In a continuing denial of their responsibility in the strains with society and violence against the public (including the strangulation of Eric Garner), the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) leader blamed African-Americans and the fatherless on their inability to be participants in law enforcement.  Other former minority NYPD officers spoke up, however, and described an environment where some white police officer views African-Americans with contempt and some did not view them as human beings.   This contempt for human rights must be challenged by all those who support our shared universal human rights.

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, in an interview with the Guardian, blamed the NYPD’s woes on their inability to hire African-Americans in police positions. He stated: “We have a significant population gap among African American males because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can’t hire them.” He then states that this is the “unfortunate consequences” of an explosion in “stop, question and frisk” stops in the last decade targeting racial minority men. This policy, struck down in 2013 by a federal judge as a “policy of indirect racial profiling,” was implemented by NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton.

NYPD Police Commissioner also blamed those without fathers for the decline of law enforcement’s effectiveness and hostility against police behavior: “We’re starting to reap what has been sown over the last 40, 50 years, with homes dissolving and homes without parental guidance,” he said on John Gambling’s radio show on AM 970. “There is just less respect for authority. I think some of it’s coming out of the fact that we have so many home environments in our country that are not home environments in the traditional sense, in that there’s no direction at home.”

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton also told the Guardian that he continues to defend the ongoing “broken windows” ultra-aggressive policies of NYPD police officers, mostly against minority neighborhoods. These “broken windows” policies contributed to the NYPD 120th precinct (Staten Island) police strangulation of African-American Eric Garner. The “broken windows” policies are defending by extremists in law enforcement, such as NYC John Jay Criminal Justice College police instructor Peter Moskos, who also seeks to promote whipping and electric shock as punishment for Americans.  Peter Moskos is a “Facebook friend” to NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton.

Former NYPD captain Eric Adams stated that one white NYPD police officer described a largely black housing area as, “these people are all animals; they don’t deserve anything.” The Guardian reported that “Adams says officers and management must stop making assumptions about poor communities based on the ‘numerical minority’ that commits most of the offenses.”

Former NYPD officer Ray Benitez, who is African-American Hispanic, told the Guradian that he observed racial stereotyping among the NYPD police. The Guradian reports that he “watched officers stereotype entire neighborhoods.” He stated that: “You’ve got to know that 95% of the people in the community have no dealing with the police at all. None.” But he still saw a discriminatory attitude among NYPD police. “I’m talking about a thinly veiled disgust…simply because they appear to be in distress, with a different station in life. Maybe the sociological condition is that somehow those cops feel they’re more entitled, that they’re better.” Former NYPD police officer Ray Benitez described the “stop and frisk” procedures on NYPD police taking racial minorties as: “humiliation, maybe even emasculation, of a segment of society.”

Former NYPD police officer Travena Garel stated to the Guardian: “I just think that for a lot of officers, black men are viewed as something other than human beings.”

Responsible for Equality And Liberty believes that a representative democracy involves shared responsibility for societal problems.  No one group is exempt from that shared responsibility as well as our shared universal human rights.  We are disappointed to see extremists in our justice community pointing fingers at problems, and ignoring their own responsibility to be contributors in a representative democracy.  We urge all of our fellow Americans to reconsider what it means to be active participants in a representative democracy for all.

We urge all to be Responsible for Equality And Liberty.