Gotham Gazette

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Criminal Justice

Criminal Justice

Battling Gun Violence In The Streets And In The Courts


Melissa Gayle, 10th grader at Washington Irving High School who spent her spare time doing charity work with a religious group in the Bronx, was on her way to get a snack near her home in East Harlem one evening in October, when she was shot deadby a single, stray bullet.

It is difficult to call her random murder commonplace in New York City. One could almost be comforted by the recent improvement in the statistics – shootings in the city decreased from 2,030 in 1999 to 1,837 in 2003. And while nationwide, almost three-quarters of all murders were committed with a gun, in New York City, it is a little bit more than half – some 325 people shot dead in 2002, according to the Department of Health, not including those deaths caused by the police.

But even one such horror story makes it clear that the battle to stop gun violence has not been won. Now, while police continue with strategies designed specifically to get guns off the street, the frontline in the battle is as much in the courtroom, thanks to the new Gun Courts, and ongoing gun lawsuits.

Police Strategies

Police continue to attack the gun problem on a variety of fronts outlined in a Vera Institute of Justice report(in pdf format). Operation Gun Stop, an anonymous tip program that offers a $1000 reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone for felony gun possession, resulted in the recovery of 455 illegal guns and 757 arrests from April 2002 through last December.

The Firearms Investigation Unit continues to work undercover, as the case against the men involved in the shooting deaths of two undercover officers last year continues. The case highlights the dangers of trying to crack down on illegal gun traffickers, dangers that might have increased since the expiration of the federal ban on assault weapons.

Gun Courts

The idea behind gun courts is at least partly grounded in psychology. Before gun courts, cases where illegal gun possession is the most serious charge were mixed in with other cases, sometimes murder or rape cases, that had the effect of making gun possession seem minor in comparison. Mandatory sentences might seem to solve that problem, but while New York has stiff penalties of a year for even first-time offenders guilty of illegal gun possession, judges are able to set aside the minimum if they feel it is unduly harsh.

So, Brooklyn Gun Court was born in April of last year, to keep gun cases from “fall[ing] between the cracks of the criminal courts,” explained Justice Jonathan Lippman, the state’s chief administrative judge. The court began by hearing cases from five Brooklyn neighborhoods known by police to be centers of gun violence. The concept has since expanded to include parts of the Bronx and Queens. In each gun court, one judge and a handful of prosecutors handle all gun cases.

New York is not the first city to adopt the gun court strategy in an effort to speed up gun cases and enforce sentences more in line with mandatory minimums. But it may be one of the toughest, at least compared with the nation’s first gun court in Providence, Rhode Island.

Rhode Island, like New York, has long had lengthy mandatory sentences for those convicted of illegal gun possession. In Providence, however, before the creation of gun court, sentences—including probation—were only imposed in 67 percent of cases, and jail time imposed in only about 25 percent of cases. During the first four years of gun court, sentences were enforced in 82 percent of cases.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg happily trumpeted the drastic change after the first few months of gun court. Of the first 97 cases resolved by the gun court, 98 percent resulted in jail or prison for offenders, and median jail time increased from 90 days to a year. Statistics in the current issue of Legal Affairs magazinereveal that about 75 percent of the first 300 cases resulted in sentences of at least one year in jail, compared to about 50 percent of gun cases in the rest of the borough that don’t go through gun court.

Clearly gun courts are specialized courts that, unlike drug courts, which offer counseling, mainly exist to make sure criminals are punished for illegal gun possession. Whether or not such sentences will reduce gun violence in the city remains to be seen.

Gun Lawsuits

Stopping the flow of illegal guns before they reach New York remains the top priority of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, an advocacy group which is once again pushing for city legislation that they hope would make it easier for gunmakers to be held liable in court when guns are used in crimes Various efforts against gun manufacturers remain ongoing, including a lawsuit by the city.

City council legislation that would set out the criteria that would make gun manufacturers liable has been languishing since last year, but Andy Pelosi, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, remains focused on passing the legislation, the Gun Industry Responsibility Act. Sponsored by Councilmember David Yassky, it is currently before the City Council.

“About 85 to 95 percent of guns used in crime come from out of state,” Pelosi said. Statistics from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (in pdf format) back up Pelosi’s assertion. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Murdering Women


The stories would be more shocking if they didn’t all sound so similar: a woman killed -- shot or stabbed or strangled -- at the hands of a current or former lover. From 1995 through 2002, more than 300 New York women were killed by someone with whom they were in a romantic relationship, according to a new study released by city health officials last month. And while overall the murder rate in New York declined dramatically over the same time period, the study concluded that there was very little decline in the number of women killed by an intimate partner.

“This problem is not going to be fixed by ways you normally think of to reduce crime,” said Dr. Susan Wilt, author of the study and assistant commissioner for the Health Department's Bureau of Injury Epidemiology. She noted that police can’t be expected to patrol inside people’s homes.

Part of the problem is convincing more women to get help. While a national study has reported that the majority of intimate partner homicides involve physical abusebefore turning deadly, in New York, over 70 percent of family-related homicides -- a police category that includes homicides committed by an intimate partner -- had no prior police contact, according to the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence.

Murder Rate Of Intimate Partners Stays Steady

The report, entitled “Femicide in New York City: 1995-2002"(in pdf format), is based on data gathered from the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City, which classified the deaths of 1,030 women aged twelve and older as homicides from 1995 through 2002. After studying this data, which included police records, researchers concluded that 369 of the deaths were non-intimate homicides, 339 were intimate homicides and 322 had an unknown motive (In most of these deaths, along with several in the other two categories, the perpetrator remains unknown. While not meant to be an official police clearance rate, the study notes that the perpetrator’s name was able to be determined by researchers in only 54.5 percent of cases.)

While the motives and identities of perpetrators can be hazy, the single most common, or at least clearly identifiable, motive for killing women was related to their having an intimate partner. Separate from that category, about 10 percent of women killed were killed as part of a sex crime or a drug-related crime, while about six percent were killed due to family violence.

Far fewer women have been killed by non-intimate partners in years after 1995, but the rate of women killed by intimate partners, while fluctuating yearly, was only 20 percent less in 2002 than in 1995. In 1995, 1.54 out of every 100,000 New York women were killed by intimate partners, while in 2002 the rate was 1.23 per 100,000 women. Contrast those numbers with the decline in the numbers of women killed by people with whom they were not romantically involved: 2.35 per 100,000 in 1995, down to 1.04 per 100,000 in 2002, a decline of 56 percent.

Who The Victims Are -- Mostly Immigrants

The study also identifies characteristics of female victims of homicide. Black women made up about 50 percent of all women killed, while Hispanic women accounted for 27 percent of homicides and white women 18 percent.

Researchers found that 51 percent of women killed by an intimate partner were foreign born. (Wilt noted that 47 percent of women aged 12 and older in New York are foreign born).

Yolanda B. Jimenez, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence, noted that focus groups of immigrant women have pointed to the language barrier as the number one reason why they are reluctant to call police. Jimenez noted that not only is it difficult for non-English speakers to make themselves understood, but it might mean that a neighbor will have to become involved when the police come. And if the woman’s partner speaks English and she doesn’t, it can leave the woman who needs help left out of a conversation with police when they arrive.

Jimenez pointed to a pilot program begun in the 115th Police Precinct that equips police with cell phone access to interpreters in various languages. Jimenez called the project a success, and said the program was going to expand to the 109th Police Precinct.

Wilt noted that the community has to be aware of their influence in preventing homicides. “They have a role, a really important role…Community organizations have to realize that."

Ways To Help

Police may not be the only group that can help prevent femicide. Wilt noted that an 11-city study published last year cited specific risk factors for women. The study recommended that health-care professionals take an active role in identifying potentially life-threatening situations. The study suggested doctors ask domestic violence victims if the abuser has a gun (about 40 percent of intimate partner femicides in New York involved the use of a gun, compared to about 32 percent of non-intimate partner femicides).

 

Jimenez said the city was “in the process” of responding to some of the risk factors cited in the report. “One-third of all women who present at emergency rooms are there because their injuries are caused by an intimate partner,” Jimenez said. In New York, Jimenez said that every hospital has a domestic violence coordinator, along with digital cameras and link-ups to a database so information about domestic violence assaults can be recorded quickly and easily.

The city has distributed manuals to all health-care professionals related to being culturally sensitive when trying to spot domestic abuse. As far as guns, however, those questions are asked by social workers, not doctors.

 

 

 

 

Former Senator Guy Velella: Convicted Felon, $80,000-A-Year Public Pensioner


 There are political scandals that last no more than a day in New York, and then there are those select few stories that simply refuse to die, because they have grown out of the public’s overwhelming dissatisfaction with the dysfunctional system of government which they have been forced to endure.

Such a scandal is the early release from Riker’s Island of convicted felon Guy Velella.

Velella was a high-ranking, popular Bronx Republican State Senator, and throughout his thirty years in elected office he exercised his powerful influence to win massive contracts for his political cronies while bringing home the bacon for his district. Velella held a safe Senate seat for 18 years, and he had garnered a reputation around the state as a shrewd politician. But it all came crashing down when Velella and two of his associates -- former state housing official Hector Del Toro and Bronx social service consultant Manuel Gonzalez -- were charged in 2002 with a 25-count indictment that alleged the Senator had accepted at least $137,000 —- and allegedly solicited $250,000 -— in return for steering public-works contracts to those who paid bribes from 1995 to 2000.

Velella faced up to 15 years in jail on the indictment, yet he was allowed to plead guilty to only one count of bribery. Velella agreed to serve one year in jail; the other two men agreed to eight months. None of the three served anything close to their full sentences. After less than twelve weeks, the virtually unknown Local Conditional Release Commission abruptly ordered their releases. Only four other people have been released under similar circumstances since 2000. In the wake of their early release, much has been written about the special access to the Commission the convicts were afforded and the fact that Velella will receive an $80,000-a-year pension. During the ensuing furor, Mayor Bloomberg has forced the resignations of the entire board, which may have acted illegally, as well as its $135,000-a-year executive director. City investigators and the office of District Attorney Robert Morgenthau are probing the decision as well.

To borrow a quote from Henry Kissinger: “Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.” The public uproar being driven by the overwhelming press coverage of the Velella scandal would have you actually believe that 90 percent of elected officials are corrupt individuals! This could not be further from the truth. The fact is that most elected officials that I have come across on the local, state and federal levels (in both parties) are decent, civic-minded people with the best interests of their constituents in mind. Of course, you have your occasional corrupt, power-hungry individual, but that is part of the nature of politics. The successful elected official must balance the power of his or her office with the responsibility of that office. As James Freeman Clark wrote in Sermon, “A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.”

Let's not forget, though, that running for elected office is a choice. Nobody put a gun to my head and demanded that I run for office. I chose to run and as such, I believe that I should be held to a higher standard of accountability. When I campaign and I ask people for their votes, I am actually asking people to put their trust in me. I do not take this lightly and most of my colleagues take their oaths of office very seriously. The fact is that those who do violate their oaths of office, such as Guy Velella, should be punished.

When the Velella story broke and the shady circumstances under which he was released were brought to the public, I decided it was time to bring attention to the fact that elected officials who commit felonies are still eligible to receive their pensions -— in Velella’s case, an $80,000-a-year pension. I have since introduced legislation that would close this loophole and prevent City and State elected officials convicted of felonies relating to their official duties -— that is, when they use the powers of their offices to engage in criminal activity —- from collecting their government pensions. Specifically, those who would be affected by this proposal would only forfeit the portion of their pensions that come from the taxpayers.

There are those who believe that jail time is a sufficient penalty for the crime that Velella committed. After all, Velella is a disgraced man; he not only lost his Senate seat, he was also disbarred. Yet, this is not about the crime committed, and it is not about the penalty. This is about making a simple statement to present and future New York elected officials. It is simply unconscionable for elected officials who violate their oaths of office by committing felonies to receive pensions that are funded by tax-paying New Yorkers. You forfeited that right. You broke the law. You violated the people's trust.

Government reform has become the buzzword in New York State politics this month. Calls from Senate Democrats, Assembly Democrats, and surprisingly, even Senate Republicans have reached a critical mass where there is a real possibility of achieving at least some reform by changing the legislative rules. This represents a huge step forward, compared to the attitudes of the Legislature when I first published reform proposals in 2002. Polls show that the electorate is dissatisfied with the State Legislature, and that the people of New York yearn for a transparent and deliberative system of governance.

The fact that a convicted felon can still collect his or her full pension is a perfect example of the institutional failings of the culture of Albany. When we do pass this legislation, I hope that New Yorkers will start to feel some small inkling that integrity and honesty are returning to the State Legislature. I promise, we are getting there, step by step, election by election.

State Senator Liz Krueger represents the Upper East Side of Manhattan



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