A few months ago, Salley May showed up at a mosque in Harlem where a woman was having a mental health crisis, holding children inside and refusing to allow people in or out. About 50 onlookers had gathered outside, as well as a large number of police officers.
A New York state judge ruled last week that the New York City Police Department illegally withheld body-worn footage in two police shootings, including the killing of Kawaski Trawick.
The judge said at an October hearing in the case that the NYPD had been operating in “bad faith.”
Body-worn cameras have been widely adopted by police departments over the past decade and can provide crucial evidence in misconduct cases. But like many police departments, the NYPD maintains full control over the footage, deciding what gets released and when.
The nonprofit newsroom, THE CITY, hosted a panel discussion in Flatiron about the future of policing in New York City under a new mayoral administration. Moderated by THE CITY Deputy Editor Hasani Gittens, the Nov. 10 discussion explored police reform efforts that have worked and how they could be implemented by the NYPD.
NYPD brass and Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that they’re taking a page out of the Walmart playbook: hiring brand-new “greeters” at all 77 police precincts in the city, who will have the sole responsibility of welcoming people and guiding them to the right offices and officers for the services or paperwork they need.
An NYPD sergeant could face discipline in the fatal shooting of Deborah Danner, five years after the Bronx woman’s death helped ignite a citywide reassessment of the role of police in responding to mental health calls.
Sergeant Hugh Barry is scheduled to begin a weeks-long department trial on Tuesday. He will be brought up on administrative charges of failure to supervise and poor tactical judgement in the high-profile killing.
“We do not support ‘defund the police.’ No one in my administration does.”
Say what you want, but here’s what we know to be true: the current state of over-policing in our communities combined with the prison industrial complex have created an existential crisis that needs to be sorted out, sorted through and resolved. The two women Michael Harriot spoke with in this episode of The Root Institute are unapologetic about their stances on this subject.
Carl Stubbs put it simply: “I wonder what my life would be like if the money used to arrest me and lock me up was instead used to support my education and help me get a job?”
Stubbs, who has been affected by and fighting mass incarceration “my whole life,” posed the rhetorical question over the weekend to a crowd gathered for the unveiling of five community murals demanding a defunding of the NYPD.
First arrested at age 12, Stubbs said he spent the next 20 years “going in and out of jail, mostly committing crimes because I couldn’t find a job.”
Local organizations have come together to unveil an art installation to highlight community demands to defund the police.
The past year has seen a number of calls to defund the police, but the city budget for fiscal year 2022 would actually increase the NYPD's budget.
Tuesday marked one year since the May 25, 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Several events across the country and the city took place to remember the incident that ignited a nationwide racial reckoning and calls for police reforms.
The infamous cellphone video of former police officer Derek Chauvin putting his knee on Floyd’s neck during an arrest for more than nine minutes was forever cemented as a dark moment in American history. Last month, justice was served as Chauvin was convicted on two counts of murder and is facing up to 40 years in prison.