Dermot Shea’s time is up

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea has done it again. This week, he callously stepped in front of a microphone to blame necessary changes to our cash bail system and a long-overdue ban on chokeholds for an uptick in shootings this past weekend.

This is the same commissioner who praised his officers after two police vehicles rammed into demonstrators and after officers were caught on tape swinging batons at peaceful protesters. The same commissioner who, after seven weeks of protesting since the death of George Floyd, has failed to offer any meaningful proposals on how to transform policing in a way that keeps all New Yorkers safe.

Shea doesn’t deserve a platform for fearmongering. He deserves a pink slip.

New Yorkers are right to be concerned about shootings, but Shea blames bail reforms that just took effect in January (and that have just been amended) and, bizarrely, a ban on chokeholds that hasn’t even taken effect.

Let’s put this in perspective: The commissioner denounced a chokehold reform that could have saved the life of Eric Garner. His opposition to commonsense bail reform serves to deny the humanity of Kalief Browder — arrested at 16 years old on a discredited minor theft charge and locked away in jail for three years (about two in solitary confinement) without trial because his family could not afford $3,000 bail. Browder committed suicide as a result of these horrors. And it insults the memory of Layleen Polanco, who was in jail because she couldn’t pay $500 bail and died after seven days in solitary confinement.

Meanwhile, per the NYPD’s own statistics, of the 528 shooting incidents this year, only one can be tied to someone released as a result of the reforms.

Shea even labeled the routine democratic act of approving a municipal budget as an example of bowing to “mob rule,” disparaging the City Council’s baby steps towards cutting a bloated police budget that has grown 34% over the last decade as crime rates have plummeted.

At a time when an unprecedented one million New Yorkers are out of work, 50,000 face potential eviction and over a half-million lack health insurance, protesters demand that our leaders direct resources to address our problems.

We need officials who talk to communities and local leaders, not disparage them and resort to bullying and fearmongering. We are in the middle of a pandemic that has produced depression-level economic devastation and killed tens of thousands of New Yorkers; the effects are being felt most acutely in communities of color.

Shea shows no interest in the real causes or cures for what ails us.

In contrast, some police leaders in other cities are rising to the occasion. In Minneapolis, the police commissioner immediately fired the four officers who killed George Floyd, and the City Council is starting from scratch with a Department of Community Safety to replace the police department. The Minneapolis police commissioner has let that process play out.

Here in New York, we are stuck in the dark ages. Shea inexplicably claims that the NYPD needs additional “support,” “tools” and “resources.” Give me a break. The NYPD, with 36,000 officers and a $6 billion budget, is the most well-resourced police department in the country, if not the world, even after the “cuts” adopted last week.

Shea’s comments are part of an effort by the opponents of reform to use short-term crime statistics to maintain the system of policing they prefer. They can’t see that crime spikes, while troubling, are likely because more than half a million New Yorkers are now unemployed, forced to rely on food pantries and facing an increasing risk of eviction.

If we believe black and Latino New Yorkers deserve to be safe — physically, economically and emotionally — and if we want to truly reform policing, then we need our leaders to lead. Dermot Shea has proven that he is not up to the task. He must go.

Wiley, a professor at the New School, served as chair of the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board and counsel to Mayor de Blasio. She is exploring a run for mayor.