the kelly speech: prepared remarks, oct. 29, 2013

8/13/2019 The Kelly Speech: Prepared Remarks, Oct. 29, 2013

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COMMENTS OF POLICE COMMISSIONER RAYMOND W. KELLYNOAH KRIEGER MEMORIAL LECTUREBROWN UNIVERSITYTUESDAY, OCTOBER 29,2013

1want to thank the faculty, administration and students of Brown University for invitingme. 1also want to express my appreciation to Noah Krieger s parents, Sandy and Carol, forestablishing this tribute to their son. I can t think of a better way to perpetuate Noah spassion for learning and for social justice. n that spirit, tonight I want to speak to youabout the role proactive policing has played in keeping New York City safe in the post-September 11th era.

One week ago today, I attended breakfast with an inspiring group of women who arepart of a program the NYPD started in Brooklyn called Grandmothers ove Over ViolenceWe began this initiative three years ago in recognition of the fact that in somecommunities, grandmothers are often the heads of households with young adults. Wehold a breakfast for them on the third Tuesday of every month, and provide expertspeakers on everything from nutrition, to education, to mental illness as well as referencesto social services.

At this month s breakfast, as I often do, I spoke to a grandmother by the name of DenisePeace, one of the charter members of our group. Denise is the mother of Zurana Horton.Two years ago, Zurana, a mother of twelve, was picking up one of her children from schoolin Brownsville, Brooklyn when a gunman involved in a gang dispute opened fire from arooftop at rivals on the street below. Acting instinctively, Zurana immediately shieldedseveral of the children around her. Tragically, in the hail of bullets she was struck andkilled. Her mother Denise was left to care for five of her children with the rest spreadamong other family members.

The NYPD is determined to do everything in its power to prevent tragedies like this fromhappening again. Our Grandmothers program is part of a wider initiative called the NYPD-Brooklyn Clergy Coalition, which is aimed at doing just that. We partner with a group ofmore than two dozen prominent African-American religious leaders in Brooklyn to reduceviolent crime. We consult with them and provide them with updated crime information.


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500 miles of shoreline as well as the world 's second largest subway system, with 660 milesof track and 5 million riders per day.

This slide shows you the drop in overall crime during the last years. The sevenmajor index crimes of murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny, and autotheft have been driven down by a combined 72 .

In 1990 homicides peaked at 2,245. Last year we had 419. It's important to note thatthis has taken place even as New York City added a million more people since 1990. That'sthe lowest murder total in at least half a century. Why do I say at least? Because prior to


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the early 1960s the homicide numbers were not accurately kept. There were probably morethan was recorded.

And murders are down another 25 this year. At the current rate, we'll have about 330,which is the lowest since the 1950s when Dwight Eisenhower was president.

Here's a look at shootings which are down by 74 over the last 20 years. That's whenwe first began compiling this data.


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Not surprisingly, we see virtually the same reduction in shooting victims.

While the country as a whole experienced a significant crime drop in the 1990s, thereduction in New York was twice as steep and lasted twice as long, continuing through thepresent day. Since 2001, we've been able to drive crime down another 32 .

We've made significant gains in recent years. This chart shows the difference in themurder total between the past years and 9 months of Mayor Michael Bloomberg'sadministration compared to the years and 9 months before that. It comes to 9,172 fewermurders. If history is any guide, they are mainly the lives of people of color, andpredominantly young black and Hispanic men.

One of the nation's leading criminologists, Dr. Franklin Zimring of the University ofCalifornia Berkeley has called what has taken place in New York City quote, a GuinnessBook of World Records crime drop, never before seen in the developed world. Why hascrime continued to go down? According to Zimring, who wrote a book on the topic calledThe City th t Became Safe one of the chief reasons is hot spot policing, otherwiseknown as Operation Impact, which we first implemented in 2003.

When we graduate new police officers from our police academy we assign most, if notall of them, to designated impact zones for a period of six months. These are carefullyselected areas, some as small as a few blocks, where we have measured a spike in


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shootings or other serious crimes. We put these officers with experienced supervisorsand deploy them in large numbers. In some zones, we've driven crime down by 30%.

1also want to mention Operation Crew Cut, which we launched one year ago. Ouranalysis showed that thirty percent of shootings in New York City can be traced to so-called crews. These are loosely affiliated gangs, mainly composed of young teens, whoare responsible for much of the violence in and around public housing and elsewhere.

Social media is another new ingredient often used to add fuel to the fire. For example,gang members have posted photographs of themselves in front of a rival's apartmentbuilding and surveillance pictures of those who they threaten to kill next. In response, wecreated a team of investigators dedicated to monitoring social media. Their goal is to seean act of retaliation coming and to stop it. We're also doubling the size of our GangDivision and providing extra resources to address street conditions in those precinctsmost affected by crews.

As part of Operation Crew Cut, we work hard to distinguish the leaders and hard coreinstigators within a crew from the wannabes and hangers-on. We arrest those who areconnected to criminal activity and we reach out to those who may be headed down thewrong path. e have our precinct youth officers visit their homes, talk to their parentsabout the seriousness of the problem and offer them assistance with afterschoolprograms, job training and other social services. Thanks largely to Operation Crew Cut,homicides of young people between the ages of 3 and 2 are down by 53% this year.

e 've also placed a major emphasis on deterring domestic violence. And we'veenhanced our community partnerships as I described earlier. In addition, we've employedadvanced technology throughout our mission, establishing the Real Time Crime Centerand a sophisticated camera network to support the work of our officers.

e combine these and other measures with what I call a policy of engagement. eutilize the long-established right of the police to stop and question individuals about whomwe have reasonable suspicion. In some cases in which a weapon is suspected, the officerwill take the additional step of doing a limited pat down of the person.


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Last year stops resulted in the seizure of more than 7,000 illegal weapons, mostlyknives, as well as 800 guns. I don 't know how to say it more emphatically: this tactic is life-saving.

As I mentioned the effect is felt most profoundly in minority communities. The data isclear on this: black and Hispanic New Yorkers are disproportionately victimized by violentcrime. Last year, these groups made up 87 of all murder victims and 96 of all shootingvictims. By concentrating our resources in those areas where they re needed most we'vebeen able to sharply reduce the number of young minority lives lost to violence.

I want to take a few moments to address a number of misconceptions about how weemploy stops. First, the common law practice of police stopping individuals to makeinquiry of suspicious behavior is as old as policing itself. It is not unique to New York. Itwill happen tonight in Providence. It's what police departments large and small across thiscountry pay their officers to do.

Stops are to a police officer what a wrench is to a plumber or a notebook is to areporter. It's one of the tools of the job. When the police see something of a suspiciousnature, it 's their role to confront it. The U.S. Supreme Court said as much when it upheldthe use of stops in its 1968 decision , terry versus Ohio.

Contrary to what some have reported in the media, the New York City police departmentdid not suddenly engage in such stops on a massive scale. Rather, we've become morecareful about recording each one in detail as required by a law that went into effect only in2002. Even then, the department wasn t immediately up to speed in capturing all suchstops, hampered by an entirely manual system that was eventually automated. Last year,with the number of stops recorded at more than 500,000, that total still translated to lessthan one stop a week per patrol officer.

That shouldn t be surprising, considering our police officers had approximately 3million contacts with members of the public last year ranging from giving directions tomaking arrests. Some additional context is relevant. The NYPD responded to 4.8 million


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calls for service last year. We recorded more than 500,000 total crime complaints, andmade arrests or issued summonses 873,000 times.

Last August a federal judge held that New York City s stop-and-question policy violatesthe constitutional rights of African-Americans and Hispanics. It s worth noting that thelitigation on this issue began in 1999 under the same judge. We disagree strongly with herrecent decision, which we believe is fundamentally flawed.

For one thing, it makes no sense to evaluate street encounters, as she does, bycomparing them to census data. In other words, because blacks represent 23% of thecity s population, they should represent no more than 23% of those stopped by police.That's like saying police should stop males no more than 50% of the time because theyrepresent half of the population, when in fact men are responsible for about 90% of violentcrime, and police stops reflect that.

The Rand Corporation, a respected research organization, describes this as the leastreliable form of comparison. Instead, Rand uses the far more reliable benchmark ofvictims' and witnesses' descriptions of suspects. On the basis of this standard, it hasconcluded that stops by race in New York comport with crime-suspect descriptions. It alsodetermined that the racial distribution of stops generally reflected the racial distribution ofarrestees. In each of the city s 76 police precincts, the race of those stopped highlycorrelates to descriptions provided by victims or witnesses to crimes.

The New York City police department does not engage in racial profiling. It is prohibitedby law and by our own internal regulations. Yet, based on scant evidence, the judge haspainted an entire department and its 35,000 hard working officers as racially biased.

Remarkably, of the 19 encounters hand-selected by plaintiffs to prove their case, thejudge found that 10 stops were justified. These are the best examples plaintiffs could comeup with, and more than half were deemed to be appropriate stops. Furthermore, theplaintiffs' own expert, whose analysis the judge adopted, found that only 6% of thedepartment's 4.4 million stops between 2004 and 2012 were, quote apparentlyunjustified. Even if you accept the pla intiffs' flawed analysis on its face, a rate of 6 of


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stops being apparently unjustified by no means shows a systemic practice of racialprofiling.

It simply defies logic all the more so given the fact that the NYPD is the most diverseagency in city government. The majority of our members at the rank of police officer arethemselves minority, a fact we are proud of. They were born in 1 6 different countries andspeak 75 different languages. For many reasons, we believe this decision cries out forappeal. That process is moving forward under the city law department and we hope it issuccessful.

Just as proactive policing has helped to dramatically reduce the murder rate in NewYork, it has also helped to protect the city from another terrorist attack. Since September11th we've been the subject of 16 additional plots targeting everything from bridges,tunnels, and subways to returning U.S. troops and airports.

In 2002 knowing New York would remain a target, we became the first policedepartment in the country to develop our own counter-terrorism bureau and werestructured our intelligence division to build a global intelligence-gathering capacity.We increased the number of NYPD detectives serving on the joint terrorism task force withthe F I from 17 on September 11th to 120. We hired a corps of civilian analysts who'veearned degrees from some of the best schools in the country and are experts in foreignaffairs and military intell igence. We posted senior officers in cities around the world toform relationships with local police agencies. They visit the scenes of terrorist attacks andgather real-time information that guides the NYPD's operations at home. In short, we builta robust counter-terrorism program and one that is consistent with the threat we'vecontinued to face since nine-eleven.

Some have asserted that the NYPD has been insensitive to constitutional rights inprotecting the city against another terrorist attack. They are wrong. The policedepartment's investigations are based on leads and other information about possiblecriminal conduct. They are never determined by a subject's religion, ethnic background, orpolitical opinion.

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The NYPD subjects terrorism investigations to a rigorous examination by our attorneys.This is done in conformance with what is known as the Handschu guidelines for theinvestigation of political activit ies. We do that in order to guard against the possibility ofintruding on first amendment and other constitutional rights.

This process, subject to review by a federal judge, was modeled on similar guidelinesused by the federal government for domestic investigations. It establishes strongoversight of cases from beginning to end. No other police department in the country isbound by these rules, which restrict police powers granted under the constitution.

The guidelines state clearly that in its effort to prevent terrorist acts, the NYPD must, attimes, initiate investigations in advance of unlawful conduct. Handschu entitles membersof the department to attend any place or event that is open to the public; to view onlineactivity that is accessible to the public; and to prepare reports and assessments to help usunderstand the nature of the threat.

As part of our counter-terrorism activities, we try to determine how individuals seekingto do harm might communicate or conceal themselves. Where might they go to findresources or evade the law? Establishing this kind of geographically-based knowledgesaves precious time in stopping fast-moving plots.

As a matter of police department policy, undercover officers and confidentialinformants do not enter a mosque unless they are following up on a lead vetted underHandschu. Similarly, when we have attended a private event organized by a student groupwe ve done so on the basis of a lead or investigation reviewed and authorized in writing atthe highest levels of the department in keeping with Handschu protocol.

Twelve years after 9/11, i t is our view that the terrorist threat to the United States is asdangerous as ever. Furthermore, the analysis of the police department and our recentexperience tells us that New York remains squarely in the crosshairs of global terrorism .This is a time for vigilance, not complacency. New Yorkers, perhaps more than most,understand that. The notion that the NYPD s policies are causing deep divisions amongthe general population is simply not supported by the poll numbers we see.

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IA survey conducted by Quinnipiac University earlier this year showed that 70 of New

Yorkers polled approve of the job police are doing, the highest level of public approval ourofficers have received since the months after nine-eleven. That number jumps to 82when it comes to their handling of terrorism.

It's worth mentioning that approval of the police among African-Amer ican New Yorkerswas 56 and, someth ing I wouldn t normally highlight, 63 for me personally. Acrossevery segment of the city s population we see evidence of broad support for the efforts ofthe NYPD That support has remained strong despite a highly publicized federal trial and amayoral election campaign.

I think the public also understands that, regardless of the politics, the mission of thepolice has always remained the same: to enforce society's laws fairly and impartially andto protect human life. But we cannot do it alone. Every institution has a role to play.

That of course includes the institutions we've always depended on to further ourunderstanding of the world through research and reasoned analysis, namely our collegesand universities. I want to commend Brown University for its contributions to thisendeavor through this lecture series and its efforts to engage and nurture tomorrow sleaders in the classroom. Through both means, you re helping society to adapt to thechallenges and opportunities of our changing world.

Thank you again for having me here tonight and for your interest in the work of the NewYork City Police Department.

the kelly speech: prepared remarks, oct. 29, 2013

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