NYPD Destroyed Evidence of Bogus Ticketing Operation — Almost 1 Million Fake Summonses Written for Quota

ONE guess at which ethnic groups ended up getting saturated with all the bogus tickets.

A text message obtained from a whistleblower shows a sergeant admonishing a beat
cop for failing to issue enough seatbelt summonses.

By Stephen Rex Brown

The NYPD and city lawyers are engaging in a “stunning pattern” of evidence destruction in a high-stakes class-action case alleging cops have issued 850,000 bogus summonses due to a quota system, new documents charge.

Attorneys for the city have failed to turn over even one email from the files of former Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly or former Chief of Department Joseph Esposito regarding summons activity over the last eight years, attorney Elinor Sutton writes in new filings in Manhattan Federal Court seeking sanctions against the city.

“It is simply not tenable that Commissioner Kelly and Chief Esposito did not — in the entire period of 2007 through the present — write or receive emails using terms” related to the word “summons,” Sutton writes.

RELATED STORY: New York City Cop Who Blew Whistle On Arrest Quota System Allowed to Sue City — Judge Rules

The city was unable to find any communications about summonses in the files of three other former members of NYPD brass, as well.

Does lying start at the top?

Ray Kelly: Until recently the Police Commissioner of New York
City. He repeatedly claimed there were no quotas for 'Stop and
Frisk.' He wasn't telling the truth. (Photo by US Department of
Homeland Security)

But that’s not the only example of missing evidence, Sutton says.

Police Lt. Stevelle Brown, who is alleged to have implemented a quota in Queens’ 105th Precinct, has destroyed text messages in which he denied a cop time off for failing to meet goals for traffic summonses, Sutton charges.

She also points to an exchange from an officer identified only as Sgt. Carty, who sternly admonished a cop for failing to issue enough seatbelt summonses.

“We missed seat belt number by 30 last week unacceptable. if need be u guys will go with me 2 traffic stat 2 explain why u missed,” the text reads.

Lastly, Sutton has introduced emails from Capt. Andrew Benjamin, who laments the lack of arrests among his top overtime earners in the Bronx Task Force division.

“This has to stop it is ridiculous to have 50 + hours with only one arrest,” Benjamin wrote.

RELATED STORY: Hero Cop Blew the Lid Off of the NYPD's Racially Discriminatory "Stop-and-Frisk" Practices  and he Backed Up his Claims with Audio Recordings Documenting "Stop-and-Frisk" Quotas 

Sutton said lawyers obtained the three exchanges through whistleblowers or by other means. The city has been unable to obtain its own copies of the messages. That’s proof, Sutton writes, that the communications have been improperly destroyed.

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Mass "Stop and Frisk" in New York City Blocked Blacks From Getting On Police Force — Admits NYPD Chief

When you randomly stop virtually every person in any community, sooner or later you are going to find illegal contraband.  That's how mass "Stop and Frisk" is used to criminalize generation after generation of blacks with misdemeanor arrests. The resulting "criminal" record is then used to block blacks from entire sections of the job market for the rest of their lives. This is also why mass "Stop and Frisk" is not inflicted on white communities — If you stopped every other white teenager, what do you think you would find in their pockets? The chief of the NYPD has just admitted that years of "Stop and Frisk" (targeting literally hundreds of thousands of blacks) has helped to keep the police force overwhelmingly white. Then he changed his mind and demanded a retraction from the British newspaper that reported his comments.

New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton. (Illustration by DonkeyHotey)

By Lauren Gambino
Hiring more non-white officers is difficult because so many would-be recruits have criminal records, the New York police commissioner, Bill Bratton, has said.

RELATED STORY: Bratton Demands Retraction After Interview on Hiring Black Cops - Report

“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,” Bratton said in an interview with the Guardian. Police departments, responding to widespread protests against several high-profile police killings of black men, are boosting efforts to recruit more non-white officers. But budget restrictions, strained relations between police and minority communities and, according to Bratton, a history of indiscriminate policing tactics that disproportionately target black and Latino men complicate the department’s goal of racial parity.

Bratton blamed the “unfortunate consequences” of an explosion in “stop, question and frisk” incidents that caught many young men of color in the net by resulting in them being given a summons for a minor misdemeanor. As a result, Bratton said, the “population pool [of eligible non-white officers] is much smaller than it might ordinarily have been”.

The application process to join the NYPD includes, among other things, a complete criminal background check.

[...]
The controversial stop-and-frisk policy was struck down in 2013 by a federal judge, who called the practice a “policy of indirect racial profiling”. Judge Shira A Scheindlin found that the program led officers to routinely stop “blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white”.

But critics say Bratton - who helped shrink the widespread use of stop-and-frisk -is partly, if not ultimately, responsible for the relative paucity of eligible non-white recruits.

“It is a net that he set out for them,” said Rochelle Bilal, vice-chair of the National Black Police Association and a former Philadelphia police officer. “If [Bratton] didn’t stop people for nothing, he might have a bigger pool to hire from.”

[...]

Black defendants were 15% more likely than white defendants to be imprisoned for misdemeanor offenses and drug offenses, and 14% more likely than their white counterparts to be imprisoned for felony drug offenses, according to a July 2014 study, published by the Vera Institute of Justice of prosecutions handled by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Overall, black defendants were 5% more likely to be sentenced to time in prison than white defendants facing a similar charge, the study found.
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Racist School Superintendent?: Parents Issued Arrest Warrants for Cheering For Children at High School Graduation Ceremony

Power tripping superintendent, Jay Foster, inadvertently gave students
a lesson on pointless criminalization and mass incarceration in
America.

By Caitlin MacNeal
Four people were charged with disturbing the peace after cheering too loudly at a high school graduation ceremony in Senatobia, Miss., Memphis television station WREG reported on Tuesday.

Police at Northwest Mississippi Community College, where the ceremony was held, told WREG that Senatobia Municipal School District Superintendent Jay Foster, told attendees at the ceremony to refrain from cheering and applause until the end of the ceremony.

Four people, including Ursula Miller and Henry Walker (pictured below), both of whom are black, were asked to leave the ceremony after cheering on the graduates.

When Lanarcia Walker graduated, Miller yelled out her niece's name.

RELATED STORY: District Drops Charges Over Cheers at a Mississippi Graduation

"When she went across the stage I just called her name out. ‘Lakaydra’. Just like that," Miller told WREG.

Henry Walker received arrest warrant for cheering during graduation
ceremony.

And Walker cheered and waved a towel as Lanarcia graduated, according to Lanarcia's mother, Linda Walker.

"He said ‘you did it baby’, waved his towel and went out the door," she said.

A few days after the ceremony, those asked to leave for cheering were served with arrest warrants.

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