Mayor de Blasio & First Deputy Mayor Shorris in 2013 (photo: @NYCTransition)
Two recent reports on City Hall’s role in the questionable lifting of deed restrictions on a nursing home property issued scathing indictments of both process and personnel in the de Blasio administration. They revealed mismanagement and miscommunication that belies Mayor Bill de Blasio’s own attempts to portray City Hall and its agencies as well-oiled machines that deliver swift and efficient services to the people of New York.
The reports, one by the Department of Investigation and one by Comptroller Scott Stringer, paint a picture of dysfunction and raise significant questions about oversight by First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris. De Blasio has acknowledged gaps in communication while defending Shorris unequivocally.
The Department of Investigation report, released July 14, found “a complete lack of accountability within City government regarding deed restriction removals and significant communication failures between and within City Hall and DCAS.”
Comptroller Stringer’s report, released August 1, stated that Rivington House, the nursing home property, “was allowed to slip away not so much because of poor City processes, but because of poor execution of those processes in a manner that undermined both public input and the interests of the City…[S]enior City officials required agency commissioners to prepare weekly reports but then chose not to read them...decisions were made but never communicated to subordinates, and...a lack of vigilance allowed a single individual to gain control of a valued community resource.”
The deal in question involved Rivington House, a nursing home on the Lower East Side that was restricted to use as a non-profit health care facility until last year when the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) allowed two deed restrictions on the property to be lifted. The owner, the Allure Group, paid the city $16 million to lift the deed restrictions, and then quickly sold the property to a luxury condominium developer for a $72 million profit.
In March, after the Wall Street Journal first reported that Stringer was looking into the Rivington House deal, the mayor said in a subsequent news conference that it was the first time he had heard of the problematic deal. Acknowledging that agency officials had made mistakes, the mayor promised to overhaul procedures at DCAS and at City Hall. He said that if he had been notified of what was going on he would have put a stop to it and that the moves did not represent the values of his administration. He also laid blame on the Allure Group for misleading city officials.
It later emerged that the Department of Investigation (DOI) was already looking into the transaction, referred to it by DCAS Commissioner Lisette Camilo in consultation with the Mayor’s Office. The deal also drew the attention of the state Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, whose office has yet to conclude its investigation.
On July 14, DOI issued its investigative report, which was critical of the role that DCAS, the Law Department, and the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services (MOCS) played in letting the deal go through without adequate analysis of whether it was in the best interests of the city. The investigation found that top officials at City Hall and DCAS were well aware of the deal and did not raise any objections or attempt to ensure the property would continue to serve a purpose for the community. It also pointed out that DCAS employees were aware that the Allure Group was considering selling the property to a private developer.
The investigation was also clouded by controversy. DOI revealed that the mayor’s office had withheld information from investigators, ultimately hampering their findings. De Blasio has persistently denied these allegations, while admitting that some paperwork had been redacted and pointing to natural tension between the Law Department and DOI.
In his report, Comptroller Stringer echoed many DOI findings. He pointed to failures of communication at multiple points between City Hall and DCAS and said the officials involved were at fault, not the process itself. This contradicted most of de Blasio’s focus on the need to update the deed restriction removal process as a result of the incident. While Stringer said updated procedures area good idea, it was poor management and “information flow” that led to the mistaken deal on Rivington House.
Stringer’s report notes that more than 40 officials were involved in the deal, including three agency heads and three deputy mayors, but no red flags were raised. It also criticizes DCAS for undervaluing the property in its appraisal and stated that the efforts to solicit public input on the deal were inadequate.
Neither report directly faults Mayor Bill de Blasio, who maintains he had no knowledge of the proceedings until after the fact. There is one key email that was sent to de Blasio that the mayor says he did not read.
The comptroller’s report also placed individual blame; first on Joel Landau, Allure Group principal, for exploiting the system and misrepresenting the company’s intentions; and secondly, but more importantly, on First Deputy Mayor Shorris for ignoring memos about the Rivington deal sent to him by the DCAS commissioner and not ensuring adequate internal systems.
Despite the clear failings of his top functionaries, the mayor has presented a full-throated defense of his administration, blaming flawed procedures inherited from earlier administrations and the bad actor that deceived the city in this particular case. De Blasio has admitted that mistakes were made by his administration, but has been loathe to hold anyone to account.
At an unrelated news conference on July 25, in response to a question from Gotham Gazette about Shorris’ role in the deed change, the mayor said, “I don’t have a concern. I think Tony Shorris is one of the finest public servants I’ve ever worked with, and he has an immense amount of material he has to deal with. I think he deals with it very well in a very organized fashion.”
The mayor reiterated that the city’s policies on deed restrictions needed to be reevaluated and, taking full responsibility, he said, “[W]e should’ve understood that the underlying policy did not represent our values.”
Later that week, on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, the mayor said he had “total confidence” in Shorris, who “probably has the most on his plate” of anyone in the administration. “A deed restriction change – you can understand – might not be on the top of anyone’s list on a given day,” he added. Both investigative reports noted that Shorris was given updates of the Rivington deal at multiple occasions, receiving weekly memos which he did not read. Neither Shorris nor other top city officials thought that Rivington House was an important matter.
This was an unsatisfactory explanation for Doug Muzzio, political science professor at Baruch College’s School of Public and International Affairs, who believes Shorris dropped the ball. “He’s doing a million things,” Muzzio said of Shorris, “but that doesn’t absolve him of a management and communications error.”
What irks Muzzio most about the Rivington House situation was how the administration dealt with the fallout. “In and of itself, the Rivington case isn’t a major deal,” said Muzzio. “It’s the sidestepping and stonewalling, the half-truths, untruths, and sophistry,” which are. “It’s part of this administration’s DNA,” he added.
“One could argue it was a minor deal and people gave it perfunctory attention,” he said, “but it shows that, after the fact, communication was lousy.”
At the July 25 news conference, de Blasio said of Shorris, “I think if you look across the whole range of issues he deals with…this is one of the only things you can say like this. It’s a pretty damn good batting average on his part.”
Kenneth Sherrill, professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College, called the selling of Rivington House to a condo developer a “civic tragedy” considering the historical importance of the building as a home for HIV/AIDS patients. But Sherrill doesn’t believe there was any intentional wrongdoing or gross incompetence. “What ended up seeming to be massive incompetence could’ve been the cumulative effect of a lot of small mistakes,” he said in phone interview.
Sherrill said the administration was on its back foot once the news broke that the deal was being scrutinized. “It’s very difficult to get ahead of this kind of story once it’s broken so City Hall was playing catch up,” he said.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Anti-street harassment mural in Bed-Stuy, led by Groundswell
Street harassment is a pervasive and public form of sexual harassment that most women face at some point in their lives. Overwhelmingly, it is experienced for the first time before the age of 17, can force those who experience such harassment to alter their behavior to avoid being harassed, and comes with serious psychological consequences.
“The majority of women have been catcalled while walking the streets of NYC,” said Eona John, a youth artist who contributed to a Groundswell mural calling attention to the issue. “Women are harassed to the point of fear being imprinted in their skin."
Many courses of action to reduce street harassment and to help victims of harassment exist, yet in New York City, options like enforcing existing laws against verbal harassment or providing educational programming in schools are largely underutilized, advocates say.
In 2010, New York City Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, then chair of the Council’s Committee on Women’s Issues, held the first-ever hearing on street harassment, prompted by a visit to a high school in her Queens district during which she learned that a group of female students were being sexually harassed verbally on a daily basis by local mechanics on their way to and from school.
Street harassment, which can include catcalling, unwanted sexual comments, and gestures, “limits the rights and freedoms of women and girls to enjoy a simple walk around. It conditions their every move and forces them to adopt a veil of caution as they walk in public,” Ferreras-Copeland said at the time. “The environment that allows for this type of behavior has roots in the same attitudes that say it’s OK to treat women…as nothing more than sexual objects. It has roots in the same belief system that allows for women to be battered, abused, and even sometimes raped.”
That “belief system” in which women are perceived as “nothing more than sexual objects” that men are entitled to allows the sexual harassment of women in public spaces to be seen as an acceptable occurrence, even a “compliment.” Should a woman ignore or reject this “compliment,” the situation can quickly escalate.
Escalated harassment can become even more discomforting, damaging, and dangerous. Some incidents result in violence. For example, in May, a man spit on a woman who ignored his advances at the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall subway stop in Manhattan. She laughed, and he responded by slashing her arm and running away, sending her to the hospital. Around this time last year, a New York City man hit at least four Asian women in the face with a heavy object over the course of a week after they rejected his advances while on the streets of Manhattan,sending them all to the hospital. In October 2014, a woman in Queens was slashed in the throat after she rebuffed a man who had followed her into her apartment building.
At the 2010 City Council hearing, leaders from organizations like Stop Street Harassment, Hollaback, the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, and the Center for Anti-Violence Education, among others, all recommended that the city take action to reduce street harassment. Recommendations included conducting a citywide survey to gather data on the effects and the scope of street harassment in New York City and investing in educational efforts like public awareness campaigns, curricula designed to teach students about street harassment (as well as consent, respect, gender issues, and healthy relationships), and bystander intervention training.
“Your suggestions are definitely going to be followed up on,” Ferreras-Copeland said at the end of the hearing, in a familiar City Council refrain. “We’re trying to identify which agency to do [PSAs and/or surveys] through, the Department of Health or the Department of Education, or maybe both.”
Five-and-a-half years later, no citywide survey has been conducted, and only the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has run PSAs, doing so on subways, reminding riders that sexual harassment on the train is a crime and encouraging victims to report unwanted sexual conduct to an MTA officer or to the police. The MTA is a state-run agency.
The city Department of Education has not been involved in any targeted anti-street harassment educational efforts, according to a spokesperson (the DOE has other, more general anti-bullying programs in place), and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene did not respond to multiple inquiries regarding the agency’s involvement or lack thereof in anti-street harassment efforts.
Instead of funding a study, Council members funded an app developed by Hollaback that allows victims of street harassment to make a record of their experience and report the location of the incident, adding it to a map. The app can also be used to report the incident to the City Council, if users wish to do so. Emily May, executive director of Hollaback, told Gotham Gazette, “we then took those stories, stripped of contact info, and did a content analysis in partnership with Cornell.”
Hollaback used the stories that were submitted for a qualitative study, which examined victims’ emotional reactions to street harassment and the effect a bystander's presence had on the experience, and found that street harassment is an "under-researched, but likely prevalent experience for many New Yorkers."
As Ferreras-Copeland said in a statement sent to Gotham Gazette, “there is much more that needs to be done to improve the attitude around women’s bodies and our behavior in public spaces.” Gotham Gazette spoke with advocates from all four previously mentioned organizations, some of whom were present themselves at the 2010 street harassment hearing, and two other organizations - SAFER NYC and Safe Horizon - all of whom said education is the key to “improv[ing] the attitude around women’s bodies” in a way that would change the culture that allows public sexual harassment to persist.
Hollaback has developed a curriculum, in part thanks to funding from the city, which it has distributed to schools. However, there is no mandate to provide students with education to better equip those who are or may become victims of street harassment, or to deter those who may harass. Some schools have contacted Hollaback requesting workshops in response to the curriculum, Debjani Roy, deputy director of Hollaback, told Gotham Gazette.
Workshops are not something Hollaback is “funded to do,” Roy said, and it would be ideal if the city were to “continue that stream of funding that allows for the whole picture, not just the curriculum - we need the curriculum and workshops and ongoing conversations.” Preventative education must be at the forefront of efforts to curb street harassment, experts like Roy say.
California, meanwhile, became the first state in the nation to mandate lessons on sexual violence prevention and affirmative consent in high schools last October.
Several City Council members appeared in a video made by Hollaback in May to speak out against street harassment. Hearing stories of street harassment, Council Member Brad Lander said, makes him feel “horrified that there’s a set of folks that don’t have the freedom to walk around the streets of the city without getting harassed.”
“What we’ve got to do together is stand up to it and work to get people to not just be bystanders, but to stand up and say we’re not going to tolerate street harassment, everybody’s got to have the right to walk around our city in their own skin,” Lander added. Lander declined to comment for this story when asked for specifics on what he and the Council are doing to “stand up and say we’re not going to tolerate street harassment.” Lander has consistently allocated discretionary funds to Hollaback during his time in office.
A Council member in Washington, D.C., Brianne Nadeau, has introduced legislation to establish a task force to end street harassment. The D.C. City Council held a hearing on street harassment in May, and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities is funding a $40,000 grant for a public art installation to help deter street harassment.
At the 2010 hearing in New York City, a high school student from Ferreras-Copeland’s district, Natalia Aristizabal, testified. She had first brought the issue to the Council member during a visit to Aristizabal’s high school. There was a street with several mechanic shops on the way to school, which 13- to 18-year-old students walked. “It seems like when girls go into the school and outside of the school, it’s a fun time for [the men working there],” Aristizabal said at the hearing.
“Every time that I pass by,” Aristizabal continued, “I’ve gotten a comment.” She began searching for solutions to stop the harassment, and at the hearing, one of Aristizabal’s suggestions was to create a mural in the area - to put art saying that harassment is unacceptable in a place where the harassment is happening in an effort to deter it.
No mural was put up in the area where underage girls faced sexual harassment every day, multiple times a day, from older men on their way to and from school.
A public art organization, Groundswell, has taken it upon itself, though, to install murals to deter harassment around the city, including one titled “Respect is the Strongest Compliment” in Bedford-Stuyvesant that Eona John helped create.
Putting art in places where public sexual harassment is prevalent is one solution, though it is only one part of what experts say is needed to “bring about an end to street harassment,” in the words of Julia Nethero, founder of SAFER NYC. “We can end street harassment through education, through raising awareness, through media campaigns, and things like that. It requires a cultural shift. I think education is really the answer, and starting in school would be the best way to do it.”
Educating young people about street harassment, its effects, and how to prevent it is the number one policy recommendation from all experts who spoke with Gotham Gazette for this story. Getting a “mandatory curriculum around street harassment” in all schools “is number one,” said Roy. “That’s where girls and LGBT folks experience it first, between the ages of 13 and 14. Curriculum that’s engaging, that’s interesting - mandating that I think would be a key piece of it.”
“One of the things that would be most beneficial for our entire city is if we implemented more education around this in our schools,” said Tracy Hobson, executive director of the Center for Anti-Violence Education. “Girls are dealing with this all the time, on their way to school, in the school.”
The City Council members who spoke with Gotham Gazette for this story were all open to doing more to prevent and reduce street harassment. “I would love to see there be some anti-street harassment curriculum in our schools, maybe incorporated into ‘Respect for All,’ which is already in our schools,” said Council Member Steve Levin, who is chair of the General Welfare Committee and, like Lander, has consistently allocated discretionary funding to Hollaback during his time in office.
“I think that that’s a fabulous idea because we need to make sure that our young people are learning these issues early and understanding what’s wrong with this type of behavior, what the consequences of it are, and get a good understanding of why it’s not to be tolerated,” Levin added.
“To me, we have to tackle it through education, through outreach, through programs and services,” said Council Member Vanessa Gibson, chair of the Committee on Public Safety, “because we have to show young people something different than what we see.”
Levin also appeared in Hollaback’s video speaking out against street harassment, and told Gotham Gazette, “I’ll be reconnecting with my colleagues to see if we could get the ball rolling again on this…I would be very interested in participating in another hearing,” Levin added. “There’s still a lot more to be done, honestly.”
Like Levin, Gibson expressed an interest in furthering the work of Council members to do more to prevent and reduce street harassment. “I think it would be great for us to have a discussion on an outreach campaign, on a PSA, that’s something that I’m happy to consider and work with my colleagues on,” Gibson said.
Advocates like Holly Kearl, founder of Stop Street Harassment and author of two books on street harassment, would also like the see city and state governments have more of a hand in producing surveys, as most of the existing data on the prevalence and effects of street harassment has been gathered by organizations that work to end street harassment in partnership with universities or research institutes.
What that data reveals is alarming, but unsurprising to advocates like Hobson, who works with victims of all forms of sexual violence and has seen the impact street harassment has on women and girls firsthand.
“We had one woman in our [self defense] program who was harassed on her way to school, and somebody grabbed her - grabbed her butt,” Hobson told Gotham Gazette. “She was so traumatized and upset by it that she actually ended up changing schools. She moved to Brooklyn with her grandmother so she could go to a different school, and she came into our program,” Hobson added, referring to the Center for Anti-Violence Education’s self-defense program. “She uprooted her entire life.”
[See a collection of research on street harassment here]
Providing educational programming in schools; larger public awareness campaigns; and bystander intervention training, which encourages people who witness harassment to find ways to safely intervene (and which organizations like Safe Horizon offer), are three of the top policy solutions available to reduce street harassment.
Other recommendations from experts include sensitivity training to better equip police officers to respond to reports of harassment and community safety audits, which involve community members auditing a location to see how the safety of that area can be improved (by adding more lights or clear visible paths, for example).
“One thing that we’re working on right now is having all police officers go through mandatory sensitivity training when it comes to harassment,” Roy of Hollaback says, “because then when people report they’ll know what to do instead of just dismissing it or brushing people off, which happens a little too often. It’s not all about the report itself, it’s about the experience when reporting, the options made available to people when they experience harassment.”
A few bills have been introduced in the City Council that Council Member Laurie Cumbo, chair of the Committee on Women’s Issues, believes could help address street harassment.
Cumbo has introduced one bill to create an emergency mobile text system that would allow the public to send texts to 911, including videos and photographs, which could be used to capture more evidence of harassers. Another bill introduced by Cumbo would require the NYPD to add sex offenses to its crime status reports, including the total number of crime complaints and listing the types of sex offenses out separately. And in March, Cumbo introduced a bill to require sexual assault awareness and prevention trainings for drivers of vehicles licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission.
Cumbo believes the sexual assault reporting bill could help to reduce street harassment by making it more clear exactly what sort of sex offenses are occurring, and where they are happening. “If we can understand where this harassment is happening, where there are areas and spaces where women feel unsafe, then we can make sure that resources are deployed there so that women will feel safer going into those areas,” Cumbo said. “Because if you’re in an unsafe environment, if you’re being catcalled, if you’re being spoken to in a lewd manner, if the harassment is constantly happening, it can also be a gateway for other forms of sexual assault to be prevalent.”
While there isn’t much hard data to support this claim (in part because the city has not funded such a study and in part because the way that sex crimes are reported doesn’t often make it clear how the crime may have progressed or escalated), advocates like Hobson and Amy Edelstein, director of Staten Island community programs for Safe Horizon, have heard their fair share of anecdotal evidence to support the notion that a society that allows the sexual harassment of women and girls in public spaces to persist without consequences contributes to a culture in which sexual violence against women and girls is accepted.
“It’s all on a continuum,” Hobson said of street harassment and physical forms of sexual violence. “I think that one sort of creates a way of thinking that allows another. If you’re able to objectify someone on the street and not really think of them as human beings, that translates into you can also maybe touch them in a way and it doesn’t matter whether they want it or not.”
“I work with a lot of people who have experienced sexual violence,” Edelstein told Gotham Gazette, “and the people that if affects absolutely have the same reactions as a lot of our trauma survivors.” There have been “situations that have started out as street harassment or unwanted comments or groping,” Edelstein added, “that have absolutely escalated into a full blown sexual assault. We find that street harassment is certainly incredibly pervasive and happens to many many men and women. It shouldn’t be minimized.”
The emotional impacts of street harassment alone should raise concern for city lawmakers. “In a qualitative analysis of self-submitted stories to ihollaback.org, we found that emotions such as fear, anxiety, anger, shame, and helplessness were incredibly common,” said Beth Livingston, assistant professor at Cornell University’s ILR School, in a 2014 interview with Stop Street Harassment founder Holly Kearl. “These sorts of emotions - particularly when experienced day after day - can become paralyzing...It is incredibly likely that, as with many other negative emotional experiences, the impact can accumulate over time, leading to behavioral and health outcomes that we all should be concerned about.”
Street harassment can be especially harmful for those who have already experienced escalated forms of gendered violence, like domestic violence or sexual assault, says Edelstein. “I personally know survivors who I have worked with have said that the man who sexually harassed them on the subway or made unwanted comments to them on the street kind of re-traumatized them and made them continue to feel victimized again, continued to perpetuate their lack of trust in the world, the lack of their sense of safety that they have,” said Edelstein.
With one out of every six American women surviving an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime (according to the National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), helping to make sure that women in New York City do not continue to suffer from a lack “of their sense of safety” ought to be a priority for lawmakers, who advocates say can and should do more to minimize street harassment.
“There are already laws in existence against harassment that would include pretty much all forms of street harassment,” explains Nethero. Yet they are largely unenforced. “New York penal law actually already has a clause about harassment that covers any kind of physical harassment or threat of physical harassment, following in a public space, and then they have a really broad phrase, like engaging in any course of conduct that places others in reasonable fear and also serves no legitimate purpose, that’s considered harassment.”
“I think that the existing laws are probably being underutilized for the more serious crimes [like groping and flashing],” says Kearl. “So helping to publicize those, let people know what their rights are.”
All advocates and lawmakers interviewed for this article expressed a preference for prevention over punishment when it comes to deterring street harassment, citing concerns over the potential uneven application of fines or jail time for harassing. “I don’t think that sticking all these harassers in jail is the answer either,” Kearl said. “I’m more in favor of education. If a street harasser had to go to an education class or something, though, that would be fine, I wouldn’t mind that!”
Many of the organizations mentioned here provide programs aimed at reducing street harassment, like bystander intervention training (SAFER NYC and Safe Horizon), anti-harassment curriculum (Hollaback), self-defense training (Center for Anti-Violence Education). These organizations do work centered on changing the culture that permits street harassment to persist, legitimizing the problem, and giving victims the tools to deal with harassment.
“Legitimizing the problem is the first step,” says Alexis Grenell, Democratic political consultant and City & State columnist (Grenell is also a board member of Hollaback). “Then educating people - I would like to see there be an education curriculum, frankly, and Hollaback has developed one. I’d like to see that mainstreamed, teaching respect for women, but also teaching bystanders the skills to create a safer and more supportive public space.”
In early May, construction workers at the Pacific Park (formerly Atlantic Yards) complex in Prospect Heights were harassing passersby so frequently that they became required to wear different color-coded hard hats in order to make complaints easier to file (New York Magazine reports that four different companies were stationed at the site, and a sign posted at the entrance explained which color helmet belonged to which company).
While making it easier for women to report their harassers is a step in the right direction, an even better response, organizations like Stop Street Harassment suggest, would be to target those who are committing the harassment themselves: to tell the construction workers not to harass, and that there will be consequences for doing so.
Council Member Cumbo echoed this sentiment while speaking about the city’s lack of PSAs against street harassment. Vision Zero, the city’s campaign against traffic fatalities, include PSAs that tell drivers they could end up dead or in jail if they choose to drive drunk. “All these imaginary characters pop up and say things like, ‘if you hit someone, you’re going to see me,’ and ‘I’m going to be your lawyer and cost this amount of money,’” Cumbo said.
“I think the same thing should happen with sexual assault and sexual harassment,” Cumbo continued, adding that to her, the “messaging” around rape is all wrong. The way Cumbo sees it, there are two ways of talking about sexual assault and street harassment that dominate the messaging: if it’s happening to you, here is where you can go for help; or here is how not to get sexually assaulted or sexually harassed.
“But I’ve never seen a campaign that says, ‘do not sexually assault, do not sexually harass, and if you make that decision, here’s what’s going to happen to you, we have zero tolerance for this behavior in our city,’” she said.
When asked if she would be open to making a campaign like that happen, Cumbo said yes, but cautioned that male lawmakers should also be involved in the process.
SAFER NYC actually has already created such a campaign, but lacks the funding to implement it. “Our first project idea was to have subway ads that were targeting men - ‘would you say that to your daughter,’ that kind of thing,” Nethero said. “So we made these ads and we still are hoping to run them. We haven’t gotten enough funds to do that.”
At the end of the day, advocates want to see more support from the city’s lawmakers, both in terms of funding and policy solutions, to help address the city’s street harassment problem. We want “legislators and policymakers to pay attention to the issue,” Roy said, and “put more money forth into education and workshops and trainings and hosting collaborative events with policymakers.”
“I think that an opportunity to bring back a public education campaign and start the conversations again are essential,” Ferreras-Copeland told NY1’s Errol Louis in a November 2015 interview. “We still see groping on our trains, we still see young girls complaining about harassment. It would be great to see if we have an opportunity” to return to that conversation.
It’s unclear what’s stopping city lawmakers like Ferreras-Copeland, Cumbo, Gibson, Levin, Lander and others from creating such opportunity or, in Lander’s words, “stand[ing] up and say[ing] we’re not going to tolerate street harassment, everybody’s got to have the right to walk around our city in their own skin.”
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by Meg O'Connor, @GothamGazette. More:
RESEARCH shows that:
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by Meg O'Connor, Gotham Gazette
@megoconnor13 @GothamGazette
Bratton, O'Neill, de Blasio at City Hall (photo: Ben Max)
Mayor Bill de Blasio didn’t want Bill Bratton to leave his post as NYPD Commissioner, but his departure comes with a thick silver lining. And just because de Blasio would rather Bratton stay than go doesn’t mean the mayor doesn’t see it.
As de Blasio stood smiling and shaking the hand of soon-to-be Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill on Tuesday at City Hall, the mayor may have exhaled an inaudible sigh of relief. While we don’t yet know what kind of Commissioner O’Neill will be, we do know that he won’t - he can’t - be Bill Bratton, for better and for worse. The big question, to which de Blasio surely thinks the answer is “yes,” is whether O’Neill can be most of the better and almost none of the worse.
With crime at historic lows and the mayor nearing his re-election campaign, O’Neill gives de Blasio his best opportunity at crime-stopping continuity, but also the chance to more clearly highlight an evolving NYPD, one focused on neighborhood policing, and a commissioner who is less likely to say something politically damaging.
The shift from Bratton to O’Neill may make the mayor at least a little nervous and certainly makes him more vulnerable to criticism over any uptick in crime, but O’Neill is set to take the helm at a period of relative calm and there is already little pause for those who see de Blasio as soft on public order.
Bratton is a tenacious, smart, authoritative living legend with immense credibility in key circles. He is also blunt, headstrong, not always politically correct, never deferential, and distrusted by many. Bratton is the embodiment of controversial policing tactics. Over the past two-and-a-half years - since de Blasio took office and Bratton resumed command of the NYPD - crime has continued to drop and Bratton has defended the mayor to many de Blasio critics. On several occasions, though, Bratton has said things de Blasio wishes he hadn’t.
Simply put, O’Neill is not as respected or as reviled as Bratton; he’s not as tough a defender nor as likely an offender.
Does O’Neill have the leadership chops necessary to take over the department, ensure that crime continues to drop while furthering reform efforts, and navigate all of the tricky politics of the top cop job in the country’s biggest city? We’ll soon see. Even someone with three decades of experience in the NYPD may have a hard time adjusting to being the boss.
Currently Chief of Department, the NYPD’s top uniformed role, O’Neill oversees 34,000 cops, has been implementing the new neighborhood policing model, and offered de Blasio the safest choice. The mayor had no reason to rock the boat with even a search outside the NYPD ranks. What de Blasio needs now - at the NYPD and all around - is stability. Facing law enforcement investigations into his campaign fundraising and his administration (including an NYPD corruption probe that has already resulted in arrests), de Blasio needs a steady drumbeat of good news, with no new fires to put out.
The continuity O’Neill offers was perhaps the number one reason the mayor chose him, but he also gives de Blasio a chance at turning a corner that Bratton may not have been able to navigate. And, not coincidentally, it’s a corner where de Blasio’s base lives. Polls show that the mayor’s strongest support comes from African-Americans, while black New Yorkers see Bratton far less favorably than white New Yorkers see him.
Though Bratton provided de Blasio with a vicious attack dog to bark back at those wrongly saying the city was reverting to the “bad old days,” he is not known for staying out the fray or for toeing the company line. O’Neill appears likely to do both.
Where Bratton is outspoken and has little concern with political correctness, O’Neill seems content saying as few words as possible and may possess a better understanding of the diverse constituencies of the city and how to talk with and about them. Where Bratton comes with a great deal of authority, but is well-known for his strict adherence to tough enforcement on quality-of-life issues, O’Neill commands respect from many for his body of work, but is not widely known by the public and has the opportunity to define his philosophy and establish relationships.
De Blasio and O'Neill walked a parade in Queens and a boardwalk in the Bronx on Sunday, the mayor beaming and introducing his friendly new commissioner to New Yorkers.
As City Council Member Ritchie Torres put it to Politico NY, de Blasio may be welcoming of “a normal police commissioner who will have a lower profile.”
During his current run as commissioner, Bratton has made comments about the City Council, Black Lives Matter protesters, the city Department of Investigations, rappers, and others that have made de Blasio cringe, and contort himself to respond without directly contradicting or criticizing the commissioner. During an interview with ABC-7 that aired on Sunday, Bratton said the sergeants union president, Ed Mullins, had “something bipolar going on.” It’s hard to imagine O’Neill saying something similar about anyone unless he was reading directly from a medical diagnosis.
At a recent press conference, before Bratton announced his NYPD retirement and O’Neill was named commissioner, O’Neill said that he loves the “apolitical” nature of his job. “I love what I do,” he said, “I love being a cop.”
O’Neill’s initial attempts at outreach will be telling. While the city will not be moving away from Broken Windows policing, its continued evolution under O’Neill will impact how de Blasio is viewed - by supporters and critics of Bratton alike.
Still, police reformers reacted skeptically to O’Neill as the next commissioner, noting that he has learned at the knee of Bratton, whom many blame for over-policing, especially in communities of color. Some who know O'Neill well, like City Council Member Vanessa Gibson, who worked closely with O'Neill when he was a precinct commander in the Bronx, call him a listener and believe the new commissioner will bring a more collaborative spirit to the role.
As de Blasio heads toward re-election in 2017, he needs crime to continue to drop and a police commissioner who stays on message. O’Neill gives him a good shot at both.
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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@tweetBenMax @GothamGazette
inset photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office