Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly warned reporters today that if the City Council passes legislation to allow citizens to challenge discriminatory police practices and install an Inspector General to oversee the department, New York will revert to the dangerous dystopia of the "old days," only with more attorneys. "Every tort lawyer is gonna buy a new house and a new car right away," Bloomberg said. "They're not even gonna have to wait for the cases to come in." Kelly added, "City council might as well have named the legislation, the 'Full Employment for Plaintiffs Attorneys Act'…Take heart Al Qaeda wannabes."
A reporter pointed out that the legislation, which is likely to be put to a vote in the next day or two, would not allow for monetary damages, just injunctive relief and attorneys fees. Bloomberg replied, "It doesn't matter. If I spend all my time in court and police stations writing up descriptions or whatever I do, instead of being out there in the streets, they're not gonna be out in the streets to protect you." The mayor then glared at the reporter. "This is a very personal thing for you and your family."
Bloomberg's warnings seemed to jibe with what he said was the reason why polling shows 68% of voters support an Inspector General for the NYPD, even as they also support the department and their stance on terrorism.
It's easy to get someone to go along with something if you frame it as if their safety is at stake, he explained. "If you phrase a question, 'Would you like or would you not like something,' you get different answers…I can tell you from my personal experience, if you say, 'Do you want to be safe, if you want your kids to be safe?' They all say yes."
The mayor then repeatedly invoked those very same stakes to reject the legislation: "This is not a game, this is a life-threatening thing…This is life and death, this isn't playing some game…It's very nice to have a lawyer and everybody after say you should have done this and you should have done that, but when the other guy maybe has a gun in his pocket, that's a different story."
Aside from the usual dubious arguments against the legislation, officials said that recent police initiatives to curb violence might be jeopardized, though this line of reasoning assumes that state judges would side with every complaint.
The Mayor also made a bizarre complaint against the Inspector General bill: "Intro 1079 would allow gang members to make anonymous complaints to the new inspector general…The IG would have to review, and the NYPD would have to dedicate time and resources to answering the gang members' anonymous complaints."
Asked how gang members (not to mention zombies, pirates, and cannibals) making vague, anonymous complaints could realistically be a problem, the mayor responded: "Because today…you have to have some substance. If you just say I don't like that guy in my neighborhood, that may be well be true, but we're not gonna devote our resources to that."
Bloomberg batted away a question about what his administration would do if the legislation passed, and said he would not spend money to fight the politicians who voted for it, as he has done with congressional gun legislation.
Kelly claimed that an Inspector General would "undermine our partners that the NYPD has carefully constructed over the past decade. Partnerships with both domestic and foreign entities. Those partnerships have helped keep New Yorkers safe.
Kelly said that those "entities" can't handle any "review of their own sensitive operations", by an IG, and would "walk away" from the NYPD if probed.
http://gothamist.com/2013/06/24/bloomberg_city_council_legislation.php
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