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NY Times, July 28, 2019
Eric Garner, Soaked Officers and the Tilted Scales of Justice
By Ginia Bellafante
In what has emerged as one of the least predictable trends of the
summer, police officers in New York City have been getting doused with
buckets of water while on the beat. This has happened on three occasions
over the span of just a few days, each case captured on video —
expressions either of impish seasonal boredom or deeper, more meaningful
antagonisms.
The scenes read almost as slapstick: In the videos, the police are shown
going about their business, in one instance making an arrest, and then
suddenly someone approaches and the drenching begins.
Perhaps because we are supposed to have entered a new era of more
compassionate and connected policing, or perhaps because it has been hot
and the water might not have been entirely unwelcome, the officers
involved responded calmly to these incursions. There were no signs of
retaliation or anger. In one shot, two cops just keep walking as they
get increasingly soaked.
In a certain version of these events, senior law enforcers might have
praised this equanimity, given how hard the Police Department has worked
to rebuild trust in the communities it alienated during the long period
when officers stopped and frisked young black and Latino men as if it
were an addiction.
Last year, a high ranking member of the department explained that
relationships were evolving along a new intimate model, with people in
various neighborhoods essentially assigned their own police officers
whose cellphone numbers and email addresses they could acquire and use.
“Have you ever had a personal issue, like if you had an ailment you had
to go see a doctor? You always go see the same doctor,” Rodney Harrison,
chief of patrol said. “Well, it’s kind of the same thing now.”
But the notion that you might move on after getting water poured over
your head was not met warmly. Speaking to a group of officers at an
awards ceremony on Tuesday, Terence Monahan, who is the top uniformed
official in the police department, addressed the subject. “Any cop who
thinks that that’s all right, that they can walk away from something
like that,” he said, “maybe should reconsider whether or not this is the
profession for them.’’ The audience applauded.
The bucket incidents are surprisingly complicated. On the one hand they
represent untenable displays of disrespect; at the same time no one
victimized by them was seriously harmed. At the core, they reveal the
considerable tensions in a criminal justice system transitioning from a
history in which police and prosecutorial authority too often went
unquestioned to a future in which reform has brought new demands for
forgiveness and bonding.
By Wednesday three men had been arrested in conjunction with the
incidents. One of them, Courtney Thompson, was charged with obstructing
government administration, disorderly conduct and harassment.
African-American business and political leaders as well as former mayor
Rudolph Giuliani and Vice President Mike Pence have condemned the dousings.
Chief Terence Monahan suggested that officers who did not react to being
doused with water should “reconsider whether or not this is the
profession for them.” CreditAngus Mordant for The New York Times
But while few would argue that throwing water at a police officer is
something that should pass without consequence, the reality is that Mr.
Thompson is currently facing more severe punishment than Daniel
Pantaleo, the police officer whose chokehold resulted in the death of
Eric Garner five years ago.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department decided not to bring federal
civil rights charges against Mr. Pantaleo in the case, sparking a fresh
round of protests and reflection. Why was he still on the force? Why
hadn’t Mayor Bill de Blasio fired him? The city maintains that it is not
up to the mayor, that its charter authorizes only the police
commissioner to fire an officer — a position that ignores hundreds of
years of management history in which bosses push subordinates to get rid
of people all the time.
The Police Department in turn is waiting for a recommendation of what to
do, not from an independent investigator but from its deputy
commissioner of trials, who adjudicates these kinds of disciplinary cases.
One aspect of the case that has caused so much rage relates to the
shield of privacy that Mr. Pantaleo has been afforded, thanks to a
longstanding law in the state’s civil rights statute — known as 50a —
that allows personnel and disciplinary records of police officers to be
protected from public view. The law, drafted during the high-crime years
of the 1970s, was predicated in part on the idea that officer safety
would be compromised — by far worse than buckets of water — if the
misdeeds of law enforcement were disseminated.
About Mr. Pantaleo’s past we know that a city watchdog agency had
recommended sanctioning him four times, before Garner’s death, only
because of documents leaked to the website ThinkProgress two years ago,
not because the city believed it was in the civic interest to make these
facts known.
While officials make broad claims about the need for more police
transparency and the need to revise or repeal Statute 50a specifically,
they seem to keep honoring it. When the leak about Mr. Pantaleo
surfaced, the city, instead of simply doing nothing, which would have
given substance to its rhetoric, began an investigation to go after the
leaker.
And yet the same system that works so hard to conceal the pasts of its
officers is quick to reveal the sins of defendants. It took virtually no
time for the police to let the world know that Courtney Thompson was a
gang member affiliated with a Crips subsidiary and that he had been
arrested many times.
Despite the recent progressive turn of the New York State Legislature
and the passage of bills, including a reform of the bail system, 50a was
not repealed in the last session. It did not even come up for a vote.
Around the country, similar laws have been softened or effectively
dismantled.
In a recent law review article, Cynthia Conti-Cook, a staff attorney at
the Legal Aid Society and an expert in police and privacy matters,
pointed out that when an advocacy group in Chicago successfully
petitioned local government for years of police records, the public
database resulting from those findings did not produce the feared
outcome: assaults on officers whose misbehavior was no longer hidden.
She argued essentially that more transparency could only enhance the
reputations of the many, many officers serving New York City who do
absolutely nothing wrong.
Jamaal Bailey, a state senator from the Bronx, is the person in the
Legislature most committed to repealing 50a. We talked about the bucket
incidents and the grim ironies when they are held up against what has
happened in the aftermath of Eric Garner’s death.
“You’re looking at a loss of life and a bucket of water, and each of
them should be looked at with the weight of the law,” Mr. Bailey said.
“But let’s not act like choking a man is not a big deal.”
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