The official purpose of Tuesday’s digital City Council hearing was to discuss a slate of police reform bills before the council. But what the hearing really accomplished was to reveal in miniature – if a 10-hour hearing can be said to be miniature – the state of power, policy and policing in New York City at this moment. Politicians who have spent years enabling the police are scrambling to get it right in this new climate; the NYPD, uncowed, shrugged off the council's feeble gestures at oversight; and an endless parade of New Yorkers were left to weep and rage to each other over a 10-hour Zoom call.
First, there were the politicians. In their opening remarks, City Council members and the Public Advocate beat their breasts in indignation at the well-documented violence of NYPD officers against protesters over the preceding weeks, and decried a police department operating without accountability. “There is a sickness in the culture of this department,” Public Safety Chairman Donovan Richards told the NYPD witnesses appearing by Zoom at the hearing. “We’re marching because we’re tired of having knees on our neck.”
Of course, virtually all of the elected officials scrambling to project righteous outrage at the NYPD’s apparent impunity have played some part in building it, whether through the council’s toothless oversight processes or through their support of measures like the 2015 budget that expanded the force by 1,300 officers. Some chose not to acknowledge this, others did. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who is widely believed to be running for mayor, opted for a fulsome mea culpa.
“I’ve made mistakes,” Johnson said. “I had good intentions, I thought I was doing the right thing. But being defensive isn’t helpful. Voting to hire 1,300 new cops instead of pushing for more investments in communities was wrong. Increasing the PD’s budget year after year was wrong without making those investments in communities in a meaningful way. Not moving quickly or aggressively enough on police reform was wrong. We need a reckoning”
Across the virtual table sat the police. But not Commissioner Dermot Shea, whose snub clearly frustrated the council members. Where was he? They repeatedly demanded of the deputies and lawyers he’d dispatched instead. The deputies shrugged.
In his opening remarks, First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker largely stuck to the boilerplate of NYPD council testimony. The police are committed to cooperating with civilian oversight, he said, the police acknowledge that “we can always do better.” But Tucker continued the recent pattern of the police and mayor of denying knowledge of troubling police behavior, from the kettling of thousands of protesters on the Manhattan Bridge to the coordinated violence against protesters in the Bronx, down to the police practice of confiscating arrestees masks while holding them in cramped detention.
Asked about widspread police violence, Tucker continued the administration’s strategy of pleading ignorance. “They need batons,” he told the Council, speaking of police doing crowd-control. “When you say we’re beating peaceful demonstrators, that’s troubling because that’s not the purpose, that’s not what they should be doing, if indeed that happened.”
Had the police produced a written plan for handling the protests that the council might review? A council member wanted to know. They hadn’t, Tucker said. Wasn’t the department required to draw up a plan, under the patrol guide? “That's just a guideline,” Tucker explained. “That's why they call it a Patrol Guide.”
Councilmember Brad Lander, clearly disgusted by the NYPD’s insouciance in the face of civilian oversight, said it was becoming obvious the hearing was not going to be productive. "Council is going to need to take stronger leadership beyond these bills,” he said, and invoked the budget process, where the Council is being called upon by police critics to defund the NYPD budget by $1 billion or more.
Asked about the introduction of ICE officers into New York City policing, which Mayor de Blasio had denied only the day before, Tucker acknowledged that federal agents had indeed been deployed during the protests, but only to guard precinct houses in order to free up more officers to hit the streets. Did some written agreement govern that arrangement? Tucker was asked. No, he said.
The specific legislation under consideration by the Council was hardly bold: a measure codifying the right to film the police, which is already protected by case law, not that it makes much difference to police; a bill to require police to display their shield numbers, already required by the NYPD Patrol Guide, for what little that has been shown to be worth; a bill calling for the state and federal legislatures to take action; a bill that has been circulating for years that would make it a misdemeanor to choke someone while effecting an arrest.
Nonetheless, Tucker and the police lawyers flanking him also pushed back on further curtailment of police behavior. The administration could only support the chokehold bill if it were narrowed to exempt officers who might have accidentally choked someone during an arrest, they said.
Queens Councilmember Rory Lancman, the bill’s author was having none of it.
“How many officers, if any, have been fired over a substantiated choke-hold complaint?” Lancman asked. (The Civilian Complaint Review Board has received 986 complaints that included allegations of chokeholds or restricted breathing since the beginning of 2015, according to a CCRB spokesperson. Of the 352 it fully investigated, it substantiated 35.)
“None,” Tucker answered. Counting Daniel Pantaleo, who fatally choked Eric Garner on Staten Island in 2014 and remained on the force for five years before finally being fired last year, Tucker corrected himself, the number is one.
How many officers suspended for a substantiated choke-hold allegation? Lancman pressed.
“None,” Tucker answered.
Lancman pointed out that the accidental-choke-hold argument was a centerpiece of Daniel Pantaleo’s defense during his disciplinary hearing, and that making accusers prove deliberate motivation in holding officers account would open a gaping loophole in the legislation. “We’re not going to let you put an intent standard in this,” he told the police.
Protesters in Manhattan on June 8, 2020.
After nearly four hours, the hearing was opened to public comment. As is their longstanding practice at City Council hearings, the NYPD witnesses ducked out before the people began to speak. This further enraged some Councilmembers when they realized several hours into the public comments that the NYPD brass had logged off.
Councilmember Carlos Menchaca interrupted the testimony to ask if any police officials still on the video call could identify themselves. Crickets. Was anyone from City Hall on the call? Silence. “This is B.S.,” Menchaca said in disgust. Speaker Johnson directed Council staff to contact the police and the Mayor’s office to get them back. Every agency testifying before Council is required to stay through public comments, Johnson said. There was no evidence from the video call that Johnson’s efforts were successful.
But even without the police or the mayor, and even as more council members dropped out, the following hours of the hearing were remarkable. For the better part of six hours, ordinary New Yorkers of every age, race and background testified, raged, pleaded, wept, cursed, and bore witness. Many of the witnesses had been in protests over the past two weeks and had been injured, traumatized, or shocked by what they had seen done to others. Most were nearly as outraged by the evident impotence of City Council as they were with the police.
Charlie Monlouis Anderle, a trans woman, spoke through tears of having their arm broken, their hands cuffed so tightly they turned blue, and urinating themselves in terror, as police mocked and ignored their pleas for medical assistance. Speaking hours later, Allie Holoway displayed her own bruised wrists and said she had been on the same Corrections Bus as Anderle, and wanted to confirm every aspect of her account.
“They beat us with a smile on their faces,” said Sarah MacEneaney, “Knowing… City Council won’t stop them."
“My God, you guys are cowards,” said Ziggy Leecock, addressing the Councilmembers still present.
Jess la Bombalera, calling in from a rooftop in El Barrio: “City Council members, you posing like you opposing them, for your soundbites, for your social media, for your reelection campaigns? Fuck outta here, you’ve been supporting the cops.”
David Moss, a former staffer for Speaker Johnson, recounted with emotion watching the unprovoked police violence in Mott Haven last week. “I’ve worked in the City Council, I’ve seen up close and personal how city council members think about their reelections, their campaigns for mayor, they think about real estate interests, police unions, more than they think about black lives,” Moss said. “Think bigger. Get with the real solutions or get out of the way.”
Many of the speakers seemed to find catharsis and comfort in this peculiar space of a government Zoom call largely deserted by its official sponsors. But they were skeptical about the capacity of politicians to exert control over the police. Final public testimony came from Naqiya Hussain, who addressed the city council directly.
“We’ve been here for hours, telling our stories, listening to trauma, holding space for this community,” Hussain said. “And I want to know: Why? Clearly our elected members don’t have enough power over the NYPD to make them sit here and listen as they should. So why are we here? What is going to happen?”
