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.

City Council Leadership Denied Lawmakers a Look at the Details of a $75 billion City Budget

Withholding of City Budget Details Undermines Financial Oversight and Checks and Balances

RELATED Council Staffers Withheld Budget Documents From Lawmakers (The Wall Street Journal) New York City Budget : Vote First, Read Later (The Wall Street Journal) Melissa Mark-Viverito Is Quiet on City Council’s Budget Losses (The New York Observer)

City Council Central Staff, reportable to Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, delayed sharing with all municipal lawmakers some of the budget paperwork for several hours on the day that the Council voted on the city budget. IN A CONTINUATION OF corrupt strong-arming of City Council votes, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito's central staff deliberately withheld some budget documents from Councilmembers for up to six hours before the full Council would vote on the Fiscal Year 2015 $75 billion city budget. The phony reason that Speaker Mark-Viverito's central staff gave for holding back some of the budget paperwork was because all of the budget had not yet printed, and that staffers were told that “you don’t slow drip the budget,” as one person told The Wall Street Journal, whose City Hall reporter broke the story. But this blatant lie flies in the face of that fact that Council Speaker Mark-Viverito did "slow drip the budget" -- by dropping the 400+ page budget report of the speaker's slush fund, otherwise known as "Schedule C," the night before the Council voted on the city budget. Releasing the Schedule C report of slush fund allocations to politically-connected charities, Council Speaker Mark-Viverito satisfied Councilmembers' first order of business : how much tax dollars were they going to be able to award to nonprofit groups that helped Councilmembers with get out the vote efforts, mailing lists, and other soft forms of political contributions. By withholding the details of the FY2015 city budget up until the very last minute, the Council Speaker aimed to thwart any debate on or challenges to the budget by her fellow Councilmembers. Details of the city budget were probably largely dictated to the City Council by de Blasio administration Budget Director Dean Fuleihan on the mayor's behalf. Suppressing debate, examination, or challenges to the $75 billion budget is detrimental to the healthy function of the City Council. Political bloggers and government reform activists, such as Suzannah B. Troy, have long argued that the Council leadership under Speaker Mark-Viverito's predecessor deliberately thwarted investigations into corrupt multi-billion dollar technology outsourcing contracts, such as CityTime employee timekeeping system and the ECTP program of the 911 emergency call system. Who knows how many corrupt over-payments, contract-overrides, or payment extensions were granted under the city budget documents that Speaker Mark-Viverito's central staff deliberately withheld for several hours. But the Councilmembers surely did know how many millions they gave to quiet down police reform groups, to deescalate political pressure from the Left on the neoliberal de Blasio administration.

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

ACT UP/NY Will Protest Against Fiscal Cliff Budget Cuts In Washington

Follow today's actions in Washington, DC on Ustream :

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ACT UP/NY is planning a pre-World AIDS Day action in Washington, DC to prevent AIDS budget cuts. We will march with activists from other ACT UP chapters, V.O.C.A.L. New York, Housing Works, and Queerocracy demanding that Congress not touch AIDS/Healthcare spending.