Frank Serpico on AJ- "We have been sold out"

[Unified Serenity]

Ok, I thought this was interesting, and think this man has had a whistle blower background. I'm interested in other people's take on this subject:

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[crosby]

great video. Frank Serpico has certainly paid his dues regarding corruption. i remember when this happened years ago. in the small town that i live in, there is much police corruption. we have the local town cops, the university campus cops, and the state police barracks one mile out of town. they are on the prowl all of the time. years ago, people stopped driving their cars when going to the bars so that they wouldn't be charged with dui's, to combat this, the locals and campus cops started citing people for public drunkeness because they would leave the bar and walk home. these people didn't even have to be intoxicated to receive a fine. so now, our pub/tavern businesses do not get as much business as they used to. there are also other corruptions that have occurred within this town.

thanks for posting US, this is important information. a total take over by corrupt and greedy forces at the lowest level of citizenship.
regards, corson

[spiritguide]

Serpico is the real deal. Just realise that there are pockets of corruption everywhere and exposing it must be of concern to all if our future is to be changed for the good. IMHO

:peace:

[Unified Serenity]

I have tried to post this three times now. I keep getting "You token has expired, please hit the back button....". Let's try it again.

Serpico mentioned this article, so I thought I would post it:

Policing by the Numbers

By JOHN A. ETERNO

Published: June 17, 2012


THE pervasive use of stop-and-frisk (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/stop_and_frisk/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) tactics that have deeply alienated racial and ethnic minorities in New York City is only one symptom of a broader dysfunction in the Police Department. The overwhelming pressure on officers to write summonses, make arrests, stop pedestrians and motorists with little or no justification, and downgrade crime reports reflects the deterioration of effective management under Raymond W. Kelly, the longest-serving police commissioner in the city’s history.



Eighteen years after the start of the much-vaunted CompStat system of data-driven crime fighting, the Police Department — where I served from 1983 to 2004 — has become a top-down, micromanaged bureaucracy in which precinct commanders are pitted against one another and officers are challenged to match or exceed what they did the previous year, month and week. Words like “productivity” are code for quotas. Supervisors must exceed last year’s “productivity” — regardless of community conditions, available budget and personnel, and, most important, the consequences to citizens.



There have always been quotas, but they were rarely enforced to the level that they are today. If an officer was sick or on vacation, for example, many supervisors understood that lower activity would result. If a situation on the street called for a warning, the officer was expected to give one and not give a summons. Taking complaint reports from crime victims was routine and the officer’s judgment was rarely questioned.
The institutional culture that once allowed police officers to use their judgment has dissipated, according to in-depth conversations with current officers that I have conducted as part of my research on policing.
An officer assigned to an “impact zone” — a high-crime area — told me that “the Constitution has been thrown out the window when it comes to stops.” He is given strict daily quotas and asked at the end of his tour about his numbers. An officer who fails to meet the required number for the day is berated (sometimes in front of peers), not allowed time off and given unpalatable work assignments. Nothing is asked about maintaining order, interacting with the community or other kinds of police work.



The result of this “performance culture”: needless summonses for minor violations (putting one’s feet on subway seats, playing chess in a park, failing to wear seat belts) and other quota-driven activity. This does not make for efficient policing.



Asked whether data are fudged, another officer, who prepares his captain for the daily CompStat briefings, says, “there is no way the command can possibly beat last year’s figures without doing so.”
Most seriously, crimes are being downgraded; crime scenes are revisited, and victims called back, expressly so that reports can be revised, and the seriousness of the crime downplayed. It should be no surprise that police manipulation of crime data has been reported in other jurisdictions — Baltimore, New Orleans, even Paris — where the police have emulated New York’s tactics.



Discretion is essential to police work, but today, local commanders and patrol officers are allowed so little that their work is no longer problem solving but bean counting. The irony is that Mr. Kelly, in his first stint as commissioner, from 1992 to 1994, helped usher in the era of lower crime by working with communities, a strategy that his successor, William J. Bratton, later eschewed in favor of a reliance on data that has now become an addiction. Officers of nearly every rank are now subservient to managers who are subject to little or no meaningful oversight. Entities like the Civilian Complaint Review Board and the Commission to Combat Police Corruption do not have the ability to compel the Police Department to give immediate answers, to subpoena witnesses or to grant immunity to whistle-blowers. That’s why a bill before the City Council (http://council.nyc.gov/html/home/home.shtml), to create an independent inspector general for the department, is so important.



Policing in a democracy is not easy, nor is it meant to be. Reducing crime numbers is simple if you disregard basic rights, ignore victims, mandate quotas and manipulate numbers. The lunacy of this police performance culture can end only with stronger leadership, greater transparency and more meaningful relationships with communities.



It is worth heeding what Detective Frank Serpico, testifying on police corruption, told the Knapp Commission in 1971: “The department must realize that an effective, continuing relationship between the police and the public is more important than an impressive arrest record.”



John A. Eterno, a retired New York City police captain, is a professor of criminal justice at Molloy College and a co-author of “The Crime Numbers Game (http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781439810316): Management by Manipulation.”



A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 18, 2012, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Policing By the Numbers.