Rare News Desk
There are various strands of outraged analysis of the grand jury’s recent decision in the Eric Garner homicide, and of the reluctance of politicians to do anything about the obviously broken system. As an economist, I can clarify some of the power relationships at work, which help explain the initially unbelievable excuses for the police given by officials such as New York Rep. Peter King.
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In short, everything becomes clear when you view the NYPD as a very powerful interest group—the teachers’ union but with guns.
According to its website, “the NYPD’s current uniformed strength is approximately 34,500.” Note the wording: they didn’t say “the number of officers” but rather referred to current uniformed strength. Now you understand why Mayor Bloomberg once called the NYPD the seventh-largest army in the world.
Although Bloomberg was making a rhetorical point with that infamous line, the metaphor blurs into reality in certain areas of the city. If you have only experienced sleepy suburbs, you really don’t know how the police are quite literally an occupation force in various urban neighborhoods around the country. In the case of the NYPD, I saw it firsthand when I was (out of curiosity) looking at some very cheap apartments located way uptown. It was broad daylight, and for whatever reason the squad car driving down the street decided to turn around. The driver pulled such a sharp U-turn that nearby pedestrians moved to be sure they weren’t hit (To be clear, the cop didn’t turn his lights on; it’s not like he just got a call about a bank robbery in progress.).
Now to be sure, my little anecdote is innocuous enough; nobody was hurt. But I was astonished at the time, because such reckless driving would have been inconceivable in the West Village (where NYU was located) or the nicer parts of Brooklyn. Yet removed from the wealthy areas, the police behaved with very little accountability when interacting with residents.
Another eye-opening event for me was the public outcry during the Puerto Rican Day Parade attacks in June 2000, in which more than 50 women reported being assaulted by a roving “wolf pack” of men. I was a grad student at NYU at the time, and was particularly shocked by the account of Anne Peyton Bryant, a glib rollerblader who made a name for herself by demanding a personal apology from Mayor Guiliani. (In 2006 Bryant settled with the city for $125,000.)
At the time, I heard Bryant explain in a radio interview that after her attack, she and a male friend appealed to a police officer for help. He said he couldn’t leave his post directing traffic. He refused to even radio for help, nor did he even slow his stride as she related her horrific tale. Bryant and her friend, understandably incredulous, went to another officer, and received similar treatment. She then approached three officers who were sitting on the steps of a building. Peyton maintains that not only did these officers fail to hurry to the rescue, but that they didn’t even stand up.
But wait, it gets worse. Although we can’t prove this, some speculated that the NYPD were deliberately ordered to stand down during the Puerto Rican Day parade attacks, in order to punish the public for the convictions of Justin Volpe and other NYPD officers involved in the torture of Abner Louima while in custody. In case you don’t remember the grisly details of the Louima case, here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:
On August 9, 1997, Louima visited Club Rendez-Vous, a popular nightclub in East Flatbush. Late in the night, he and several other men interceded in a fight between two women. The police were called and several officers from the 70th Precinct were dispatched to the scene. There was a confrontation between the police, patrons and bystanders involved in the scuffle outside the club…In the ensuing scuffle, Volpe was struck by a “sucker-punch” and identified Louima as his assailant. Volpe arrested Louima on charges of disorderly conduct, obstructing government administration, and resisting arrest. Volpe later admitted he was mistaken about Louima being his assailant.
The arresting officers beat Louima with their fists, nightsticks, and hand-held police radios on the ride to the station. On arriving at the station house, he was strip-searched and put in a holding cell. The beating continued later, culminating with Louima being sexually assaulted in a bathroom at the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. Volpe kicked Louima in the testicles, then, while Louima’s hands were cuffed behind his back, he first grabbed onto and squeezed his testicles and then sodomized him with a broom handle. According to trial testimony, Volpe then walked through the precinct holding the bloody, excrement-stained instrument in his hand, bragging to a police sergeant that he “took a man down tonight.”
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The day after the incident, Louima was taken to the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital. Escorting officers explained away his serious injuries being a result of “abnormal homosexual activities.”
Now the NYPD officers involved in this case did get into serious trouble. In December 1999, Volpe was sentenced to 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole. In March 2000 three other officers were convicted of conspiracy to thwart the federal investigation into the torture, while Charles Schwarz was convicted on June 27, 2000 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, for helping Volpe assault Louima in the bathroom.
Note the proximity of these convictions to the Puerto Rican Day attacks of June 11, 2000. Although no one obviously came out and said it officially, at the time various sources within the NYPD made comments to the effect that they were “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”—as if the public was being unreasonable for not wanting police to sodomize suspects in precinct bathrooms, but also to want police to stand up when a terrified young woman explained that a gang of men were roaming around Central Park assaulting other women.
This Salon piece from a few days after the Parade attacks reported:
Anonymous NYPD officials are claiming in the media that the Central Park attacks following the Puerto Rico Day Parade resulted from politicians taking a hands-off attitude toward a minority community event. It’s payback, they hint, for the police-brutality protests, of which Springsteen’s song—derided by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association — is being treated as the latest chapter.
In the quotation above, the reference is to Bruce Springsteen’s song “American Skin (41 Shots),” which concerns Amadou Diallo, an unarmed man who was killed in a hail of 41 shots from the infamous NYPD “Street Crimes Unit” in 1999.
Americans should realize that just as they would be intimidated in standing up to a major police force, so too are the elected officials who are ostensibly their bosses.
There was a reason the Roman emperors made sure to keep the army happy. Don’t expect any mayors to crack down on the literal armies surrounding their offices.
