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March
21, 2001
NYPD's
War On Blacks
by Michael
Lewtin
The whole city of New
York deserves "enlightenment" about the NYPD exoneration
of Officer Craig Yokemick, who fatally fractured Kenneth Banks's
skull by throwing a police radio at his head in October 1998.
Unfortunately,
the department's failure to take even minimal disciplinary action
against Yokemick in this case reflects the Giuliani administration's
street-level war on young men of color.
As in the cases
of Amadou Daillo (1999) and Patrick Dorismond (2000), Mr. Banks
was a black man whose life was taken without justification by
the NYPD. The 5'5"-tall Banks was unarmed and posed no
threat to the 6'6" Yokemick. As with attempts to defuse
criticism by assassinating the characters of Diallo and Dorismond,
police sought to justify Bank's death by demonizing him as a
drug dealer-an allegation disputed by civilian witnesses-with
a criminal record. Indeed, rather than obtaining emergency medical
attention for his severe injuries, police cuffed and jailed the
unconscious Banks, whom they charged with misdemeanor drug possession.
As in the Diallo
and Dorismond cases, New York City's criminal justice system
has proved unwilling to punish the officer responsible for Banks's
death. Every day, Legal Aid attorneys relearn the old maxim
that prosecutors can indict even a ham sandwich. Here, however,
the Manhattan District Attorney's Office endorsed the grand jury's
decision not to indict Yokemick on the grounds that "the
level of force was appropriate under the circumstances in order
to apprehend Mr. Banks." Then-Police Commissioner Howard
Safir would comment only that "the criminal justice system
has spoken."
To top it off,
the NYPD's Department Advocate was unable to obtain even a 10-day
suspension in Yokemick's recent disciplinary hearing. It wasn't
the first time the department had gone easy on Yokemick; he was
still on the force at the time of Banks's death despite previous
findings of excessive force, assault, and discourtesy.
This pattern
of abuse is the predictable consequence of the Street Crime Unit
(Diallo), Operation Condor (Dorismond), and department-wide "quality
of life" arrest quotas systematically aimed at young black
and Latino men-usually for nonviolent and/or petty offenses.
As a high-ranking
NYPD narcotics commander recently explained, "[c]ops are
flooding the system with minor stuff just for the overtime."
(N.Y. Daily News, December 22, 2000). As a result, "Manhattan
has more residents in state prison than any other county in the
state . . . A whopping 105 out of every 10,000 Manhattan residents
are in state prison" (N.Y. Post, Feb. 4, 2001).
These policies,
in turn, feed the state's insatiable "war on drugs,"
whose Rockefeller Drug Laws have boosted the number of state
prison inmates to 70,000-21,000 of them incarcerated for nonviolent
drug offenses.
The Giuliani
administration insulates police misconduct generated by these
policies through staunch resistance to effective police oversight.
According to
both the NYCLU and the city Department of Investigation, the
CCRB is, at best, ineffective. The Mayor has adamantly opposed
Federal oversight of the NYPD, and recently defended his refusal
to cooperate with Federal investigation of the Street Crime Unit
on the grounds that "they (Federal prosecutors) have to
stop harassing the Police Department."
By pursuing
such search-and-destroy policies, the administration bears ultimate
responsibility for taking the lives of people like Amadou Diallo,
Patrick Dorismond and Kenneth Banks.
MICHAEL LETWIN
is President Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW 2325
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