Now through a good run of consecutive work days after the long vacation. It’s been a fast summer with alternating binges of fun and job with no real mixing or straddling of the two. One or the other it seems.
The NYC mayor’s race is heating up and it’s going about as I thought it would. Three separate elections spanning eight weeks will settle the outcome. Voter turnout will be lousy (probably no better than 25-percent) despite what’s at stake. Some will justify failure to carve a half-hour somewhere out of three Tuesday’s to fulfill an important civic duty because of the ridiculous notion this is a lackluster field of candidates. Not true. There’s some interesting, well-qualified and articulate public servants in this race. It’s almost certain the next mayor of New York City will be nothing like the one we have now. For better or worse. Probably for worse.
I got a knock on my door a week ago Saturday from state senator Jose Peralta who was campaigning on behalf of Bill Thompson. When I looked through the peephole,. I felt a tinge of weirdness given the taint linked to Peralta after government investigators caught him on tape at the home of snitch and felon Shirley Huntley. After a gulp, I opened my door. Peralta held a clipboard with one hand and shook my hand with the other. I told him I was voting deBlasio in the primary but would turn to Thompson in the run-off should deBlaz fail to crack the top two.
“It’s alright having a second choice,” said Peralta. We parted ways without me asking what the heck he was doing at Huntley‘s house when it was clear to the world she was bad news.
A week later, dozens of unionized hotel workers flooded my neighborhood to work the endless blocks of six-story apartment buildings housing tens of thousands of registered Dems. The New York Hotel Trades Council is a powerful force in city politics and has endorsed Christine Quinn who remains the favorite to win this thing.
All of the major Democratic Party candidates have been strongly outspoken against a tactic that is the centerpiece of the NYPD’s aggressive and successful effort to keep handguns off the streets. Known as “stop and frisk,“ police officers in NYC have escalated use of the controversial strategy over two decades of rule under Giuliani and Bloomberg. Cops have flooded what were once high-crime areas to make it clear that the city’s very punitive gun possession laws will be enforced. How do you know if somebody is carrying a gun? You check their waistband. Their pockets. And then you let ’em go if they don’t have one.
A federal judge asked to consider the constitutionality of such a strategy heard nine weeks of testimony between March and May of the current year.
In a 198-page decision issued 8-12-13, US District judge Shira Scheindlin cited protections in the 4th and 14th Amendment to the US Constitution en route to concluding that liberty trumps public safety in this divisive debate. Scheindlin’s opinion is free of complicated mumbo-jumbo. It’s extremely well-written and a pleasure to read. Scheindlin doesn’t argue against effectiveness of stop and frisk but rules it to be unconstitutional as it is currently administered. The judge says people of color are stopped at a disproportionately high rate and that the police often lack reasonable suspicion of criminal activity in advance of such stops.
I was stopped and questioned by police on a city street as part of this strategy. It happened on a Saturday night in my neighborhood here in Queens eight or nine years ago. I was walking along Roosevelt Avenue when two male officers in plainclothes raced up to me in an unmarked van as I prepared to cross 76th Street. The officer on the passenger side rolled down his window and asked what I was doing in the neighborhood. I told him I lived here. He then asked me where I was going. I told him I was walking to the subway station at 74th and Roosevelt. That was it. There was no frisk. The cops didn’t even exit the vehicle. It was a stop and inquire that didn’t lead to a frisk. A statistical analysis of 4.4 million such stops (between 2004 and 2012) examined by Scheindlin found that about half ended without a frisk. Why did I get stopped that night? Two factors: Rosie Ave at that time had long been a seedy stretch where illegal narcotics were sold and I’m a white guy who sticks out a bit. The two cops took a shot that I was a bad seed and moved on once they got the impression I wasn’t. Was there “reasonable suspicion” prior to the stop? Scheindlin would probably say no. The current crop of mayoral candidates on the Dem side would say no. But personally, I’m in sharp disagreement with all of them about stop and frisk. Rosie Avenue has been cleaned up without its soul being removed thanks in large part to stop and frisk. The wild west carnage that’s happening in Chicago (even the Uptown neighborhood was littered with shells and stained by blood after a drive-by shooting last Monday night) is simply not tolerated here.
Just look at the numbers:
Chicago – population 2.7 million – 506 murders in 2012
New York City – population 8.3 million – 419 murders in 2012
While 2.3 million documented frisks in NYC between January 2004 and July 2012 yielded weapons just 1.5-percent of the time, how many guys with guns left them at home out of fear they’d get stopped?
Scheindlin says cops use racial profiling to determine who to stop and frisk. The police counter nine out of ten suspects in the homicides investigated in 2012 were Black or Hispanic. I would simply say that the police here should be allowed to continue using stop and frisk when and where they see fit with a continuing emphasis on neighborhoods vulnerable to gun violence.
I’m not black and maybe I don’t have a full handle or appreciation for the sanctity of the two constitutional amendments cited by Sheindlin, but I hope this city’s police force isn’t overly constrained by her ruling. Should the city win on appeal, I’d hope the next mayor keeps in place a hard-nosed anti-gun approach that includes tough and visible policing in parts of the city where they think people may possess and use firearms.
My departure from passionate prevailing thought on the political left on this issue prompted much re-consideration of my stand. For me, it comes down to grave concern about the kind of urban warfare unfolding in Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore. I’ve heard some minimize what’s happening in each of those three places by referring to it largely as “black on black” crime. As if it’s somehow not as bad.
What’s worse? That kind of dismissive attitude that surrenders to contained chaos because it doesn’t penetrate their cocoon – or one that acknowledges a firm law enforcement hand better shapes long-term movement away from the gun?
-Over-under action on the Jets’ win total this season is moving in a way that will probably put the number at five and a half by the time the regular season starts. As it stands now at my book, the Jets over 6.5 returns 150 on a hundred and the under 6.5 costs $185 to win a hundred. Another tick or two on the under and you’ll see Vegas drop it to 5.5 which says all you need to know about what kind of team the 2013 Jets will be. Perhaps the most surprising opportunity among all the NFL over-under plays is Seattle at 10.5. Play the under all the way for a hundred to win a hundred.