NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly: 'our general tactics have worked'

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/26/nypd-ray-kelly-our-general-tactics-have-worked

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Outgoing New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly has lauded his officers and his policies for reducing crime and protecting the city from terrorist attacks – while brushing off fierce controversy over the huge increase in the use of stop-and-frisk measures on his watch.

Commissioner Kelly, 72, will leave his post after 12 years at the head of the largest police department in the United States when incoming mayor Bill de Blasio’s new chief William Bratton takes over on January 1.

Kelly took credit for the continuing downward trend in violent crime in New York which last year saw the number of murders fall to 414, the lowest figure since full records began to be kept in the city in 1963.

“Our general tactics and strategies have worked, and that’s why we see these record reductions,” Kelly said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Gun laws have been tightened up in the city under outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg and police officers have been concentrated in high numbers in violent ‘hot spots’.

“We brought in first-class professionals,” said Kelly.

Kelly became commissioner of the New York Police Department (NYPD) a few months after the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001 destroyed the towers of the World Trade Centre at a cost of almost 3,000 lives.

Several plots to attack the city have been foiled since, including the apprehension of a would-be car bomber with his vehicle full of explosive material in Times Square in 2010.

But the swift rise in the number of people stopped by police on the streets and frisked, or given a pat down, to look for weapons or other evidence of crime during Kelly’s tenure became a storm of controversy in his final years.

When it came to light in 2011 that almost 700,000 people were being stopped and frisked annually – compared with just 100,000 when Bloomberg was elected in 2001 – and more than half of the individuals were African-American, Kelly’s reputation suffered.

A federal judge earlier this year ruled the practice unconstitutional after a court challenge. There are likely to be changes mandated in the way the policy is carried out as well as additional oversight of the practice in the city.

Kelly was unapologetic in his interview this week.

“We did what we had to do to protect the city, we did it legally, we did it pursuant to oversight by the district court – and we’re still doing it legally and we have sufficient monitoring by our legal cadre,” he said.

The new police commissioner William Bratton is known also to support stop-and-frisk as a crime-fighting strategy but has given indications that there will be more transparency to the way it is done and how often, and who it involves, and that the NYPD will accept greater oversight of the practice.

Kelly, a former Marine, emphasised that the number of murders has halved in the city while he has been commissioner and New York became the safest big city in the US.

Kelly and Bratton reportedly enjoyed a lunch together at the Harvard Club in the city before Christmas and the two have said very little about the other’s reputation or policies in detail.

The outgoing chief steered clear of advising Bratton and his incoming team, saying simply: “These are experienced people, they know what they are doing, and I wish them well.”

Bratton was briefly commissioner of the NYPD when he was appointed by former mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1994. His drive to bring down crime is credited with starting a long-term reduction in violence in the city that has continued successfully under Mayor Bloomberg and commissioner Kelly.

But Brooklyn councilman Jumaane Williams told the Guardian that Kelly – and Bloomberg – should acknowledge the mixed results of his policing.

“That’s one of the major problems with this administration, they are unable to take credit for the things they did achieve while simultaneously acknowledging the things that did not go well,” he said.

Williams said the stop-and-frisk policy had unfairly targeted the black and latino populations of the city and had undone some of the good brought by the overall reduction in crime.

“The city is safer but not everything Kelly has done has worked and the arrogance of not talking about that is so frustrating because we could have got past the controversy a long time ago,” said Williams.

He accused the police of stopping people “on the basis or race, not reasonable suspicion’, which had been a ‘destructive’ policy and not responsible for the drop in crime as cited by the commissioner.

When Kelly leaves his post he plans to give speeches and join the Council on Foreign Relations as a visiting fellow focusing on counterterrorism, cybersecurity and other national security issues.

Kelly has been praised by President Obama.

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