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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

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Dirty NYPD cops can't lose

The NYPD is a notoriously corrupt institution, whose indiscriminate acts of violence and murder have steadily worsened for decades. A powerful police union and a cowed City Hall ensure that even the worst cops rarely have any kind of reckoning.

After a series of legal wrangles - a New York state law, a lawsuit by the police union, and Propublica's brave decision to publish - we finally got a glimpse at the buried horrors in the NYPD disciplinary files.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/27/ip/#nypd-who

We also learned about the impunity enjoyed by dirty cops, including the cops who were caught on camera breaking the law to brutalize and maim protesters in last summer's BLM uprising.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/18/news-worthy/#nypd-black-and-blue

However, there are instances of police abuse that are so egregious and well-documented that the officers involved face some kind of consequences.

For example, Officer Vincent D'Andraia faces criminal charges and a civil suit after he was recorded brutalizing Dounya Zayer last summer.

https://twitter.com/JasonLemon/status/1266529475757510656

NYC's Law Department has announced that it won't provide D'Andraia with a lawyer. That may sound like he's being cut loose, but as a joint The City/Propublica article by Jake Pearson explains, that isn't true.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/3/26/22351475/nypd-union-contract-defend-officers-when-the-city-wont

That's because the city's contract with the NYPD's union mandates the creation and funding of a secretive slush-fund that is used to hire white-shoe, high-powered private sector lawyers to defend cops so dirty the City's own lawyers won't touch them.

The deal has been in place since 1985, and it requires the city to divert $75 per officer ($2m/year) into a defense fund that cops get to dip into "when the City of New York fails or otherwise refuses to provide a legal defense."

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20509353-pba_civil_legal_representation_fund_8112_73117

Nominally, this fund is off limits in case "directly or indirectly adverse to the interests of the City," but this is meaningless: when someone sues over police brutality, the City is usually a co-defendant, meaning defending the dirty cop is in the City's interest.

The City's contract with the Police Benevolent Association - the NYPD's union - expired in 2017 and will likely be renegotiated by whomever wins the upcoming NYC mayoral race.

As Pearson notes, the $75/officer fund has become standard - Rikers' guards and police brass all got similar deals after the PBA deal was struck.

These deals mean that even when cops and guards commit offenses so grotesque the City won't defend them, NYC's taxpayers do.

Police reform is on the ticket in the mayoral race. NYC pays out hundreds of millions of dollars every single year to settle claims against its officers, but its contracts with the PBA make those officers not just un-fireable but immune to ANY consequences.

Image: Teresa Shen (modified): https://www.flickr.com/photos/tshen91/8393203038

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic

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chicago-geniza · 1 year

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Do a double take whenever the German in Tár is the same as Yiddish or she says it with like. Idk how to explain? She says "sehr gut" like it's "zayer gut," she draws it out, the emphasis falls slightly in the wrong place for crisp German, it's an English accent but also Yiddish. The pronunciation, the prosody. Something in it.

#tar the movie tag

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nowthisnews · 4 years

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NYPD officer Vincent D’Andraia is under investigation after pushing Douyna Zayer, who was taken to the ER with serious head injuries

follow @nowthisnews for daily news videos & more

#NYPD #Vincent D’Andraia #police brutality #police #police violence #protest #news #nowthis

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oldserah · 4 years

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Completed Request made for @the-mechanical-angel Oc’s Deva Zayer From the Game ‘The Last of Us 2′

1/10 request’s [8 or 7 spaces left!]

#request #tlou2 #OC #OldSerah #myart #theolddraws

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hawkthorneroyals · 4 years

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FIRST ENGAGEMENT FOR THEIR ROYAL HIGHNESSES THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF DRUEVALE

After few days of silence and mourning, the Royal Family seems ready to resume their work again and not abandon their subjects. In the morning The Duke and Duchess of Druevale made their first royal engagement as couple by visiting the Saint Helen Art and Design School in Merbridge, in the North of Sovoy, where they were welcomed by the institute’s headmaster, Arch. Javier Burkett and the eccentric teacher of the industrial design course, Arch. Vera Robles.

Founded in the mid 19th century, the aim of the school is to train the new generations of designers who, thanks to the help of their creations, will try to solve problems that have not yet been answered. Nowadays, the institute is training young minds for the design and development of sustainable products designed to protect our environment. During the years the School boasts illustrious students and teachers like the architect Sigmund Zayer, the interior designer Alfred Boyles and Sir Paul Lewitt, who directed the art course for over twenty years.

Their Royal Highnesses spent a part of their visit chatting with teachers and students of each laboratories. The Duke of Druevale gave a speech regarding the attention we must put on the issue of eco-sustainability and how we can adopt alternative solutions to combat pollution. Here’s an estract of his speech:

“Climate changes is a challenge that we have accepted to face. We have always underestimated the problem and we never had the strength and the will to act. But now the issue is real, and we need to put our minds together to help our nature as best as we can. [...]

[...] My wife and I are utterly impressed by the passion and the dedication young people is taking to offer us alternative solutions to be more ecological. And we want to thank the hard work of the teaching staff to train a more respectful and aware generation.”

Their Royal Highnesses interrupted their honeymoon due to the Queen Mother’s funeral, and Sovoy Palace’s court staff claimed that they will postphone their holidays to represent the Monarchy with all their might.

#ts4 #ts4 monarchy #ts4 royalty #ts4 royal family #ts4 royal simblr #ts4 legacy #ts4 royal legacy #royal family challenge #hawkthorne royals #sovoy legacy #gen 1

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feelingbluepolitics · 4 years

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"Cellphone video showed him knocking the victim, Dounya Zayer, 20, to the ground and calling her a 'bitch' after she asked him why he told her to get out of the street.

..."Officer D’Andraia, who has been suspended without pay, is the first city police officer in New York to face arrest over his conduct during the large protests that have sprung up every day since Mr. Floyd died on May 25.

"Prosecutors are weighing criminal charges against as many as 40 other officers, law enforcement officials said, as the police, district attorneys, and lawmakers face intense pressure to change a status quo that for decades has largely allowed police officers accused of assault or other violent acts on duty to avoid serious punishment.

"Police and prosecutors have said they are investigating several other instances of police using violence against protesters after they were recorded on video, and a civilian oversight agency that investigates police misconduct said it has received hundreds of complaints since the protests started.

"Officer D’Andraia and another officer involved in a separate incident were suspended without pay last week after investigators concluded they had violated department policies and recommended disciplinary charges. The second officer, who has not been named publicly, was recorded snatching off a man’s mask and pepper-spraying him during a protest on May 30 in Brooklyn."

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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Even among the hundreds of videos capturing the violent police response to Black Lives Matter protests last year, this one stood out.

A muscular male officer, in a navy blue shirt with “NYPD” across the back, lunged at a young demonstrator, shoving her several feet and sending her crashing to the ground on a street in Brooklyn.

In a video shot by a reporter and shared widely on social media, the woman, Dounya Zayer, can be seen clutching her head and writhing in pain after she tumbles to the asphalt.

The mayor called the officer’s actions “absolutely unacceptable,” the police commissioner said internal affairs was investigating and, 11 days after the incident, the district attorney announced criminal charges against the officer, Vincent D’Andraia.

Zayer, 21, went on to file a lawsuit alleging that D’Andraia had violated her right to free speech, and last month, the city’s Law Department, which almost always represents officers sued for on-the-job actions, told D’Andraia it wouldn’t defend him in court.

It looked like the city was cutting the cop loose, a step rarely taken in the hundreds of lawsuits filed every year against NYPD officers. But while a city lawyer won’t be representing D’Andraia in court, it turns out New Yorkers are still paying the law firm that is representing him in the case.

That’s because every year, the city treasury effectively bankrolls a union-controlled legal defense fund for officers. The little-known fund is financed in part by a direct city contribution of nearly $2 million a year that is expressly intended to pay for lawyers in civil cases like D’Andraia’s, where the Law Department has decided an officer’s conduct is essentially indefensible. Or, as the police union’s legal plan puts it, “when the City of New York fails or otherwise refuses to provide a legal defense.”

The money isn’t supposed to be used by the union, the Police Benevolent Association, “in any action directly or indirectly adverse to the interests of the City,” according to a 1985 letter memorializing the deal that established the annual taxpayer contribution. But the agreement doesn’t define those “interests,” and the city is typically a co-defendant in such cases, as it is in the lawsuit by Zayer. So even as the city might distance itself from an officer, it could still argue that the government’s legal interests are best served by its employee having robust legal representation.

“It’s not bad public policy to invest and make sure that all sides have adequate representation,” said Zachary Carter, who ran the Law Department from 2014 to 2019.

But critics say that subsidizing such defenses could undercut police accountability by sending a message to officers that the city will back them no matter what.

“The bottom line is this is scandalous,” said Joel Berger, a lawyer who specializes in police abuse cases and who, in the 1990s, served as a senior official in the Law Department who decided when the city should withdraw representation of officers. “It was a sweetheart deal with the union and it should never have been agreed to.”

Neither the mayor’s office nor the Law Department would address detailed questions from ProPublica about the fund, including how the city squares paying for the defense of officers it won’t represent with the provision stipulating that the money not be used for any purpose “adverse to the interests of the City.”

The Legal Services Fund of the Police Benevolent Association has in recent years paid for the representation of an NYPD officer accused in a lawsuit of slamming a 75-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease against the hood of a car after the man talked back to the cop, and has paid to defend another officer who court papers charge tackled an unarmed, chronically ill, 4-foot-8-inch, 85-pound man and shocked him with a stun gun.

The message to officers, said Zayer’s lawyer, Tahanie Aboushi, is that the city will help shield them from some of the consequences of even their most egregious conduct.

“Maybe you’re going to be disciplined,” said Aboushi, who is a candidate in the race to be the next Manhattan district attorney, “but getting a lawyer, paying for a lawyer, understanding the accountability that comes from a lawsuit — they’re completely insulated from that.”

It is the sort of protection that, in the last few decades, has proliferated in police labor agreements across the country, often negotiated behind closed doors, with little attention paid to the public policy implications.

But in the reckoning that has followed George Floyd’s killing, many Americans are rethinking how the country is policed and unions are facing particularly pointed questions, not just in Minnesota or in New York, but also in city halls, in state legislatures and at negotiating tables across the country.

“There is a whole set of what I’ve labeled ‘special privileges’ that employees in other contexts don’t enjoy,” said Samuel Walker, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a national expert on police accountability. “It’s been a very secretive development, and the lack of any organized opposition until just recently has kept it secret.”

The violent police response to many Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the country in the weeks after Floyd’s death only intensified calls for sweeping changes in American policing.

In New York, the furor after Floyd’s death pushed through the long-sought repeal of a state law that made police disciplinary records secret. And last month, the city beat back a legal challenge by the PBA and other unions that had sought to block the release of those records.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio, who campaigned as a champion of police reform, has been criticized for his embrace of the NYPD, particularly during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. As he prepares to leave office at the end of the year, many of the leading candidates to succeed him have promised a new approach to policing.

Still, it’s a long way from the campaign stump to the negotiating table, and even after the events of the last year, the police unions — and the power and protections entrenched in their contracts — will pose a formidable test for the next mayor. The PBA’s contract expired in 2017 and will remain in force until a new one is approved, so it will almost certainly fall to the new administration to negotiate the next labor deal and to decide whether to take on sacred cows like the legal defense fund.

ProPublica pieced together the origins of the defense fund by reviewing tax records, studying labor agreements and examining other city documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Law.

Like anyone charged with a serious crime, an officer facing criminal prosecution has a right to a defense lawyer. But the deal establishing the city’s contribution to the fund was specifically designed to pay for defending officers in civil litigation, where an officer could face a substantial monetary judgment.

The deal, struck by the then-police union head and the city’s top labor negotiator, created what has become an annual taxpayer contribution that amounts to $75 per officer. The legal services fund takes in another $3.7 million every year from the union’s health and welfare fund, a city-funded entity that provides health insurance and other employee benefits. That portion of the defense fund can be used for legal representation, too, though not in those lawsuits where the city has said it will not represent the officers.

All told, the defense fund takes in about $5.5 million a year, which the PBA pays to the Manhattan law firm of Worth, Longworth & London to represent officers, tax filings show.

A spokesman for the PBA, which represents about 25,000 rank-and-file officers, didn’t respond to detailed questions about the fund.

While the PBA was the first to secure the city contribution, the annual $75-per-member taxpayer funding for civil defense has been replicated in the contracts that cover thousands of NYPD sergeants, lieutenants and captains.

The union representing the 9,000 jail guards who run the violence-plagued Rikers Island complex and other city jails secured a $75-per-member city contribution to their defense fund as well. Correction officers are frequently sued over allegations of prisoner abuse and neglect in New York City, suits that have led to multimillion-dollar settlements and, in recent years, a federal investigation and monitoring agreement. And the union representing jail wardens, deputy wardens and assistant deputy wardens gets a $189-per-member contribution for civil defense, according to their contract.

New York City’s mayoral primaries are on June 22, and de Blasio’s staunch support for the NYPD has made police accountability a key issue in the race to succeed him, especially among candidates with their own ties to oversight and reform of the department.

Candidate Maya Wiley, once a close adviser to de Blasio and later the chair of the city’s police oversight board, said she would renegotiate the police union contract to ensure better accountability. A Wiley spokesperson said the taxpayer money going to officers’ civil defense should go to gun violence prevention or “a dozen other, better ways to ensure public safety.”

Another mayoral candidate, Comptroller Scott Stringer, plays a key role in police accountability, reviewing and approving every settlement reached in civil cases brought against police officers. But a campaign spokesman said Stringer wasn’t familiar with the defense fund provision of the PBA’s contract and that his policy staff was now looking into it. Mayoral hopeful Eric Adams was for many years a prominent reform voice within the NYPD, rising to the rank of captain and co-founding the group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. But Adams, now the Brooklyn borough president, didn’t respond to questions.

In New York, the rare rollback of police union protections has typically come only when a case of police brutality seized the public conscience and compelled political leaders to act. Even then it can take years.

For decades, NYPD officers involved in shootings or other incidents of potential wrongdoing had two full days to consult with lawyers before being questioned by internal affairs investigators. But after officers sodomized a Haitain immigrant with a stick in the bathroom of a Brooklyn police station in 1997, the so-called 48-hour rule emerged as a key obstacle in the investigation.

In negotiations to settle his lawsuit against the city and the police union, the man, Abner Louima, and his lawyers called for the rule to be scrapped. It wasn’t until 2002, during labor negotiations with the police union, that city officials moved to extract the provision from the agreement, asserting that the police commissioner had broad authority to oversee disciplinary matters. That prompted a yearslong legal battle, which the union ultimately lost in 2006.

Removing a union benefit that has been renewed for decades is possible, but it’s hard to do, said Victor Kovner, who served as the city’s chief lawyer under Mayor David Dinkins in the early 1990s. “And hard doesn’t begin to suggest how challenging it would be,” he said.

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