QPP 47: Arthur Storch and Louis Anemone

Arthur Storch and I (and half way we’re joined by Louis Anemone) talk about community policing, compstat, the great NYC crime drop, and how it went went wrong with stop question and frisk. Just great “inside baseball” on policing then and now.

It’s a long episode, over 2 hours. So make a snack, sit back, relax. Or break it up into two. Also, unlike most episodes now, it’s edited…. down from 3 hours. So it’s action packed and guaranteed to please.

Anemone’s contribution to my violence reduction project is here: https://qualitypolicing.com/violencereduction/

Audio:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/45128515

YouTube version:

Timeline:

[00:01:31] In the early days of Bratton, when we first started Compstat and we were bringing down crime, at that point, we had full blown community policing and NYPD.

[00:04:00] Communities raising money for bike cops.

[00:06:00] How it went wrong and let to stop question and frisk abuse.

[00:18:49] Inter-agency collaboration

[00:32:49] Crime families, race, and policing in Queens in the 1990s.

[00:42:23] A crazy idea for going back to beats and all foot patrol policing

[00:44:37] what I loved about working under the Bratton and what the great thing about Anemone. All right. I’m telling you, like his rough side, but I love the guy. Boundless enthusiasm. Boundless energy. Right. And he wanted creativity. He didn’t want you doing everything the same old way.

[00:55:05] Drug enforcement in public housing.

[01:07:20] Cops who are assholes, red flags within the department, and internal affairs.

[01:17:08] The role of supervision in officer discipline

[01:17:08] [Louis Anemone joins the call]

[01:20:00] And I had to deal with these guys. They weren’t mean to the public. They were just mean to cops….it’s up to the whoever’s in charge to not allow attitudes.

[01:22:45] I don’t have to fire you, I don’t think, to gain your compliance willingly or unwillingly. There are enough tools for any commander to gain compliance with what he wants or she wants done.

 [01:29:04] The commissioners that followed Bratton, they understood that Compstat was really important and that the I always call it the engine that brought crime down. But those those people that replaced him were first of all, they weren’t really police officers, some of them. Right. They didn’t understand the importance of community policing.

[01:33:00] What they told us at Compstat was, you can’t be a conscientious objector if someone breaks the law in front of your face. You’re a police officer. You have to make sure they don’t continue to break the law. You could do with a warning. You could do with a summons. You could do it with an arrest. But the thing is, you can have them keep doing it while you’re there. That’s not that’s not involved. Unacceptable.

[01:33:16] Policing and reducing date rapes.

[01:39:00] Look, when I was a precinct commander, no exaggeration, I worked fourteen hours a day.

[01:43:11] They were asking for “touches” at the Compstat meeting. How many touches did you have? How many touches? I need more touches. That’s crazy.

[01:44:45] I actually had precinct commanders say to me, Chief, well, don’t bring down too much now because how are you going to do next year? If you have a good strategy? It builds on itself.

[01:47:22] How compstat is like the opening credits of the TV show Kung Fu.

[01:51:47] What’s the role of the union in this?

[01:52:30] Let’s not forget the diaphragm part of the chokehold ban.

[01:56:40] You know what’s happened in Chicago recently with their foot pursuit policy?

[01:59:02] OK, you use the term “bad guys.” Now, many people today might say that’s the problem, is you see the world divided between good guys and bad guys. You can imagine sort of the argument I’m presenting here. What do you say to that?

[01:59:24] Even bad guys are human beings. That’s what I’m going to say to you.

[02:02:13] You have to reserve the right to any and all police officers to use force if and when they feel it’s appropriate, and then to be judged by the rules of the department or the rules of the state or the city as to whether or not that use was justified. But you can’t have them not engage. You can’t have them not pursue. You can’t have them not use force because something may or may not happen. So we do need leadership, police leadership throughout the country, has got to speak up on this. The pendulum has gone way, way too far.

[02:04:01] Cops as dispatchers.