Police Shooting Essay

The claim that the NYPD is becoming trigger-happy cannot really be said conclusively without comparing it to other large metropolitan areas in the United States and when doing so it seems that the answer is, at the present time, no.   In 1999, 11 people died at the hand of an officer in New York, in 2000 it was 41.   1993 had 23 people killed by police that was the same year that David Dinkins was mayor. Now if you compare this to Chicago last year, 2001, 13 people were killed by police with only 10 in 2000. LAPD was the only U.S. city to have the death rates from police shootings fall lower than New York, down from 39 to 6 in between 2000-2001.   But LAPD’s crime reduction still did not match New York, which was drastically lower.   Even with demonstrations and poor poll rating, the number of civilian complaints about the police fell to 4,903 in 1999, the lowest since 1994.   Even though the NYPD is not perfect the trend still predicts that improvement is still happening.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Some attribute the decline to economics such as lower unemployment or demographics, fewer criminal youths.   No one wants to believe that it could possibly be tougher policing.   A new computerized system that maps the criminality in the city has been given credit by most.   Along with this system and weekly brainstorming meetings among senior police and precinct captains NYPD has been able to predict and locate new outbreaks of crime quickly and find better ways of cracking down on them. Some point to the focus on quality of life crimes like littering and graffiti painting.   Enforcing these types of crime has shown the community that law will be enforced and this has given a clear message.   The changing of how police officers are rewarded for performance has also made a really huge difference.   It switched from rewards for number of arrests to rewards for lower reported crimes. Only until an incident with Patrick Dorismond, who was shot by police in March of 2000 by the street crimes unit, did the NYPD gain a more critical look into if they are trigger-happy.   The unit is a plain clothed police squad that can be sent anytime anywhere.   At the time they were investigating an outbreak of cab drivers who were being murdered.   Another function of this unit is to find illegal weapons.   In New York City it is quite frequent that individuals can become stopped and frisked, but many residents do not like this fact.   It seems that this activity focuses on many blacks and Hispanics. Dorismond was approached by officers from the street crimes unit but because they were in street clothing Dorismond did not realize they were officers and a scuffle began with the result of Dorismond’s fatal shooting.   He was unarmed and the family is searching for answers.   What really hurt the department was when the mayor’s office decided to make public Dorismond’s juvenile record, trying to portray the man as â€Å"no Altar boy† did not go over well with the community and became nationwide news giving the police as being very insensitive. Racial Profiling seems to be at the heart of this problem, the mayor points to studies that the disproportionate number of people accused of crimes come from ethnic minorities and that is the reason why more of those minorities get stopped.   A recent study by Timothy Lynch of the Cato Institute points to the tactics of this policing unit as the problem.   They point out that it is unconstitutional and makes shooting like Dorismond’s a predictable result.   It gives the police â€Å"the mind-set of a soldier† training the unit as soldiers.   Some have said that legalizing guns for citizens and legalizing some drugs could be a solution to eliminate the need for this unit. As you can see there are many openings for improvement in the NYPD and while researching this topic I have found that it is obvious that improvements have been made, but they are slow in coming and in implementing.   Media has played a very important role in keeping this in the public arena, where it needs to be.   It was difficult when the changing of the way departmental review of rewards, such as being rewarded for reduction in crime reports, was implemented and there was much debate on if this would really work.   But now since it has been implemented it has shown great improvement in community safety. Now a focus on racism should be examined closely to fix what is really, in my opinion, at the heart of this controversy.   I think if officers of tomorrow were educated in multicultural terms racism will fade away, like time.   America has had many dark moments in history and hopefully racism will become just a dark moment in the past.   I don’t think that we can actually say that NYPD is trigger-happy, but I do think that acts of racism could be behind the shootings that have happen between the NYPD and its citizens. Reference: Anonymous (2000, May 6).   â€Å"United States: The Thin Blue Line†.   The Economist,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   London Ed. Vol. 355, Issue 8169, pg.32.