminal justice system deserve respect, remaining silent on that matter.

Every instance of an unarmed innocent person being killed by the police is an unspeakable horror. De Blasio is right to lead the city in mourning Garner's death.

But de Blasio is betraying his position as the city's most prominent representative of the law by suggesting that Garner's death is emblematic of a systemic problem in law enforcement throughout the country, much less in the NYPD.

Dante de Blasio faces almost zero risk that he will be killed by an officer. Any homicide risk that he does face comes overwhelmingly from black civilians. It is to stem black-on-black violence and save black lives that the NYPD focuses its enforcement effort on minority neighborhoods.

The NYPD's retraining effort, announced in the wake of Garner's death, is welcome. Officers work in more challenging environments than de Blasio can possibly imagine, as a result of which they need constant reinforcement in courtesy and in how to de-escalate tense encounters.

But de Blasio's embrace of the conceit that law enforcement is racist in the way it does its job will set back the cause of better community relations. De Blasio should have put the facts about the NYPD into the public realm, facts that show that it is easily the most restrained, professional big-city department in the country.

Instead he chose urban myth. Young minority males are now reinforced in their belief that they face a predatory police force, a belief that results in more resistance to lawful arrest.

Since taking office, the mayor has maintained an uneasy détente between the needs of the city regarding public safety and the demands of his base. With his response to the Garner verdict, he has thrown the city overboard and fully returned to his activist's identity.

And the cops, hearing from the mayor that they represent “centuries of racism,” may decide that it is simply not worth enforcing the law in high-crime areas. If they do, thousands of law-abiding residents of those areas who support and need the cops will suffer the most.

This piece originally appeared in New York Daily News

This piece originally appeared in New York Daily News