This spring is an exciting and politically important time for our issues. PROP’s May 8^th public forum, “Prosecutors: Serving the Public or Serving the Police,” featured a thoughtful, impassioned, and illuminating discussion of a heretofore neglected problem (i.e. the DAs effective complicity in abusive police practices due to their virtually unquestioning prosecution of frivolous and even bogus arrests). The stop and frisk trial in federal court is piling up evidence of racially-biased police activity with regard to filling quotas, and our upcoming mayoral forum, “Policing and Criminal Justice in in NYC,” at the Schomburg Center from 7-9 pm on June 19^th will present the candidates for the city’s highest office with the opportunity to state their views on policing policies in a debate format.

And now, PROP is organizing another Petition Drive Day. PROP representatives and volunteers will travel to different neighborhoods throughout the city on Sunday, May 19 from 1-5 pm to interact with New Yorkers and persuade them to sign the PROP Petition. We’ve recently passed the 22,000 mark and are very close to achieving our goal of at least 25,000 signatures.

We plan then to present the 25,000 petitions, and copies thereof, to each of the mayoral candidates at the June 19^th forum, as a way of demonstrating to them and to the press and the larger public that a broad-based constituency of New Yorkers supports sweeping reforms of NYPD practices including ending stop and frisk and abolishing the quota system. Please join us this coming Sunday to help us make certain that PROP’s petition drive continues stoking the gathering political momentum for real change.

We have new signatories to The Interfaith Coalition for Police Reform’s Declaration to End Abusive NYPD Practices. The following names have been added to our growing list of signees:

• Reverend Daniel Berrigan, S.J. Emeritus Professor, Fordham University
• Reverend Dr. Edgard Francisco Danielsen-Morale, Assistant Pastor for Congregational Life Metropolitan Community Church of New York
• Katherine Henderson, President of Auburn Theological Seminary
• Pastor Joseph Tolton, Associate Pastor, Social Justice at the Rivers at Rehoboth Church

Thank you to all the faith leaders leading their voices to the call for police reform. The complete list of signatories along with the Interfaith Declaration can be found here.

POLICE REFORM ORGANIZING PROJECT HITS THE STREETS TO MOBILIZE NEW YORKERS FOR NYPD REFORM

In neighborhoods throughout the city, PROP will continue to gather support for sweeping changes in the NYPD’s harsh and racially biased practices

PROP representatives will make on-the-spot videos of New Yorkers telling their stories of negative encounters with the NYPD

WHAT: Police Reform Organizing Project hits the streets to mobilize New Yorkers for NYPD reform

WHO: Police Reform Organizing Project of the Urban Justice Center

WHEN: Sunday, April 7^th from 1-5pm

WHERE: Locations throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens

VISUALS: Activists gathering petition signatures and New Yorkers telling their stories of negative police encounters.

NEW YORK, NY – The Police Reform Organizing Project of the Urban Justice Center will hit the streets, on Sunday April 7^th from 1 – 5 pm, as part of its organizing efforts aimed at mobilizing NYC communities to press for NYPD reform. PROP will have volunteers petitioning in five neighborhoods including:  Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park and Harlem; Brooklyn’s Crown Heights and Parkside; and Jamaica, Queens.

Having gathered more than 20,000 names to date, PROP is well on its way toward reaching its ultimate goal of accumulating at least 25,000 signatures, demonstrating to policy makers that a broad-based constituency of city residents are concerned about abusive police practices and are calling for meaningful change.

“We urge New Yorkers to join our campaign to stop the NYPD’s harsh and unjust practices that do harm to the city’s residents, especially people from low income communities of color, on a daily basis,” said Robert Gangi, Director of the Police Reform Organizing Project. “The city’s police should serve and protect people, rather than engage in stop and frisk and other tactics that harass and, in effect, criminalize them.”

PROP will be at the following locations from 1-5PM:

Manhattan 

-          Tompkins Square Park

-          Harlem: 125^th and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard

Brooklyn

-          Parkside Ave and Flatbush Ave

-          Utica Ave A/C station

Queens

-          Jamaica Center, Parsons Ave and Archer Ave

Watch this informative television interview of PROP director Bob Gangi, emceed by Ronnie Eldridge, former city councilperson, on her talk show, Eldridge and Co. Gangi effectively explains why abusive policing is such a serious problem for our city and how objectionable NYPD practices violate fundamental principles of justice and do terrible harm to many New Yorkers, especially people from our city’s most vulnerable populations. He also presents PROP’s work and mission and our organizing and advocacy efforts aimed at achieving sweeping NYPD reforms that will help create a more fair, livable, and inclusive city for all its citizens.

We at PROP are pleased to announce the release of“Criminalizing Communities: NYPD Abuse of Vulnerable Populations”, our new report that chronicles NYPD abuses and their damaging effects against a range of the city’s most vulnerable populations including young black and brown men, Muslims, sex workers, LGBTQ people, street vendors, people with mental illness, and the homeless.  Here is a link to the full report, which urges an end to the NYPD’s aggressively enforced quota system, an end to the NYPD’s stop and frisk program, and recommends other administrative and legislative reforms that will ensure that all New Yorkers can live free from police abuse.

Written in collaboration with the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School – people from the Center did the lion’s share of the research and writing and were wonderful to work with – the report finds that NYPD officers often harass the very populations they are supposed to protect.  The report calls on the Mayor’s Office, the New York City Council, and Governor’s office, and the New York State Legislature, as well as the NYPD to enact sweeping reforms that would end adversarial relationships between the NYPD and marginalized communities across NYC, and ensure more equitable police policies and practices.

Acting in the inspiring spirit of the great civil rights leader and as the conscience of our city, clergy leaders representing New Yorkers’ diverse faiths will present the need for sweeping police reform as a compelling moral issue.

Our panelists for the event are:

-Reverend Pat Bumgardner, Senior Pastor, Metropolitan Community Church of New York

- Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid, President of the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York

- Reverend Ruben Austria, Bronx Clergy Coalition; Founder and Executive Director of Community Connections for Youth

- Derrick Boykin, Associate Pastor of the Walker Memorial Baptist Church

-Brendan Fay, Catholic Activist and Filmmaker

- Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director of Rabbis for Human Rights of North America

The event will be moderated by Dr. Anne Klaeysen of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The address for the event is 2 West 64th Street, New York, NY, 10025 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture.

The next meeting of PROP’s city-wide coalition, New Yorkers for Police Reform, will take place on Wednesday, February 13^th from 6PM-8PM. This gathering should be especially interesting, informative, and important, as we discuss, plan, and decide upon PROP’s strategies and actions for, among other things, the upcoming state legislative session and the very important 2013 city-wide elections. The meeting will take place at 123 William Street on the 16th floor.

At least three parts of this interesting article stand out:

1. This finding:

“There’s no evidence that reducing the stops limited the police department’s ability to enforce the law: Even as trespass stops fell sharply, the overall number of arrests on public housing remained nearly flat”

2. This capsule history of the uninformed shift in the NYPD’s policing strategy:

“The past three decades have seen major changes in the city’s approach to collaborations between community residents and the police. In the 1980s, the NYPD implemented an extensive community policing program, assigning thousands of neighborhood patrol officers to the task of developing relationships with residents and working with them to solve quality-of-life problems.

As the department increased its reliance on targeted, “zero tolerance” policing through the 1990s and 2000s, it largely divested from the effort to build partnerships with communities. The NYPD’s Community Affairs Bureau—the division responsible for fostering goodwill and developing local relationships—is allocated $12.8 million per year. That’s less than 0.3 percent of the total $4.5 billion police department budget.”

3. This quote by a young man from the Bronx about abusive police tactics:

“You just make everybody turn against you. It’s supposed to be the cops and the regular people against the criminals. Instead you got everybody against the cops.”

Read the entire article below:

blogs.newschool.edu/child-welfare-nyc/2013/01/after-negotiations-with-residents-the-nypd-slashed-trespass-stops-in-public-housing/