Mayor Michael Bloomberg won re-election in part because he fulfilled an unlikely promise he made in his first campaign four years ago -- to continue the drop in crime –- and spent millions of dollars making sure New Yorkers knew about it. Assuming you believe the numbers (and Paul Moses, writing in the Village Voice, clearly does not), major crime has decreased by 18 percent citywide since Bloomberg was first elected in 2001.
Yet for all his efforts at publicizing the drop as his major accomplishment, New Yorkers may (as a recent poll suggests) give primary credit for the drop in crime to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and his several initiatives:
Operation Spotlight targeted the low-level, quality of life offenders that repeatedly cycle through the court system by providing stiffer penalties for these “career misdemeanants.”
Operation Impact sent floods of rookie officers and police resources into targeted “impact zones,” an initiative that Kelly credits for reducing violent crime in those neighborhoods.
Operation Atlas focused on protecting the city from future terrorist attacks.
No new Operations were promised (nor further crime-fighting strategies specified) in the re-election campaign, and if Bloomberg is not getting the credit for the good crime news of the past four years, it is probably safe to assume that he will be blamed for any bad crime news over the next four.
The bad news seems to have begun; at the end of November, the New York Post, in an article entitled Bloody Legacy, reported an increase in shootings of six percent from last year.
While crime levels remain low for now, the public perception of public safety can be easily shaped by the kind of high profile cases that have been in the news since the election last month.
Dillon Stewart, a 35-year-old New York City police officer, was shot and killed on November 28th after stopping man for running a red light in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Reports indicate that even after being shot, Stewart continued driving after the suspect until the chase ended at a nearby parking garage.
The next day, police arrested 27-year old Allan Cameron and charged him with the murder of Stewart, as well as the attempted murder of another New York City police officer, Wiener Philippe,on November 19th. According to the New York Times, Cameron has had run-ins with the law before in both New York and Pennsylvania. Cameron was arraigned in Brooklyn after being led to the courtroom through a hallway lined with police officers.
Governor Pataki used Dillon Stewart’s death as an opportunity to call for the reinstatement of the death penalty/ Mayor Bloomberg responded by restating his opposition to capital punishment , noting that he’d “rather lock somebody up and throw away the key.” The mayor also reiterated his support for stricter gun laws. With the Post reporting that the gun used to shoot Stewart has quite a criminal history of its own, perhaps this time people will listen.
In recent weeks, several sexual assault cases have also gotten traction in the local media. While the Police Department’s statistics say that reported cases of rape are down 4.3 percent compared to a year ago, these cases play on some of our most basic fears about violent crime.
On November 21, two police officers were arrested and charged with sexually abusing a woman while they were on duty. The officers allegedly attempted to assault the woman after stopping her car in Bushwick, Brooklyn, then followed her back to her apartment where the assault continued.
More prominent has been the case of Peter Braunstein, which has captivated the local papers and television news for much of November. According to reports ( “An assailant on the loose. A city in fear,” said the Daily News), the police suspect that Braunstein, a former journalist, is the man who attacked a Chelsea woman on Halloween night. Police say he dressed up as a firefighter, and set several small fires to get into the woman’s apartment, where he assaulted her. But Braunstein has remained at large, and New Yorkers are reporting Braunstein sightings all over town -- a cafe, a dry cleaner, etc.
Governor George Pataki and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau have both recently called for an end to the five-year statute of limitations for rape cases . With backlogs at DNA laboratories and delays in identifying perpetrators even where a DNA sample exists, there have been cases where police have identified probable rapists too late to bring charges. In Manhattan, prosecutors have attempted to bring so-called “John Doe indictments” where they have a DNA profile but do not know a perpetrator’s identity. However, as the Daily News notes, only thirty-two such indictments have been handed up, and the legality of the practice is an open question.
The governor has also advocated for a law requiring the state to collect DNA samples from anyone convicted of a crime, including misdemeanors. In a statement , Pataki said that expanding DNA collection will help “convict the guilty, exonerate the innocent, and bring justice to victims.” Opponents argue that such a measure is an invasion of privacy, and brings the potential for abuse. Those who might look to DNA as a panacea would also be wise to recall recent large-scale foul ups at DNA labs in Virginia and Houston, Texas as suggesting that the technology is still vulnerable to human error.
An even more questionable strategy has been the attempts to keep sex offenders locked up after their prison terms have run out. On November 15th, Manhattan judge Jacqueline Silbermann ordered the state to release twelve individuals who had been involuntarily committed to state psychiatric hospitals following their state prison sentences. Noting that, for example, two of the men had been diagnosed only with Antisocial Personality Disorder (a diagnosis shared by 75 percent of the prison population, and, one imagines, many outside the prison population), Judge Silbermann said that the twelve (dubbed “The Dirty Dozen” by the tabloids) were being held in violation of state law. Governor Pataki responded by locking up fourteen more offenders , and appealed the judge’s ruling to a higher court, where he was granted a stay.
Bloomberg stopped short of endorsing Pataki’s tactics, instead calling on the legislature to impose higher mandatory sentences for sex offenders, including up to life in prison. D.A. Morgenthau has called for a similar change in the law.
David Dean, a student at New York University School of Law, worked as a policy analyst in the Mayor's Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator.Â
When President George W. Bush signed the newly-passed Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (in pdf format) into law on October 26th, it marked a major victory for the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers, who have been pushing for the legislation for years. It also marked a tremendous defeat for New York City and the many other cities that have pending lawsuits against the gun industry.
The law is specifically designed to end those lawsuits. It specifically exempts firearm manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers from civil liability for injuries and deaths caused by their products (it was quite a week for shielding big business, as the House of Representatives also passed the so-called “Cheeseburger Bill,” which prohibits lawsuits against fast food restaurants for causing obesity). While the law allows lawsuits in the case of a defective gun or criminal conduct by a manufacturer or dealer, it prohibits lawsuits of the kind filed by numerous individuals and municipalities, including New York City, and calls for any pending suits to be dismissed immediately.
The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is also likely to frustrate local efforts to control the flow of guns into New York City. The City Council passed a law in January (in pdf format) that allows victims of gun violence to sue gun manufacturers and dealers who have not adopted strict standards to prevent illegal trafficking. Manufacturers and dealers that abide by those standards are exempt from being sued. While the city’s lawyers will likely argue otherwise, it is likely that the new federal law effectively overturns the city’s law.
Supporters of shielding the gun industry from liability argue that it is necessary to protect firearms manufacturers from “frivolous” and “reckless” lawsuits designed to bankrupt the gun industry. Opponents, on the other hand, argue that the ability to sue is necessary to hold gun manufacturers and dealers responsible for negligent practices that result in shooting deaths.
Fallout from the law’s passage even entered into the mayoral campaign. Fernando Ferrer criticized Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s contributions to six members of Congress who voted to pass the bill, and suggested that the mayor had “joined the gun lobby.” In criticizing the law and the mayor, Ferrer pointed out that shootings have increased by six percent this year over the same period in 2004(in pdf format), even as crime in the city has decreased overall. Bloomberg, who had lobbied against the new law, released a statement after the bill passed, calling it “a disgraceful piece of legislation” that “will make it easier for criminals to get firearms and put our law enforcement officers at greater risk.”
At best, it remains an open question whether the recent spate of lawsuits is an effective way to deter gun crime. Opponents of gun control argue that there is no evidence to suggest that gun control reduces violent crime, and that it may in fact increase crime by taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. Lawsuits, they say, are an attempt by gun control advocates to bankrupt gun manufacturers.
However, the lawsuits that have been filed against the gun industry in recent years have been focused not on gun sales to law abiding citizens, but against what the suits claim is negligent behavior by gun manufacturers and dealers that allows guns to wind up in the hands of criminals. Evidence suggests that a small number of dealers are responsible for selling a majority of the guns used in crimes.
New York City’s lawsuit attempted to show that many of the guns used in crimes here in New York are originally sold in states with weaker gun control laws and brought to the city illegally. For example, the New York Post reported on October 15th that authorities had arrested a man suspected of bringing as many as 75 illegal firearms into New York City in less than a year. The suspect was allegedly part of a ring that purchased the guns in Virginia and sold them on the streets of New York. Virginia recently weakened a state law limiting the number of handguns a single individual could purchase in a month, a law initially passed in an attempt to curb gun smuggling.
The theory behind the litigation is similar to efforts in recent decades to use lawsuits to improve the safety of a number of consumer goods, from automobiles to children’s toys. Individuals and cities filing these lawsuits hope to give gun manufacturers and dealers the financial incentive to do what they can to prevent this illegal gun trafficking.
While proponents of shielding gun manufacturers from lawsuits argue that such a measure is needed to discourage frivolous lawsuits, the irony is that the legal system has been doing a good job, in New York City and elsewhere, of weeding out the lawsuits that are without merit. In 2001, for instance, New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, overturned a Brooklyn jury’s verdict that had awarded close to four million dollars in damages to Stephen Fox, who was permanently disabled after being shot by a friend. In the case, Hamilton v. Baretta U.S.A., the court argued in part that “the connection between defendants, the criminal wrongdoers and plaintiffs is remote, running through several links in a chain,” and thus legal liability for the manufacturers was inappropriate. Similarly, a federal judge in Brooklyn dismissed a suit brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), saying that the organization had failed to prove its public nuisance claim against the gun industry’s marketing practices. And a New York State appellate court found the trial court had properly dismissed another nuisance lawsuit , this one filed by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on behalf of the state.
Yet the lawsuit filed by New York City seemed to have avoided the problems that doomed the attempts by Stephen Fox, the NAACP, and New York State. In fact, the same judge that dismissed the NAACP’s suit allowed the city’s to go forward (in pdf format). Now that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act has become law, it is likely only a matter of time before the city’s suit is also dismissed. Any attempt to invoke the local law passed by the City Council in January is also likely to fail.
Gun control opponents could be right when they claim that lawsuits against the gun industry will not reduce gun crimes. Now, because of the new liability shield law, New York City will not have an opportunity to find out.
David Dean, a student at New York University School of Law, worked as a policy analyst in the Mayor's Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator.Â
The two city charter amendments on the ballot unnecessarily and unwisely shift power to the mayor and away from our city council. The proposals come from a little-known charter revision commission appointed by the mayor.
They are unnecessary because these changes could easily be enacted as a local law, proposed by the mayor and enacted by the council.
They are unwise because the shift of power goes against the traditional American system of government, in which the legislative branch writes the laws and the executive branch carries them out. The separation of powers has served our country well.
These proposals are the latest in a series of proposals by mayoral administrations to carve out areas where they could make their own rules and not have to deal with the city council. They are not good government.
This is not about whether you like the current mayor; it’s about how the city government should be set up.
Proposal 3 would require the mayor’s administration to adopt an ethics code governing the city’s various administrative law judges (hearing officers). The charter revision commission itself concedes that the hearing officers are already covered by the conflict-of-interest and ethics laws, including the penal law, enacted by the state legislature which apply to all state and local public officials. A specific ethics code focusing on these hearing officers may be helpful. But it is wrong to put that code exclusively under control of the mayor.
These proposed changes give significant power to the mayor or mayoral appointees and shut out the city council.
You won’t see anything about shutting out the city council if you read the proposals. But the courts have repeatedly ruled that if the city charter (the city’s “constitution”) says the mayor may do something, or that certain regulations shall be made by a particular agency, then a local law enacted by the city council on that subject is not valid. The courts say that the charter gave that power to the mayor or the agency, not to the council.
Why did the mayor’s charter commission put this on the ballot? That’s a good question.
It is not because the mayor proposed it as a local law and the council stubbornly refused to pass it. The mayor never submitted it to the council. (The same is true for Proposal 4.)
The mayor has two reasons for wanting this on the ballot. One is that under state law, if a charter commission proposes a charter change to go on the ballot – even a change just to move a comma – that automatically blocks any charter change proposed by petition from going on the ballot that year. This year, the mayor wanted to block the petition for a charter amendment dealing with public school class size.
The other reason is to shift power from the city council to the mayor.
The substantive idea in Proposal 3 – an ethics code specifically directed at hearing officers – might be helpful and the mayor could easily propose a bill to the city council.
But locking into the charter language that puts that issue exclusively in the mayor’s hands is bad government.
Assemblymember Richard N. Gottfried represents the 75th assembly district, which includes parts of Manhattan, in the state legislature. Â