Michael Bloomberg's Latest Failures

The Village Voice continues to shed light on Michael Bloomberg's failures as mayor of New York City, which lately include patronage job appointments as well as racially segregated schools.

In the Voice issue dated February 24-March 2, 2010, Tom Robbins notes the contradiction between a mayor who is threatening massive employee layoffs and closings of firehouses while creating a new six-figure job for a campaign aide who lacks a college degree and who was hired in contravention of agency personnel procedures. Robbins observes that "it's not just a case of one mayoral pal getting a cushy job... hiring cronies has long been standard operating procedure."

Here is Robbins' story: http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-02-23/columns/the-bloomberg-employment-agency/

The Voice's cover story concerns a "zoned" neighborhood school which shares space with a "talented and gifted school" consisting of students who score high on tests given to them at four years of age. The zoned school students are overwhelming Latino and African American and come from the local neighborhood (95th Street and Third Avenue), while the talented/gifted school students are mostly white and Asian and come from all over Manhattan.

Consider these disturbing facts: Interaction between the students and teachers of the two schools is discouraged through deliberate policies. School entrances are separate, with white students entering at the front door to attend the talented/gifted school and black students entering through a back door to attend the zoned school. What kind of symbolism is that?

Furthermore, the students from the two schools arrive at different times and never play or eat together. For a myriad of reasons, including student-teacher ratios, PTAs, fundraising, equipment and labs, the students at the two schools might as well be attending schools in separate buildings because their educational experiences are anything but equal. An NYU professor of education concludes: "What we have here is really Plessy at work: separate, without even being equal - but very much separate."

Read Steven Thrasher's story: http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-02-23/news/inside-a-divided-nyc-public-school

Scott

Statewide Coalition of 43 Organizations Calls on Congress to Reform Patriot Act before Deadline

February 23, 2010 — With Congress poised to vote on reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act later this week, the New York Civil Liberties Union today joined a coalition of 43 organizations from across New York State in urging the state’s federal lawmakers to support critical reforms to the controversial law that would restore Americans’ privacy and constitutional rights. Read more.

NYPD "School Safety"

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly believes in utilizing overwhelming force to combat crime - whether it's helicopters in the sky, officers in unmarked cars chasing Critical Mass bicyclists, an army of officers sealing off lower Manhattan(and thereby making life miserable for many downtown residents) or a massive contingent of School Safety Officers patrolling NYC schools.

What Kelly doesn't believe in is balancing crime prevention efforts with protecting our civil liberties.

As noted in the story below by Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff - the famed civil libertarian who recently returned to the pages of the Voice - the NYPD's School Safety Division, at 5,200 officers, is itself larger than most American police departments. School safety officers, often in opposition from principals, arrest under-age students for relatively minor offenses and then subject them to the criminal justice system. The result is a traumatizing educational experience for our city's students.

Ray Kelly and his defensive deputy commissioner of public information, Paul Browne, likely would dismiss Hentoff's story as anecdotal and unreliable. But for too many students, the accounts are reflective of what life is like with Kelly, rather than Chancellor Joel Klein, overseeing school safety operations in NYC.

It's unfortunate that it takes a lawsuit by the New York Civil Liberties Union, and occasional media stories in The Voice and other papers, to shine some light on Ray Kelly's school safety policies. We ought to hear more from our city's elected officials, who too often prefer to defer to Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Whether this deference will change in the aftermath of last November's surprisingly close municipal elections remains to be seen.

Scott

Bloomberg and Kelly's School Vigilantes Get Failing Grades in a New Lawsuit
By Nat Hentoff Tuesday, Feb 16 2010

For the first time in its history, New York City is being sued in federal court on behalf of all its public-school students.

In a lawsuit charging systemic police abuse, the defendants in the case filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union last month are Mayor Mike Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. The NYCLU has never given up on this national scandal.

Bloomberg has continually insisted that his mayoralty will be judged on what he has done for the schools. Kelly, meanwhile, has deployed 5,200 police personnel in the School Safety Division, which would constitute the fifth largest police department in the country.

The plaintiffs are three student victims "and all others in similar situations" concerning "the unconstitutional policies and practices" of the School Safety Agents (SSAs), who have the power to arrest and are purportedly trained by Commissioner Kelly. A regular member of the NYPD tells me—he understandably prefers not to be named—that this "training" is farcical.

The ignorance that the SSAs have for the constitutional rights of public-school students is evident in the case histories of the lawsuit as well as in the many Voice columns I've written about this national stain on the extended tenure of Michael Bloomberg. The only wonder is how Schools Chancellor Joel Klein missed being listed as a defendant. Klein has relinquished all responsibility for these official actions to Commissioner Kelly.

When the parent of a student who has learned to fear the police complains, a principal will routinely respond by saying there's nothing he or she can do—and directs the parent to a nearby police precinct.

The NYCLU's lawsuit has only been sketchily reported in the local press, but it's gathering national attention in such influential publications as Education Week. Its complaint describes "the official municipal policy of the defendants": "The seizures of students—by means of handcuffing, seclusion, and/or formal arrest—for minor misbehavior that falls short of probable cause of criminal activity." Moreover, "the unlawful . . . excessive use of physical force against schoolchildren constitutes municipal policy [by our Education Mayor] because they occur with such frequency as to amount to a custom and usage of the City-Defendants."

As for Kelly's supposed training and supervising of the SSAs, their "use of excessive force amounts to deliberate indifference [by Kelly], thus constituting official municipal policy," adds the complaint.

Obviously, police are sometimes necessary in schools to assure student safety. But Bloomberg, Kelly, and Klein have allowed the SSAs to become a permanent occupying force—much too often indifferent, to say the least, to the fundamental civil liberties of the school system's students whose safety they are assigned to protect. The Constitution is the core of their safety.

What initial effect has this class-action federal lawsuit had on Bloomberg, Kelly, and Klein? The February 5 Daily News reported: "A 12-year-old Queens girl, Alexa Gonzalez . . . at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills . . . was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense—doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker . . . and walked to the precinct across the street, where she was detained for several hours."

Startled by the Daily News' attention, "city officials acknowledged Alexa's arrest was a mistake. . . ." Alexa [in the same February 5 story], who has been "throwing up," according to her mother, "is still suspended from her school."

The suspension was ultimately lifted, so Alexa won't have to fulfill the original mandated eight hours of community service. But her principal, Marilyn Grant, told Alexa's mother, Moraima Tomacho (Daily News, February 6), that the handcuffing and arrest of the sobbing child wasn't the school's fault. She told the mother that "it was something they had to do."

Not a mumbling word from Chancellor Joel Klein. But an allegedly humane action has since been taken under the direction of the police commissioner: "The NYPD," the Daily News reports, "is expected this month to start using Velcro handcuffs to subdue unruly kids following a pilot program in 22 schools in northern Queens." Those desk doodles by handcuffed, unruly Alexa Gonzalez included a smiley face.

An acutely valuable but underpublicized current book, Schools Under Surveillance: Cultures of Control in Public Education, edited by Torin Monahan and Rodolfo Torres (Rutgers University Press), asks: "What are the long-term effects upon students of routine scrutiny, social sorting, and unequal treatment?" This publication does not neglect this city's School Safety Agents, quoting an NYCLU report: "Fighting in the hallway is classified as assault; swiping a classmate's pencil case can be classified as a property crime; and talking back to an SSA or being late to class is disorderly conduct."

Or, from the NYCLU class-action suit, meet M.M. (initials used because of her age), who, at 16, was in sixth grade at Hunts Point School. She was drawing on paper during class when "her friend reached over to her desk and drew on her paper. Playfully, she drew on his, and then they both drew a line on each other's desk with erasable markers."

As soon as their teacher saw the marks, in came School Safety Officers who took her to the security office where "without the presence of M.M.'s mother, and without informing M.M. of her right to remain silent, an armed NYPD officer interrogated her." She told him she had planned to erase the marks, but didn't have time as the SSAs marched in.

After an SSA took M.M. back into the classroom to get her jacket and bookbag, "he then handcuffed her in the hallway. Because classes were changing, other students and staff could see M.M. being escorted, handcuffed . . . through the building. M.M. repeatedly complained that the handcuffs were hurting her, but the School Safety Officer refused to loosen them—even when a school official requested that they be loosened."

Back in the small security office, frightened and crying, M.M. asked that her mother be called, but the armed regular member of the NYPD refused. M.M., ordered to take off her shoes and sweater, was subjected to a pat-down search. And her bookbag was searched. No school officials were in the room as witnesses. On these matters, Klein and his boss, the mayor, have turned the schools over to Kelly's surrogates.

By then, M.M. and her friend, still handcuffed, were taken to the police precinct after M.M. saw a cop shove her friend so hard into a police car that he fell. He was a perpetrator.

Waiting at the precinct, M.M.'s mother watched as manacled M.M. was brought in, disheveled, jacket falling off, shoelaces untied, crying, pleading, "Mommy, get me out of here!" She and her fellow suspect were taken to another room, handcuffed to a bench, fingerprinted, and photographed. Did they get Miranda warnings? Of course not—they were in school being protected from recidivism by Ray Kelly's School Safety Officers and other uniformed police.

To assure himself that M.M. realized the seriousness of her infraction, the arresting officer threatened to put her and her accomplice into the general jail population with, he said, "the killers and murderers" there: "You are going to have to scream, and you'll be lucky if anyone comes to help you."

To make sure the lesson of her unruly actions had sunk in, this member of New York's Finest asked, "You scared? You scared?"

Somehow, in her cage, M.M. fell asleep for several hours—to be awakened by that same colleague of Commissioner Kelly yelling: "Nobody cares about you in here! In school, people care. Nobody cares in here! This is real life. You all going to get in trouble for what you all do!"

Will Michael Bloomberg, Ray Kelly, and the ghostly Joel Klein get in any trouble for what they didn't do after handing this city's public schools over to the police? I'll keep you informed.

According to the lawsuit, "M.M. continues to fear the NYPD at her school. She feels that they will subject her to unlawful seizures, arrests, excessive force, and harassment in the future."

M.M. has certainly learned her lesson of fearing the police.

New York City Council Lulus

It is disturbing enough that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is able to buy loyalty - and thereby secure her reelection as Speaker - by awarding substantial lulus (stipends) to Council members who hold committee chairs and leadership positions.

But the hypocritical decision of some Council members to accept lulus after pledging not to do so in Citizens Union candidate questionnaires reflects an attitude best epitomized by golfer Tiger Woods: entitlement.

When career politicians shed their campaign promises once they are elected, and place self-interest above the public interest, they breed public cynicism and help to create an anti-incumbent climate in which voters turn against them.

Click the following link to read the Citizens Union report on City Council lulus, including a table which lists the positions of all City Council members on eliminating lulus, their actions in accepting/rejecting/donating lulus and the dollar amount of lulus that were awarded.
http://www.citizensunion.org/site_res_view_template.aspx?id=769c6383-59ce-4320-9f93-a0823f0d9891

Scott

The New York County UnDemocratic Committee

The New York County UnDemocratic Committee
February 13, 2010
by Jim McCabe

The decision by the New York County Democratic Committee to endorse Senator Kirsten Gillibrand for election in 2010 over the process based objections of challenger Jonathan Tasini underscores the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Committee. As reported in City Hall News, Tasini objected to the fact that Gillibrand met with the executive committee of the County Committee in January, while he was only offered five minutes to speak before an endorsement vote was to be taken this past Thursday. In his initial response, County Leader / Assemblyman Keith Wright indicates that Gillibrand enjoyed this privilege since “the incontrovertible fact is that [Gillibrand] is an elected official and New York's Democratic Senator.” Of course, what he fails to acknowledge is that Gillibrand was not elected to the seat that she currently holds—which is precisely Tasini’s point—having been appointed by Governor David Patterson in January 2009 to fill the vacancy left by Hillary Clinton’s departure for the State Department. Wright points out that Gillibrand had endorsements from county chairs and committees across the state. Indeed, this was the case by July 2009. However, it skirts the issue of fairness in the process followed by the New York County Democratic Committee that Wright leads. In a follow-up letter to Tasini, Wright indignantly rails “what is not acceptable is for you to impugn the integrity of New York County’s endorsement process as undemocratic in the name of the people when your true motivation may be simply political self-interest.”

Significantly, there is nothing in the New York County Democratic Committee rules that specifically empowers the executive committee to make endorsements on behalf of the County Committee or that describes a process for doing so. The rules simply state “[t]he Policy Committee may also make recommendations to the Executive Committee with relation to endorsement of candidates and positions to be taken on issues.” No doubt the leadership enjoys the lack of specificity regarding process which permits the executive committee to do pretty much whatever it pleases.

The reality is that the vast majority of the members of the New York County Democratic Committee have no influence whatsoever in the business of the Committee which is controlled by the executive committee and the district leaders. There are a few subcommittees of the County Committee and all sorts of subcommittees of the executive committee but no clearly delineated way in the rules for how to get involved. Those regular citizens who even know about the Committee can go through the process every two years of collecting signatures to be elected to this non-paying party position. However, their participation generally is limited to attending one farcical meeting held every two years at which no business of any consequence is conducted. The rules call for divisional assembly district committee meetings but at least in my own district – assembly district 65 – such meetings are never held. It is only in the rare instance when a vacancy occurs in the state assembly that the County Committee members have a role, which is to select the party nominee to run in a special election. Such was the case when Micah Kellner was selected as the Democratic nominee to replace the long serving assemblymember Pete Grannis in assembly district 65. In that instance, it came to light that there were a very substantial number of vacancies in the County Committee seats in assembly district 65 that were actually filled to carry out this important function, a situation that had been publicized well over a year earlier by Grassroots Initiative in its report “Democracy Takes a Nap: Party Politics in New York's Five Boroughs.”

At the fall 2007 County Committee meeting, as a newly elected member of the Committee from assembly district 65, I rose in objection to what was going to be a “slam dunk” motion to approve the Committee’s rules, rules which I ventured to guess most members of the County Committee had never been provided nor read. I had only received a copy after requesting them from the executive director. My main objection was a draconian provision in the rules regarding the number of signatures required to place business on the Committee’s agenda by petition and the related filing timeline which essentially required items to be placed on the agenda even before notice of the meeting had been issued.

To his credit, I was subsequently invited by Denny Farrell, the long-serving county leader, to a meeting of the policy committee to address my concerns. I outlined my proposed rule changes in a letter to Farrell, seeking to make it less onerous for registered Democrats and County Committee members to bring issues before the Committee. I also made a number of other easy-to-implement suggestions intended to bring greater transparency to the Committee’s operations, such as keeping the website up to date, posting the Committee rules and membership, etc. I noted that much of this information is maintained by the non-partisan group Grassroots Initiative and working with them would help to get more party members active at the local level.

At the meeting, Farrell was willing to meet my requests regarding the rule changes part of the way. He agreed in principle to cut in half the number of signatures needed to place business on the agenda of the County Committee via petition. He said the Committee would need to consult with the parliamentarian to effect the change and that he would let me know the final outcome. He also indicated that he'd try to get the election law changed so that the county committee meeting could be held 30 days (rather than the current 20) after the election which would address the timing of the petition filing issue that I had raised.

I left the meeting feeling that some progress had been made. However, the Committee parliamentarian later blocked the changes from moving forward, telling me that I was trying to do an end run in proposing rule changes that hadn't been vetted through my democratic club. I appealed to the male district leader for my assembly district who was present at the meeting in question and had raised no objections at that time (nor had anyone else present). I heard nothing more.

Regarding my more modest suggestions, the executive director had indicated at the meeting that he was working on getting the website updated. Farrell, however, rejected the idea of posting the list of County Committee members on the website as being too hard. While acknowledging that it was an embarrassment that so few seats had been previously filled in assembly district 65, he was not interested in working with Grassroots Initiative and was generally dismissive of criticism by groups outside the party. To this day, the County Committee website remains woefully out of date, virtually worthless as a resource to registered Democrats who might want to become involved in party politics, the media or anyone else.

Keith Wright was installed to succeed Denny Farrell as Democratic county leader in Manhattan last October. If his actions in the recent Tasini incident are any indication, it is “business as usual.” Wright can throw around all the bluster he wants but it belies the reality that the New York County Democratic Committee is a fundamentally undemocratic institution.

Political Arrests in New York City

On Jan. 24, Jim Dwyer reported in The New York Times on a disturbing pattern of political arrests in which individuals are investigated and arrested by the NYPD after criticizing politicians in Staten Island, New York. The mayor's office, the NYPD and the Staten Island borough president's office all declined to explain or defend these investigations and arrests.

Criticism of politicians is a fundamental right which is supposed to be protected by the First Amendment. Political arrests should not be tolerated in New York City - or hushed up in quiet settlement payoffs by New York City's Corporation Counsel. There must be actual accountability for these First Amendment violations.

Monetary damages are an insufficient remedy when police violate the First Amendment by investigating, and arresting, citizens who dare to "annoy" politicians on Staten Island.

Real justice would include oversight hearings by the City Council's Public Safety Committee, discipline of offending police officers, and investigations by New York's Attorney General and the Justice Department's Civil Rights division.

Civil damages against a city with deep pockets, even in a fiscal crisis, will do little to protect citizens from a police department which seemingly is intent on using its arrest powers to shield politicians from public criticism.

Jim Dwyer's story, which appears below, should enrage, and worry, anyone who has ever "annoyed" a politician as part of political activism. If this abuse of police power can happen in Staten Island, surely it can happen to activists in elsewhere in New York City - as it did when the NYPD investigated and infiltrated many groups in advance of the Republican National Convention in 2004 and illegally arrested 1,800 demonstrators/bystanders while President Bush and Mayor Bloomberg were inside Madison Square Garden.

Scott

About New York

Annoying a Politician and Ending Up in Cuffs

By JIM DWYER

Published: January 22, 2010

One evening last August, as Edward Kerry Sullivan stood outside his apartment building on Staten Island, a car pulled up and a man got out. By Mr. Sullivan’s recollection, the conversation went like this:

Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

JAILED Terence Hunter was arrested in 2001 after writing to a Staten Island official. He sued and settled for $200,000.

“Are you Edward Sullivan?” the man asked.

“That’s me,” Mr. Sullivan said.

“Do you have anything on you that I should be worried about?” the man asked.

“Who are you?” Mr. Sullivan replied.

“Police,” the man said. “You’re under arrest.”

A second police officer, in plain clothes like the first, stood by. They handcuffed him and then folded him into their unmarked car.

The officers told him, Mr. Sullivan said, that they had been watching him for several days.

The crime?

He had written “The Jerk,” about three inches high, on a campaign poster for James P. Molinaro, the Staten Island borough president. The undercover officers had taken a picture of the poster. There was no question that Mr. Sullivan had written it; moreover, there was no doubt that for weeks before that, he had launched far more pungent strikes against Mr. Molinaro in letters to a newspaper and public officials, criticizing the borough president’s plans to develop part of the Staten Island waterfront.

Somehow the police had begun an investigation of Mr. Sullivan, 52, a former merchant marine who is now an advocate for environmental protection. He was brought to the 120th Precinct and charged with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Once the case came to court, the Staten Island district attorney declined to prosecute him.

Who gave the orders for the police to investigate him? Why would a nearly broke city squander resources on this? And by the way, what about freedom of speech?

Representatives of the Bloomberg administration, the New York Police Department and Mr. Molinaro’s office did not respond to these and other questions. So far, no one has explained why the government used its power of arrest against Mr. Sullivan.

Since early 2003, the Police Department has been given more power to investigate political activities that, in its view, might pose a threat to public order. Getting such powers for the police was a major policy initiative of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly; and the corporation counsel, Michael A. Cardozo.

Yet the Sullivan case could be rooted in a long custom of police and political entanglements on Staten Island. In January 2001, a city employee named Terence Hunter wrote to the borough president at the time, Guy V. Molinari, to complain about the closing of a community center in a predominantly black neighborhood. He compared it to a “high-tech lynching” and accused Mr. Molinari of being the type of person who would approve of a lynching — including a picture of the low-tech kind in the letter.

The day after Mr. Hunter’s letter arrived at the borough president’s office, five officers from the Intelligence Division came to his home. He was arrested, photographed, fingerprinted and interrogated. He said he was ordered to write an explanation of the letter. After spending the night in a cell, he was released from the courthouse the next day without charge.

He sued. Had the case gone through the normal process for city lawsuits, he and his lawyers from the New York Civil Liberties Union would have had a chance to question officials under oath about how he had come to be arrested. Instead, city lawyers offered him $200,000 for his night in jail. He took it.

“The city clearly was in a rush to settle Hunter so as to keep us from delving into the relationship between the N.Y.P.D. on Staten Island and the borough president’s office,” said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Now Mr. Sullivan, too, has sued. Once again, the use of police resources in a political debate will be a central issue. The posters themselves appear to have been put up illegally. Given that, it is unlikely that writing on one of them, as Mr. Sullivan did, would violate any law.

Last summer, in letters to The Staten Island Advance and to elected officials, Mr. Sullivan criticized Mr. Molinaro (who succeeded the nearly identically named Mr. Molinari in 2002) over the private development of 36 shorefront acres, saying it was a betrayal of the public trust.

Mr. Sullivan — who is fighting cancer and hoping for a liver transplant from someone with type O-positive blood — said the arrest had worn him down.

The circumstances of his arrest are too important to be explored only in a civil case, which often winds up being simply a matter of dollars and cents. The City Council is supposed to watch over the executive branch of government, including the police. A lawsuit does not freeze the rest of democracy. Nor is it a substitute.

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com

A version of this article appeared in print on January 24, 2010, on page LI1 of the New York edition.