As Mayor de Blasio faces fallout from relentless NYPD brutality, the mayor's standing with minority communities is on shaky ground

PUBLISHED : FRI, 08 AUG 2014, 04:41 PM
UPDATED : SAT, 09 AUG 2014, 02:02 PM

Will GOTV gimmicks from 2013 election come back to haunt Mayor de Blasio ?

Minority support for de Blasio is tenuous, at best, because of the political machinations used to win over the Black vote in last year's mayoral election. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is reportedly fuming that the Rev. Al Sharpton voiced sharp criticisms of the NYPD at the mayor's round table discussion, which was staged last week, The New York Post reported today. City Hall insiders, grappling with growing minority discontent and criticisms of the mayor over the homicide of Eric Garner at the hands of NYPD officers, are trying to insulate the mayor from minority unrest about the relentless instances of NYPD brutality and the police department's record of intentionally targeting and discriminating against low-income and minority communities. Two months ago, the last Quinnipiac University Poll revealed that the mayor had lost support amongst White voters and that his sole base of support remained amongst minority voters. Political bloggers have since been predicting that the mayor's regressive appointment of William Bratton as police commissioner, the mayor's embrace of Commissioner Bratton's discriminatory Broken Windows theory of policing, the militarized raids of public housing developments, the endless and sometimes violent police arrests that target people of color seeking public accommodation aboard mass transit, the summer policing offensive ordered by Commissioner Bratton, and recent examples of police brutality, including the choking homicide of Mr. Garner, would cost the mayor popularity amongst minority voters. This appears to be coming true. That Rev. Sharpton has moved from an obedient supporter of City Hall machinations to squash minority discontent to becoming a vocal critic of the de Blasio administration's handling of the community anger arising from the long, over-due overhaul of the NYPD, shows that even some of the mayor's most visible "Yes Men" may be distancing themselves from the mayor. It's been reported that the mayor wants to take a centrist approach to policing that still defends aspects of the NYPD's tactics that voters find brutal and discriminatory, a tortured position that critics believe is the mayor's payback to wealth real estate developers, who view Broken Windows policing as a key driver of gentrification. For the mayor, the political ramifications of fraying minority relations are fraught with consequences. If he loses support amongst minority voters, some political bloggers believe that he will become a lame duck, one-term mayor. Mayor de Blasio has been caught unawares, because the mayor, advised by a team of tone-deaf lobbyists and political campaign consultants, were operating under the misconception that they had already instructed the city's minority leaders to toe the party line following the election of the city's first Democratic mayor in 20 years. For instance, when then mayor-elect de Blasio first announced his appointment of Mr. Bratton as police commissioner, the mayor's team of lobbyists worked behind the scenes to strong-arm many of the city's minority leaders to issue to journalists statements approving of Mr. Bratton's appointment as police commissioner in a manipulative, preemptive move to prevent any criticisms of the thin-skinned mayor-elect. The mayor and his advisors were nervous that Mr. Bratton's embrace of the discriminatory Broken Windows approach to policing and past scandals of police brutality would become a source of division, which the mayor's advisors largely succeeded in neutralizing, except for ongoing protests by police reform activists affiliated with the protest group, New Yorkers Against Bratton, which the mayor's operatives have been downplaying -- until the NYPD killing of Mr. Garner opened the public eyes to what New Yorkers Against Bratton had been saying all along : that the mayor was not fully committed to overhauling the NYPD. But manipulating minority leaders into supporting the Bratton appointment wasn't the first time when the mayor and his advisors twisted race issues to his advantage. Let's look back to how race was a factor in the mayor's election. Mayor de Blasio's police relations round table was limited to only Whites and Blacks. You may not like the reason why : Blacks played an outsized role in the mayor's campaign win. Political power brokers generally predict spikes in the the percentage of Black voter turn out if enough Black candidates run for office in contested races, creating an advantage for Black-favored candidates. In the last municipal election, the lawyer Ken Thompson, a close friend of Mayor de Blasio, waged a political campaign to unseat Charles Hynes as the Brooklyn District Attorney. Despite Mr. Thompson’s denials, it was widely reported that Mr. Thompson’s campaign was advised by former Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Clarence Norman, with Masa Moore in some other role, meaning that old-line Brooklyn Black leaders were siding with Mr. Thompson's insurgent candidacy to unseat D.A. Hynes. To help Mr. Thompson win, Mr. de Blasio campaigned for him, and Mr. Thompson had the endorsement of the Working Families Party. As a result of the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and D.A. Hynes' reputation for refusing to challenge NYPD cases based on the unconstitutional tactic of stop-and-frisk, D.A. Hynes was seen as vulnerable to minority voters. In New York City, the two power centers of Black voting power are Harlem and Central Brooklyn. Whilst Mr. Thompson, Mr. Norman, and Mr. Moore were energizing Black voters to turn out to defeat D.A. Hynes, a potential existed to inflate the pool of minority voters for the primary election, an opportunity that could be exploited by the de Blasio campaign if his advisors could find a way harness a larger minority vote turn-out to his advantage. Meanwhile, D.A. Hynes was relying on campaign support from Scott Levenson, George Arzt, and Mortimer Matz. One of those advisors, Mr. Levenson, became involved in a conflict of interest during last year's election when it was reported that the lobbying and campaign consulting firm he heads, The Advance Group, was paid to manage Yetta Kurland’s City Council campaign during the same election cycle when The Advance Group was paid to help Corey Johnson, who was Ms. Kurland’s opponent in her City Council race. In last year’s elections, The Advance Group also worked to defeat several LGBT City Council candidates as a backroom favor, the details of which remain undisclosed, to an unnamed political operative to benefit City Action Coalition PAC, a controversial political action committee dedicated to right-wing causes, such as "traditional marriage." The Advance Group gave conflicting statements about the nature of the favor it was doing for the unnamed operative connected to City Action Coalition PAC, first describing the work as a "favor" and then describing its decision as one made in the "heat of the moment," adding that the firm hadn't performed its "due diligence." The New York Times noted that the normally left-leaning firm, The Advance Group, represented candidates "backed by the Real Estate Board of New York and candidates vigorously attacking that board" in last year's election cycle. Although D.A. Hynes had earned the ire of minorities, he was relying upon Mr. Levenson's unprincipled firm as one of the three underpinnings key to his reelection. Mr. Levenson, a longtime advisor to some of the founding leaders and institutions of the Working Families Party, overlaps with Mayor de Blasio's political background, since some of the founders of the Working Families Party have been described to be operatives and organizations with close ties to the mayor. Mr. Levenson's left-leaning bona fides were all the more incongruent with his firm's representation of D.A. Hynes, since the other key advisor to D.A. Hynes’ reelection campaign was Mr. Arzt, an establishment campaign manager, who is more politically aligned with mainstream Democrats, who can be described as old-guard, whereas Mr. Levenon saw himself as more supportive of "insurgent candidates." Why would the more radical Mr. Levenson work with old, stodgy Mr. Arzt on D.A. Hynes’ troubled reelection race ? Mr. Levenson, with his close ties to the Working Families Party, was advising Mr. Hynes, even though Mr. Hynes’ opponent, Mr. Thompson, had been endorsed by the Working Families Party, another shady arrangement. In order for Mr. de Blasio to win last year’s mayoral election and prevent a costly and bruising primary-run off election against his rival, Bill Thompson, Mr. de Blasio needed to win the Black vote, and he needed for political operatives loyal to him to take down the campaign of his chief political rival, former Council Speaker Quinn. Separate from The Advance Group's controversial involvement in the take-down of former Speaker Quinn's mayoral campaign, the role of The Advance Group in race politics cannot go unexamined. The winner in the Brooklyn District Attorney race was going to depend on Black voter turn-out, predicted The New York Times. A large turn-out of Black voters, needed by Mr. Thompson, the Brooklyn District Attorney candidate, could conceivably have a positive spill-over effect for Mr. de Blasio’s mayoral campaign, given the close associations the two political races shared. For Mr. Thompson to win, Mr. Hynes' reelection campaign had to be taken down. In the end, the advise and counsel of three seasoned political consultants failed D.A. Hynes. Against this backdrop, Mayor de Blasio released the political campaign commercial featuring his bi-racial son, Dante de Blasio. The warm and fuzzy campaign commercial resonated with voters, who were looking to turn the page on, I hate to say it, a rich White billionaire, who reprimanded New Yorkers like a nagging nanny. However, the younger Mr. de Blasio's campaign commercial did more for his father : it was created to inspire Black voters to see Mr. de Blasio as one of them, setting the stage for a crafted perception of Mr. de Blasio as having sensibilities of what the minority experience was like in New York precisely because his own wife and children were minorities. This perception would only hold together, though, so long as the machinations that created this perception could hold together. Mayor de Blasio's support amongst minority voters, critical to his defeat of Bill Thompson in the primary, was made possible by so much background work that Mr. Thompson, the mayoral candidate, was unable to break a tie with Mr. de Blasio in respect of Black voters, according to exit polling results reported by The New York Daily News. During an election when the LGBT community rejected identity politics and voted former Speaker Quinn out of office, Mr. de Blasio was engaged in a war to tug the identity politics strings of Black voters. Some of the background political operative machinations that helped the de Blasio campaign win the mayorship included having the support of Rev. Sharpton. As was revealed this week, Rev. Sharpton said that he and his supporters “won the election.” Although the Rev. Sharpton framed the win in terms of having brought racial issues, such as the demand to end the police tactic of stop-and-frisk, to the fore, political bloggers could not overlook the fact that the Rev. Sharpton also failed to make an endorsement in last year's mayor's race, a crucial decision that may have cost Mr. Thompson, the mayoral candidate, the race. Returning to the present, this revelation could have only been made possible, because of growing minority discontent over police relations with minority communities in the wake of Mr. Garner's choking death. As the minority community looks to its duplicitous leaders to press the de Blasio administration for an overhaul of the NYPD, as the Rev. Sharpton comes under blowback criticisms from police unions, and as the de Blasio administration contorts itself to continue support of the discriminatory Broken Windows approach to policing, the system is turning on itself in search of a resolution. Only when the system turns on itself can the public expect the press to finally pull back the curtain on the corrupt backroom machinations that drive how politicians manage our government -- and on how complex elections are actually won. Mayor de Blasio's support amongst the minority community was built upon a foundation of a campaign commercial, which political bloggers across the city believe was tested before focus-groups to craft the most politically-appealing message. Behind the scenes, political operatives loyal to the mayor were counting on each of Mr. Thompson, the Brooklyn District Attorney candidate, to create a spike in Black voters in Central Brooklyn and on the Rev. Sharpton to withhold any endorsement in the mayor's race, striking a blow to the hopes of Mr. Thompson, the mayoral candidate, of receiving the positive impact of the Reverend's endorsement. As the mayor wades through the fallout of relentless NYPD controversies, which the public rightly sees to be race- and income-based, the campaign machinations may give way to a new set of perceptions that the public form of their own accord, meaning that viral social media videos of NYPD brutality and murder will supplant slick campaign commercials in shaping public opinion. If the mayor really cared about resetting his own minority relations, much less the community relations between minority groups and the police department, he'd end the discriminatory Broken Windows approach to policing, he's replace Mr. Bratton with a police commissioner with real credibility with the minority community, he'd support a federal prosecutor to investigate the homicide of Mr. Garner, and he'd institute the long, overdue police reform recommendations of such esteemed civic reform leaders as Margaret Fung, Michael Meyers, and Norman Siegel, including the call to invite all minorities in the broader conversation about police reform -- as a start.

RELATED Rev. Sharpton Says He’s Earned Right To Advise On Police Policy (CBS 2 New York) A mayoral summit in black and white : Learn from past efforts to improve cop-community relations (The New York Daily News) Mayor de Blasio furious that the Rev. Al Sharpton showed him up at City Hall (The New York Post) To unite communities ravaged by NYPD brutality, mayor turns to anti-choice, anti-marriage equality bigot (The New York Times) Michael Hayes, LMT, has practiced massage for more than 20 years as a licensed massage therapist in New York City. Flatiron Massage operates its massage studio in the Flatiron District of New York City.

Broken Windows focuses law enforcement resources on 50 cent cigarettes, meanwhile Moreland Commission gets disbanded

Mayor de Blasio defends the NYPD's controversial and discriminatory approach to policing, known as "Broken Windows," whilst federal investigators probe whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo intentionally obstructed the work of a corruption fighting panel's investigations of political corruption.

There has been at least $1 billion in cost overruns on New York City's failed ECTP 911 emergency call system upgrade project, bringing the total cost to over $2 billion, and the system still doesn't work as it was envisioned. City officials find no criminal fraud in this failed $2 billion project, but NYPD administer an instant death penalty to Eric Garner for allegedly selling 50 cent cigarettes ? Political blogger and artist Suzannah B. Troy, who holds the world record of writing blog posts about the CityTime technology contract scandal, which cost the city over $600 million in cost overruns for an employee timekeeping system that failed to work, again leads local journalists in drawing the public's attention to the city's failed ECTP 911 emergency call system upgrade, which has now cost taxpayers over $2 billion, even though that technology system, too, still does not work. In her latest YouTube video, Ms. Troy compares and contrasts the scandalous ECTP 911 cost overruns against each of the death of Eric Garner, which has been ruled as a homicide by the city's Medical Examiner's office, and her own case of injustice in an attack, in which she was assaulted and battered, in the SoHo medical offices of Dr. Andrew Fagelman. Ms. Troy asks : Why does law enforcement forcus on ridiculousness -- and overlook major crimes ? In the broken justice system in New York, as pointed out by community activists and by activists informed by the Occupy Wall Street movement, cost overruns on a $2 billion failed IT project do not result in fraudulent criminal charges just like the corruption of Wall Street, which caused the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the resulting global recession. Yet, the police can apparently instantly murder Eric Garner on the scene, according to some activists, for reportedly selling single cigarettes for 50 cents a piece in "untaxed transactions," and Ms. Troy's attacker can go unprosecuted. One day after Ms. Troy posted her video on YouTube, the growing outrage over this "tale of two justice systems" has driven Mayor Bill de Blasio and his NYPD Commissioner William Bratton to throw Police Chief Philip Banks III under the bus in an apparent attempt to make him the fall guy for the community anger over Mr. Garner's murder. Selling a cigarette for 50 cents in an untaxed transaction is justification for police to administer a death-inducing chokehold, the police union head says, but the corrupt $2 billion ECTP 911 emergency call system upgrade escapes prosecutors. Adding to the controversy of Broken Windows policing is that the big money crimes are not being committed by people of color or people with low incomes ; rather, the crimes that rob society of its resources are being committed by Big Businesses and corrupt politicians and their lobbyists-enablers, which do not receive the scrutiny that they really deserve. Extell Development Company paid over $300,000 to Gov. Cuomo's campaign committee in apparent exchange for $35 million in tax breaks for a luxury condo skyscraper worth $2 billion. Big Businesses and special interests seeking similar or larger favors from New York State government have contributed to Gov. Cuomo a $35 million war chest. How large is the corruption at stake for Big Businesses if $35 million is the down payment for anticipated favours ? Against the backdrop of the injustice, and, ultimately, the murder, Mr. Garner endured, is a political "Game of Thrones" playing out up in the state's capital. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who oversees a cesspool of political and campaign corruption in Albany, apparently commissioned a panel of corruption-fighting prosecutors to investigate criminal conduct by elected officials only to decommission the panel, once the panel, known as the Moreland Commission, began to investigate the apparent pay-to-play of his own campaign donors. Using corrupting political machinations to steer a state investigation commission away from his own political supporters, Gov. Cuomo has been thwarting law enforcement probes into corporate and campaign corruption, while NYPD Commissioner Bratton is left unchecked to over-police the sale of untaxed cigarettes for 50 cents. In respect of Gov. Cuomo's role in corrupting the state's law enforcement, the U.S. Attorney's Office, led by Preet Bharara, is reviewing the unfinished investigations by the Moreland Commission and is also examining the governor's machinations that may have obstructed the Moreland Commission from its critical work. What has yet to happen, Ms. Troy has been pointing out for years, is for federal prosectors, such as Mr. Bharara, to examine the corruption in the CityTime and ECTP 911 projects for criminality by elected officials. Ms. Troy and other activists in New York City have been raising the issue that real estate interests may be behind the spree of hospital closings that have taken place in New York City, even as state health officials do everything in their power to sabotage the fragile economics of hospitals in a scorched earth campaign to make radical cuts to the state's Medicaid program. In respect of Mayor de Blasio, the civil rights and activist communities have begun to lose patience with the mayor's close alliance with Big Money real estate donors, who apparently are keen on keeping the Broken Windows policing tactics, as it directly supports real estate developers' goals of further driving up escalating real estate prices by forcing people of color and low-income communities out of neighborhoods intentionally targeted for gentrification by developers. Activists have called out the corrupt use of nonprofit and government grants and other political machinations, which deescalate community pressure for a complete overhaul of the corrupt police department, effectively locking these community groups in what has been referred to as "veal pens," and by the duplicitous racial politics now at play by the de Blasio administration, which aims to steer the public away from any serious roll-out of reforms that have been long called for by such civic leaders as Margaret Fung, Michael Meyers, and Norman Siegel, whose past work on overhauling the NYPD are once again coming back into focus. The calls for reforming law enforcement go unheard, meanwhile, White Collar pay-to-play corruption continues in government. Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn received approximately $30,000 in campaign contributions from the Rudin family, owners of Rudin Management Company, in the time leading up to the city's approval of Rudin's $1 billion luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital. Similarly, Gov. Cuomo received campaign contributions from the Kestenbaum family, founders of the Fortis Property Group that won the bid to convert Long Island College Hospital into a luxury condo complex, of at least $17,500. Allegations have been made that each of St. Vincent's and LICH, as Long Island College Hospital is known, had been intentionally driven into the ground to facilitate billion-dollar luxury condo conversions. The Fortis-LICH scandal comes atop of the $300,000 that another developer, Extell Development Company, made in campaign contributions to the governor in exchange for $35 million in tax breaks for one of Extell's projects, media reports indicate. The appearance pay-to-play is everywhere in government. If federal prosecutors are aiming to stop public officials from selling out our government in exchange for campaign contributions, then let's hope that the federal corruption investigations look to elected officials, and their corrupt lobbyists, for full accountability of these massive scams of public resources : from CityTime, the ECTP 911 project, to what happened at each of St. Vincent's, LICH, and other hospitals, to other alleged campaign corruption involving The Advance Group, which has already been referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office. In post-Occupy America, voters want to see a complete overhaul of government that goes to the very roots of corporate and campaign corruption.

RELATED City Investigation Finds Faults, But No Crime, In $1 Billion In Cost Overruns On NYC ECTP 911 Upgrade Project (CBS 2 New York) The Moreland Commission had 15 cases pending against lawmakers when Gov. Cuomo pulled the plug on it (The New York Post) Shocker : How SUNY lost more than $100M mismanaging LICH, but SUNY Trustees face no criminal investigation (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle) HOMICIDE: Medical examiner says NYPD chokehold killed Staten Island dad Eric Garner (The New York Daily News)

Will NYPD Commish Bratton be forced to resign over Eric Garner's violent, choking death ?

Community anger escalating over NYPD's continued obsession with "broken windows theory" of policing that appears to justify police brutality, and even violent deaths, for low-level crimes.

Five months before Eric Garner was choked to death by police on Staten Island, ex-Marine Jerome Murdough died while being incarcerated at Riker's Island.

Eric Garner died in a chokehold by NYPD on Staten Island on July 17. Do the officers of the New York Police Department get to decide if the suspects of low-level crimes deserve a death sentence on the spot ? That's the question many political bloggers are asking this week-end, as Mayor Bill de Blasio heads for the isle of Capri in the aftermath of the NYPD's choking death of married Staten Island dad, Eric Garner, 43. During last year's mayoral election, then candidate Bill de Blasio campaigned on promises to end policing tactics that unfairly targeted the poor and people of color. But then after he won the mayoral election, mayor-elect de Blasio swiftly made clear that he was appointing William Bratton as his new police commissioner, a signal of coming broken campaign promises on police reform. Mr. Bratton has a long history of stoking racial tensions by championing a controversial approach to policing known by the moniker, "broken windows." Under this policing theory, the cops target very low-level crimes before larger crimes are committed. But such an approach has been extremely controversial with civil rights activists, communities of color, and political bloggers, because the NYPD's obsession with combatting crime is focusing all of its resources on people suspected of committing very low-level offenses, like privately selling single cigarettes, as Mr. Garner was accused of doing, instead of major criminals. For example, former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes has been accused of using millions of dollars of confiscated criminal assets to pay for a campaign spokesman, Mortimer Matz. Yet, Mr. Hynes remains free, even those these accusations have been reported and repeated through valid media outlets through out New York state. While government reform activists wait for the NYPD to arrest former D.A. Hynes for the larceny of over $1 million, Mr. Garner is imposed an immediate death sentence for trying to sell single cigarettes for 50¢. Jerome Murdough died on Feb. 15 while being incarcerated at Riker's Island. But Mr. Garner's death is not the first time when the city's law enforcement has been accused of causing the death of an innocent person under the de Blasio-Bratton administration. Last February, a former U.S. Marine died while in law enforcement custody at Riker's Island. Like with Mr. Garner's situation, the former Marine, Jerome Murdough, first attracted police attention because of Commissioner Bratton's obsession with "broken windows" policing. Mr. Murdough's only crime was that he was homeless, and when police took him into custody, he had been huddling in the stairwell of a New York City public housing development, seeking warmth from the frigid, polar-express winter experienced by the Northeast. The frail, the poor, people in crisis, and people of color are the targets of Police Commissioner Bratton's insistence on terrorizing those with the least. And all of this sadness and drama is approved by Mayor de Blasio, a blatant contradiction to his campaign promises to reform the NYPD. The calls for NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton to be fired, or to resign, are beginning to grow. On last night's edition of NY1 The Call with Emmy Award-winning journalist John Schiumo, the nearly universal sentiment was that the NYPD were out of control. It appears that Mayor de Blasio's promises to reform the NYPD have gone unfulfilled. Thus far, though, the mainstream media has been giving Mayor de Blasio a free pass for having to failed to reform the NYPD, but already political bloggers, such as Suzannah B. Troy, and grass roots groups, like New Yorkers Against Bratton, have not let up on demanding reforms. Ms. Troy was assaulted last year in a case that the NYPD refused to investigate, Ms. Troy alleges, in order to manipulate crime statistics in New York. And New Yorkers Against Bratton has been the sole group to take a hard line position against the new mayor over his broken promises to overhaul the corrupt NYPD. Indeed, at last spring's Left Form 2014, various activists collaborated on an open forum to draw attention to how many nonprofit reform groups have deescalated calls for police reform out of deference to the new mayor. This is Commissioner Bratton's second service as head of the city's police department. He had previously served under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's first term, but resigned in 1996 amid a probe into 21 out-of-town trips he had taken and other sources of friction with former Mayor Giuliani. During his brief first stint as commissioner, NYPD were involved in the choking death of Anthony Baez, a controversy that critics of Commissioner Bratton readily point to, in demonstration of his callous disregard of police brutality and police murder. Now that two deaths of innocent people have occurred in Mayor de Blasio's young administration, political bloggers, activists, and minority communities wonder how many more deaths, incidences of police brutality on senior citizens, incidences of people of color being refused peaceful accommodation on public transportation, and military-style police raids will it take before the nonprofit "veal pen" reform groups remobilize to renew their demands for a complete overhaul of the NYPD, beginning with the Commissioner Bratton's removal from office.

RELATED Staten Island man dies after NYPD cop puts him in chokehold — SEE THE VIDEO (The New York Daily News) Homeless veteran 'basically baked to death' at Rikers Island while being held on trespassing charge (The New York Daily News) 7 million $lush fund reasons why VOCAL-NY, CPR community groups no longer pressing for NYPD reforms (Bill de Blasio Sold Out) Michael Hayes, LMT, has practiced massage for more than 20 years as a licensed massage therapist in New York City. Flatiron Massage is located in the Flatiron District of Manhattan.

Quinnipiac University Poll, meet summer NYPD offensive and ''broken windows policing''

Mayor de Blasio's high poll approval ratings from minority communities will soon clash with the summer police offensive by controversial NYPD Commissioner William Bratton that targets communities of color.

RELATED William Bratton Putting Desk Officers on Streets in Neighborhoods of Color to Aggravate Tensions in Communities During Hot Summer Months (The New York Times) A Tale of Two Cities : Racial Divide Over Bill de Blasio’s Support Widens : Political Poll shows Black voters support for mayor, for now (The New York Observer)

In last month's Quinnipiac University Poll, it was affirmed that Mayor de Blasio had lost support amongst a majority of White voters. How long will the mayor enjoy support from people of color as Commish Bratton releases the Kracken upon minority neighborhoods and the city's public housing developments ? According to a Quinnipiac University Poll release in June, Mayor Bill de Blasio had lost support amongst White voters, but he still has the support of some minority groups. How long that support will last under the racist ''broken windows policing'' policies of NYPD Commissioner William Bratton will soon be revealed. Commissioner Bratton is unleashing approximately 400 desk cops onto the city's "troubled police precincts" -- a euphemism for public housing developments and other minority neighborhoods -- in a policing crackdown that appears to be discriminatory based on income and race. The new NYPD offensive, known in the department as “Summer All Out,” will last 90 days, and it follows the controversial, military-like "shock and awe" raids conducted at dawn one day several weeks ago targeting low-income residents, who live in public housing developments in Harlem. Mayor de Blasio, Commissioner Bratton, and their public relations advisors, such as Dan Levitan, left, from the corrupt lobbying firm Berlin Rosen, are tone deaf to the concerns of minority communities. During the Harlem public housing raids, the police mobilized helicopters, officers in riot gear, and even counterterrorism officials, and the cops even hauled out all of their expensive police toys that they use to make themselves feel so strong and powerful, and, instead of targeting the suspects of interest, the police under Commissioner Bratton drew the entire residents of the public housing complexes of the General Ulysses S. Grant Houses and the Manhattanville Houses in Harlem into the dawn raid. It's clear that the intent of the NYPD was to instill fear and terror into the residents, to make the major psychological impression that to round up suspects of interest the police will raid entire public housing developments using "militaristic invasions" to make communities of color more submissive to police in a perverse form of sociological behavior modification. This was what the U.S. military meant by using "shock and awe" under former President George W. Bush in the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. But the implications for Mayor de Blasio may be the same as they were for former President Bush. U.S. popularity plummeted when we are seen as the aggressor. As more and more voters become disenchanted with the duplicitous political machinations of Mayor de Blasio (witness the collapse of Long Island College Hospital on Mayor de Blasio's watch and the swift community sense of betrayal and anger that that engendered), and you have a open window into what the mayor will likely soon face, as the residents of low-income and minority neighborhoods have to put up with aggressive policing that targets the poor and people of color. The mayor's last vestiges of political polling support amongst minorities will likely collapse before this summer is over. Already, the police are targeting low-income artists and performers, who put on shows in the subway system for tips. The unemployment rate for minority youths is stubbornley high, and the mayor has no alternative plan to give subway artists a legal and meaningful way to earn a living. These, and other violations of minority New Yorkers' civil rights, such as the right to be publicly accommodated on buses without fear of being brutalized or discriminated, are driving minority leaders and activists to question Mayor de Blasio's unbridled support for Commissioner Bratton's racist ''broken windows'' theory of policing. And if Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn closes this year, the political perceptions of more and more minority communities will turn decidedly anti-de Blasio. Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a legislative landmark that was meant to address the violent discrimination in the South. Perhaps the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice needs to look into the actions of the North, starting right here, with the NYPD. Commissioner Bratton's "broken widows" theory of policing is a form of de jure discrimination, and it must be dismantled. It can be done through the work of the Justice Department, or voters can vote Mayor de Blasio out of office after one term, after he loses critical voting support amongst minority voters as early as this summer, at the rate that he and his police commissioner are going.

VOCAL-NY amongst CPR community groups receiving over $7 million in FY15 City Council slush funds

Despite cheap "progressive" talk from mayor and new Council speaker, New York City Council is still disbursing speaker slush funds, even as one sitting Councilmember's funding had to be supervised due to pending corruption charges.

New York City Council Divvies Up $50 Million in Speaker Slush Funds http://t.co/jUmrGwJxMb via @WSJ

— Informed Voting (@informedvoting) June 25, 2014

RELATED New York City Council Divvies Up $50 Million in Speaker Slush Funds (The Wall Street Journal) Queens Councilman Ruben Wills arrested by Attorney General’s office in corruption probe (UPDATE) (Metro New York) MMV Slush Funds Report For Fiscal Year 2015 Adopted Expense : Budget Adjustment Summary / Schedule C (New York City.gov)

Slush funds allocated to VOCAL-NY include $25,000 for anti-Stop-and-Frisk workshops, even though Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned to end the "Stop-and-Frisk" era in NYPD policing. Following the Veal Pen Workshop for police reform at the Left Forum 2014, some of the member groups belonging to a coalition known as Communities United for Police Reform, or CPR, were shown to have influence over the stalled social movement to press the New York City government to deliver police reforms. When one of the stalling member groups in the CPR coalition, VOCAL-NY, was pressed about their role in deliberately deescalating public pressure for police reforms, a VOCAL-NY director, Jennifer Flynn Walker, had a meltdown on Twitter after activists pressed whether City Council slush funds played a role in CPR easing off pressure on the de Blasio-Mark-Viverito administration. "Professional" activists like Ms. Walker get a "seat at the table" next to powerholders, precisely because these "professional" activists accept government funding from the very politicians, who grassroots activists are targeting for legal reforms. Those government funding allocations come with implicit strings attached to not embarrass the politicians publicly, to not create any "scandals," and to settle for the low-bar "politics of the possible" that politicians, like Mayor Bill de Blasio, can deliver without upsetting his big money campaign donors. Some police reform activists believe that the mayor announced his controversial pick for NYPD commissioner to placate nervous billionaire real estate developers, who want to keep seeing escalating New York City real estate prices. The only way real estate prices can keep spiraling up out of control is by keeping all the youths and people of color either locked up in school or locked up in jail. Making do by accepting Mayor de Blasio's appointment of William Bratton as the new commissioner of the New York Police Department means that the City Council has to keep funding community programs to deal with police brutality and the violation of innocent people's rights. Indeed, the slush funds allocated to VOCAL-NY include $25,000 that are intended to "provide Know Your Rights workshops to inform people of their legal rights during police encounters (including stop, question and frisk) and role play de-escalation strategies in order to stay safe and calm." (Emphasis Added)

CPR member groups receiving FY15 slush funds are :   -  Bronx Defenders : $1,636,000   -  Legal Aid Society : $5,865,750   -  New York City Anti-Violence Project : $186,755   -  Streetwise & Safe : $10,000   -  VOCAL-NY : $62,000   -  Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice : $24,000 The controversial City Council practise of doling out slush funds was a hallmark issue in last year's mayoral campaign, and the slush fund allocations were used as an accusation of corruption against former Council Speaker Christine Quinn. According to her campaign promises, the new Council speaker, Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito, promised to bring reforms to the City Council never made possible under former Speaker Quinn's leadership. Alas, Speaker Mark-Viverito is using the shady distribution of slush funds to control strategic community groups for political reasons, which is no different from the motivations of her her predecessor. It's not known why VOCAL-NY still needs $25,000 for workshops that will train people how to deal with police use of "Stop-and-Frisk," if Mayor de Blasio campaigned to end the "Stop-and-Frisk" era at the NYPD. The right thing for VOCAL-NY to do is to come forward to press the mayor to deliver the full range of reforms at the NYPD that he supposedly gave lip service to in last year's mayoral election. Unless, of course, some of the CPR community groups are afraid to pressure the de Blasio-Mark-Viverito administration for the full range of legal reforms needed to end police brutality, violations of the Handschu Agreement, and other infringements of civil liberties and civil rights of innocent New Yorkers. For years, activist have wondered how could the City Council fund, on the one hand, police procedures that violate the Civil Rights Act protections of it citizens, at the same time when, on the other hand, the City Council is funding community groups for protection from police brutality ? What kind of duplicitous City Council budget are elected officials adopting ?

2014-05-31 Veal Pen (Left Forum) Contact Sheet (Twitter Handles) (FINAL)(2014-06-25 FY15 Schedule C Slush F... by Connaissable

VOCAL-NY expects Bratton to support marijuana legalization, even though mayor blocks it

The Twilight Zone that is the Veal Pen

Member groups of CPR use tortured logic, such as expecting NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton to support marijuana legalization now that Gov1% Andrew Cuomo made a campaign promise he doesn't intend to deliver, all in an effort to ignore any criticism of Mayor1% Mayor Bill de Blasio, who last week opposed the drug law reform.

Mayor Bill de Blasio broke a campaign promise by announcing he no longer supported marijuana legalization, contrary to his pledges last year, and now the many community groups, which have become the targets of criticisms for failing to hold the de Blasio administration accountable to other campaign promises to overhaul the scandal-ridden police department, find themselves going to great lengths to avoid any criticism of the mayor, even though the mayor is most responsible for updating laws that govern law enforcement in New York City. The backpedaling community groups are members of an umbrella coalition called Communities United for Police Reform, or CPR, and the groups are mimicking the mayor's own backpedalling, leading some political observers to note that the mayor had installed the lobbying firm of Berlin Rosen to supervise external communications of these community groups, in order to keep these community groups in check. Berlin Rosen has been being paid simultaneously to do the political and lobbying work for the mayor.

One CPR member community group, VOCAL-NY, is seizing on the fact that the Working Families Party has extorted a worthless campaign promise from Gov. Andrew Cuomo to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, as a way to increase public pressure on NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton so that he can begin to support marijuana legalization. What does Gov. Cuomo have to do with how Commissioner Bratton runs the NYPD ? Nothing. What does Gov. Cuomo's empty and meaningless campaign promises to the WFP have to do with the racial bias in NYPD drug arrests ? Nothing. Maybe VOCAL-NY should pressure the WFP to hold Mayor de Blasio accountable for his own now worthless campaign promise to legalize marijuana. The mayor runs the NYPD, not the governor.

Will Bratton evolve now that Cuomo pledged marijuana decriminalization to WFP in de Blasio brokered deal? http://t.co/NPDl3dWGdx @BrentNYT

— VOCAL-NY (@VOCALNewYork) June 1, 2014

Mayor @BilldeBlasio does not support legalizing marijuana, despite campaign promise. http://t.co/McsnnRzuGK

— de Blasio Sold Out (@deBlasioSoldOut) May 30, 2014

DeBlasio & Bratton Increasing Marijuana Arrests In NYC http://t.co/hJ2BsgY7oV via @PopResistance

— jess cochrane (@jkcochrane) June 1, 2014

Are you just going to keep watching NYPD police brutality videos online ?

How Can NYC Police Reform Activists Break Free From The Veal Pen ?

In February, NYPD officers used unnecessary and brutal force to detain and arrest an innocent man after he deboarded the Bx12 bus. The New York Daily News wrote a widely cited article about the police department's over-use of force in that incident. In a viral video of the attack, the innocent man screamed for help, asking of bystanders, "Are you just going to watch this sh-t ?"

Police commissioner William Bratton enforces a "broken windows" theory of policing that deliberately targets the poor, people of color, and other minorities for harassment. If the NYPD is left unreformed, then its foreseeable pattern will be more incidents of brutality. And the inevitable question we will all face each time that more and more of these incidents are recorded and posted online will be, "Are we just going to watch these videos -- and do nothing else ?"

In an excerpt of the video of the attack, we ask you this very question :

Join us for a police reform workshop at this year's Left Forum, where we will engage in activities to prompt community groups to renew their calls for reform. To attend the workshop, you need to register to attend the Left Forum ; after that, you can attend other workshops or panels, as well.

ATTEND OUR WORKSHOP : How can NYC police reform activists break free from the "veal pen" ?

Date : Saturday, May 31, 2014

Time : 3:20 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.

Place : 524 West 59th Street, Manhattan -- Session 3, Room 1.92

Join us for an intensive workshop designed to challenge groups and activists, who have voluntarily de-escalated political pressure for police reform by climbing into the "veal pen" following the election of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Registration is required to attend the Left Forum. REGISTER HERE NOW

veal pen \ vēl pɛn \ noun a holding cell, where young cattle and activists are restrained to keep their bodies tender, until all of their strengths atrophy in preparation for being butchered by the system.

If you want to take part in the conversation to free activists and community groups from the "veal pen," please join us for this important workshop.

2014-05-29 Veal Pen Police Reform Workshop - Movement Action Planning - Flyer (Final) by VealPen2014

A decade later, the New York City Council is still going through the motions on activists' Constitutional rights

Councilmember Ydanis Rodriquez promised to question the District Attorneys of New York about the prosecutorial crackdown against activists. Why doesn't he ask them about complying with the twin City Council resolutions from 2004 ?

What about follow-up of two past @NYCCouncil resolutions ? 1st : http://t.co/rvCWbPQYNy 2nd : http://t.co/lP3JsufWx1 @ydanis

— Louis Flores (@maslowsneeds) May 20, 2014

Before a joint hearing of the the New York City Council Public Safety and Finance committees met to discuss a proposed expansion of the NYPD force by 1,000 new officers, Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez tweeted that he would promise to call on the district attorneys of New York City to account for the prosecution of protesters. Councilmember Rodriguez, who was arrested when police raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment in 2011, is upset with law enforcement's focus on arresting protesters, like himself and Cecily McMillan, even though such arrests -- and their subsequent prosecution -- violate the peaceful political activities of protesters, acts which are protected by guarantees under the Bill of Rights.

When The New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin wrote about Councilmember Rodriguez's complaints, Mr. Goodwin blamed law enforcement reform advocates for demonising the New York Police Department, but Mr. Goodwin failed to see how, left unchecked, the NYPD's pattern of misconduct and brutality leads to the police department's ruination of its own reputation. Reasonable people can see how the NYPD has had a long history of controversies and scandals, when it comes to failing to respect citizens' First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly. Police have gone so far as to make arrests of activists without probable cause, violating activists' Fourth Amendment rights. Police have also violated due process by denying activists' rights to parade permits and other approvals to facilitate peaceful political demonstrations. Based on the extreme abuses by the NYPD, the New York City Council passed a decade ago two resolutions, affirming activists' constitutional rights to peacefully demonstrate without fear of reprisal, arrest, or vindictive prosecution for expressing their political beliefs. These resolutions were enacted following controversies in police tactics following the large anti-war rally of February 15, 2003, but apparently nothing's changed since this, since the police continue to unlawfully target activists for arrest, and prosecutors unlawfully target activists for prosecution.

Councilmember Rodriguez has a checkered record for law enforcement reform. He talks the talk, but when reform activists objected to Mayor Bill de Blasio's appointment of William "broken windows theory" Bratton as police commissioner, Councilmember Rodriguez defended Commissioner Bratton. It's unclear from press reports if Councilmember Rodriquez questioned the city's district attorneys at yesterday's joint hearing about the pattern of oppressive prosecution of activists. Nevertheless, it bears repeating that the district attorneys are answerable to the pressures of their political supporters. But at the very least, the district attorneys should take guidance from the twin City Council resolutions enacted ten years ago.

Locally, it is supposed to be the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, who is supposed to oversee the prosecution of crimes. Instead of focusing on major political and corporate corruption cases, which he rarely appears to prosecute, D.A. Vance rather chooses to obsess with the peaceful political activities of activists. D.A. Vance works for the New York State attorney general, Eric Schneiderman. Both D.A. Vance and Mr. Schneiderman have pretty much abdicated corruption prosecution to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. More so than the others, D.A. Vance is vulnerable to the political realities of how he can run for office. District attorneys in the five boroughs of New York run for office with the approval of the local county political organization. Since New York is overwhelmingly a Democratic Party enclave, the county Democratic Party chair of each borough must approve of each respective district attorney candidate running for office, meaning D.A. Vance would not dare sacrifice his political career by prosecuting political corruption of officials, operatives, or lobbyists loyal to the county political organization, chaired in his case by Assemblymember Keith Wright, which approves of his candidacy. That is to say, D.A. Vance will not prosecute candidates for public office, their political operatives, or big money donors, who may be engaged in corruption, otherwise D.A. Vance risks alienating himself from his own political supporters. Instead, D.A. Vance touts his prosecution record against activists, paralleling the DOJ's own suppression campaign against activists.

It remains to be seen if the scripted gestures of City Council hearings under Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito will have the same toothless effect on law enforcement reform as the twin City Council resolutions passed a decade ago under former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. The twin resolutions appeared to have no impact on the offices of the city's district attorneys. So long as the government fails to guarantee that police won't use acts of misconduct or brutality against citizens peacefully organizing around their political beliefs, it's difficult to tell how long opponents of reform, like Mr. Goodwin, as well as the city's district attorneys and their political supporters, will be able to benefit from their own constitutional rights. The consequences of demagoguery by opponents of law enforcement reform are obvious : opponents spread fear by predicting spikes in crime to keep the larger citizenry scared of advocates pushing for a reshaping of police tactics. But once one reasons that some citizens have no protections for free speech, assembly, and probable cause, among other rights and civil liberties, one moves the entire citizenry down the slippery slope toward anarchy.

EXCERPT from : Vol. III, Chapter 7 of Roots of Betrayal : The Ethics of Christine Quinn by Louis Flores

After the February 15 anti-war rally, progressives, including supporters of the NYCLU’s efforts to keep the police in check, pushed the City Council to pass two resolutions. These resolutions came about because of the lingering sting of the anti-war rally’s failure to receive a march permit. That other demonstrations were subsequently denied permits, or were subjected to police actions to subvert demonstrations, added fuel to the fire. The first resolution, which was adopted on February 4, 2004, called upon federal, state, and local officials, including city agencies such as the NYPD, to affirm and uphold the civil rights and civil liberties of citizens wishing to hold political demonstrations in New York City. Christine was one of its sponsors. The second resolution, passed on June 28, 2004, called on all government officials to uphold the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, association, and assembly. Again, Christine was one of its sponsors. These nonbinding resolutions were all that the City Council could muster. There was no more that New York City residents, be they activists or not, could expect in terms of oversight and accountability with regards to the NYPD’s record of violating the First and Fourth Amendments. While it is true that a resolution does lend the authority and influence of the City Council’s support to the cause of protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the City Council was capable of doing more, like withholding funding for controversial police tactics, subpoenaing records of police misconduct and brutality, or referring incidents for further investigation and possible prosecution. But the City Council did neither. In the hearings leading up to the adoption of the first resolution, it was clear that the NYPD was engaging in serious violations. A special report from the City Council Committee on Governmental Operations showed that, “In the aftermath of the numerous confrontations between demonstrators and police at the February 15th rally the Civilian Complaint Review Board (“CCRB”) investigated 54 complaints containing 114 allegations of misconduct by police officers.” Among the NYPD violations the report found was that the police department’s Technical Assistance Response Unit provided to CCRB heavily edited videos in a deliberate effort to disguise the police officers who committed violations. “Thus, many complaints were dropped where the officers went unidentified.” This is how the NYPD operated when it knew its actions were not going to be supervised or subjected to any accountability. How were the City Council resolutions going to address the underlying and ongoing violations of the NYPD ?

Register for the Left Forum to attend the police reform "Veal Pen" Workshop

How Can NYC Police Reform Activists Break Free from the Veal Pen ?

Workshop : How Can NYC Police Reform Activists Break Free from the Veal Pen ?
Date : Saturday, May 31, 2014
Time : 03:20 p.m. - 04:50 p.m.
Place : Session 3, Room 1.92, 540 West 59 Street, New York, NY 10019

Registration is required to attend the Left Forum 2014 : Register here.

Jane Hamsher appropriated the term “veal pen” to describe how the Obama administration subjugates liberal groups and activists in order to demobilize political pressure for reform from the Democratic left. Join us for an intensive workshop designed to challenge groups and activists, who have voluntarily de-escalated political pressure for police reform following the election of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. To demobilize some police reform groups, lobbyists loyal to the mayor now control the media relations for these reform groups. What has been removed from the messaging from these groups has been the urgency for reform that was present before the mayor won last year’s election. In this workshop, designed for experienced activists, we will undertake a specific action and then strategize about how to create new opportunities for organizing in the area of police reform against a backdrop of this new political landscape. In a real "Veal Pen," the bodies of calves atrophy by design. Under the de Blasio administration, which is sensitive to political pressure from the Democratic left as is President Obama, activists’ ideas for police reform are meant to atrophy by design. Since this workshop is designed to overcome frustrations faced by activists, who refuse to be demobilized, the rigorous activities are intended to stretch participants’ ideas and to draw attention to the Veal Pen.

Fifty years after Griswold v. Connecticut, NYPD to accommodate safer sex, but stops short of recognizing privacy rights to contraception [UPDATED]

At a nighttime protest in Jackson Heights, Queens, last year, activists held up a banner with a giant drawing of condom locked in a police handcuff to represent the NYPD's criminalization of the use of contraception.

New York Police Department to stop criminalizing use of contraception -- in some cases

Advocates for sex workers and improved public health won a major concession from the New York Police Department's on-going oppression against citizens when police officials announced that they would stop seizing reproductive contraceptives, namely, condoms, as evidence of criminality in police crackdowns against sex workers.

• RELATED : The change in police procedure will end a policy of oppression that health officials had long criticized as undermining their efforts to protect sex workers from disease. (New York Police to Limit Seizing of Condoms as Evidence of Criminality in Prostitution Cases * The New York Times)

Police announced the change in policy after years of demands from activists that the police were stigmatizing the use of condoms, so much so that health officials had long criticized the police practice as undermining their efforts to protect sex workers from disease. In fact, during the 15 years that former Council Speaker Christine Quinn was in public office, she was the city's most visible female and LGBT politician, and she never made any advancement on overturning the police criminalization of condoms. Indeed, under her incumbency, police biases against trans and gender non-conforming citizens extended the anti-condom dragnet against sex workers to include members of the LGBT community. In several media reports, LGBT New Yorkers attested to being harassed, arrested, and stigmatized by the police for innocently carrying contraception -- in direct violation of their privacy rights. What is more, many HIV/AIDS activists had long objected to the police's stigmatization of the use of condoms as flying in the face of advice from city health officials, who advocated their use for safer sex as a way to decrease the incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases and to prevent unwanted pregnancies. For years, if New Yorkers were caught carrying condoms, the prophylactics could be used as criminal evidence in sex worker prosecution cases -- even though the city's Department of Health distributed condoms to all New Yorkers to promote safer sex and greater public health.

In announcing their change in policy today, NYPD officials carved out a backdoor loophole to retain the right to use condoms as evidence in sex trafficking cases, however.

The nominal changes in NYPD condom policy, being spun under the guise as an advancement to public health, comes almost 50 years since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the landmark 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut that overturned a state law that had criminalized the use of contraception. In The New York Times article posted to their Web site, there was no mention by police as according any reasoning in the policy change to respect New Yorkers' right to privacy. Nor was it mentioned whether police would stop menacing LGBT New Yorkers as part of its new compromised policy. In respect of reproductive rights, it was never explained how police departments across the United States could opt out of compliance in the first place with the Griswold decision.

The partial backpedal on the condom policy is the NYPD's latest half-measure at reform since the election of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. de Blasio campaigned to end the "stop-and-frisk era," but the mayor contradicted his campaign promise by making a regressive appointment of William Bratton as the city's new police commissioner. Commissioner Bratton has promised to continue to use the controversial police tacking known as stop-and-frisk, which has been ruled to be unconstitutional for its racist impact on the community. Mr. de Blasio also campaigned on the promise to stop the arrests of New Yorkers carrying small amounts of marijuana, but Commissioner Bratton's arrest rate for marijuana possession is actually up from the rate of his predecessor, Raymond Kelly. The NYPD has also promised to disband a controversial demographics unit, which targeted New York's Muslim community, but the police department continues to its practice of racial and religious profiling, and surveillance, of Muslims. As Mayor de Blasio tries to resolve many outstanding litigation cases against the police department over its killing of unarmed, innocent civilians and its policy of using brutality against New Yorkers, the de Blasio administration seems to be neglecting long outstanding cases of minority plaintiffs, such as the Central Park 5, further causing tensions over the new administration's insensitivity to the concerns of people long oppressed by the police. Since Mayor de Blasio supports Commissioner Bratton's "broken windows theory" of policing, the NYPD is expected to continue to target its aggressive policing tactics against the city's poor and people of color.

The government compromises its citizens' right to privacy in the new surveillance state, but what happens to citizens' other fundamental rights that are predicated on privacy ?

Meghan Newcomer, a brilliant future lawyer graduating this year from Fordham Law School, published a "Pelican Brief" of sorts last year in the Fordham Law Review entitled, "Can Condoms be Compelling ? Examining the State Interest in Confiscating Condoms from Suspected Sex Workers," about the criminal crackdown by police departments in New York City, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles against sex workers carrying condoms. In Ms. Newcomer's legal analysis, she examined the government's burden in proving it could violate the fundamental right to contraception, and she found that the government could not achieve a compelling state reason to do so. Ms. Newcomer expertly framed her legal reasoning around the constitutional privacy rights established under the landmark Griswold case and other related rulings and laws. After examining the law, Ms. Newcomer concluded in her article that :

Because the Supreme Court has identified a right for all individuals to be free from state interference in their choice of whether to use contraceptive devices, state actors confiscating condoms from suspected sex workers infringes on that constitutionally protected privacy right. The government’s lack of a compelling state interest in taking condoms, coupled with the failure to narrowly tailor the policy so as to involve the least restrictive infringement of the right, means that the conduct cannot survive strict scrutiny. For this reason, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles are enforcing unconstitutional policies and must stop confiscating condoms from suspected sex workers.

There are more issues that need review, which were not the focus of Ms. Newcomer's fascinating article in the Fordham Law Review. Since New York City officials, privacy rights advocates, and women's rights groups are not raising alarms about the privacy violations of the police department's condom policy, are citizens basically consenting to the government's gutting of the Griswold decision ?

In the time since the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Griswold case, the impact of the court's decision has been unmistakable in expanding constitutional rights to privacy in subsequent jurisprudence. Prior to Griswold, there was no court case that found a privacy right guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. After Griswold, the fundamental right to privacy was found from the court's interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Further landmark Supreme Court case decisions, such as Roe v. Wade, Bowers v. Hardwick, and Lawrence v. Texas, the latter which expanded Bowers by overturning its narrower interpretation, were made possible because of legal precedent that citizens' privacy was protected by the due process clause.

With police departments essentially given discretion to opt out of the law established by the Griswold decision, advocates for police reform are focused on the public health aspects of the dangerous condom policy. Meanwhile, silent are citizens, who appear to be consenting to the wholesale undermining of reproductive freedoms and LGBT civil rights, in addition to the right to privacy established by Griswold. As the government conducts mass warrantless surveillance of its citizens to the outrage of voters, the state doesn't have to go to great lengths to legally violate citizens' privacy rights if the state can first undermine the case law establishing citizens' fundamental rights to privacy. With crime rates so low, why are police departments targeting sex workers carrying condoms ? Perhaps it is to sufficiently restrict citizens' rights under the Griswold case in order to serve the government's "compelling interest" to conduct its unconstitutional surveillance activities. If the state can chip away at privacy rights just enough, it won't technically be violating its citizens' fundamental rights if the state can, ipso facto, succeed at gutting Griswold.

As the government wears down Griswold, where does that leave citizens' rights to an abortion under Roe and to further rights to privacy and substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment under Lawrence ? What about the long social movement to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity to which Lawrence helped to give critical mass ?