York Police Department Research Articles

뉴욕경찰청의 알고리즘 예측치안 전략의 논쟁점

The purpose of this study is to examine the controversies surrounding the algorithmic predictive policing strategy adopted by the New York Police Department. NYPD is very active in pursuing algorithmic predictive policing strategies, but it is facing a variety of criticisms, including: First, personal information collection activities for predictive security violate the ideology of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits invasion of privacy. Second, as the police rely on instructions generated by algorithmic predictions, police operations are becoming dehumanized. Third, the police exercise their police authority intensively against dangerous people or dangerous areas, and there is a risk that these people will eventually be negatively stigmatized and become criminals. Fourth, the police unilaterally exercise police power based on algorithmic predictions, rather than a two-way police service that reflects the needs of citizens or the community. Fifth, the efficiency of algorithmic predictive policing has not been verified, and the problem of contamination of used big data is being raised. Sixth, it is impossible to confirm whether the data provided by the police to private companies is opaque and secure. Seventh, there is the irrationality of Police power being replaced by private companies' for-profit businesses. Eighth, the New York Police Department is subject to monitoring of algorithmic predictive policing through the Local Law in Relation to Automated Decision Systems Used by Agencies and Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology(POST) Act, but the problems remain unresolved. Ninth, the New York Police Department continues to engage in legal disputes with human rights watchdog groups such as the Brennen Center over the non-disclosure of algorithmic predictive security information, losing most cases, raising questions about the legality of big data collection and management.

Suspect race affects defense attorney evaluations of preidentification evidence.

When an officer places a suspect in an identification procedure and the witness identifies the suspect, it falls on attorneys to make decisions that reflect the strength of that identification. The factor that most affects the strength of identification evidence is the likelihood that the suspect is guilty before being subjected to the procedure, which scholars refer to as the prior probability of guilt. Given large racial disparities in exonerations based on eyewitness misidentifications, the current work examined whether defense attorneys are less sensitive to prior evidence of guilt when the defendant is Black as opposed to White. We predicted that when the defendant's race was described as White rather than Black, attorneys' judgments would be more sensitive to variations in the evidence that would influence the base rate of guilt. We also predicted that attorneys would rate the case as stronger when the victim's race was described as White rather than Black. We gave 316 defense attorneys case files (modeled after the New York Police Department's style) that varied the strength of the preidentification evidence (strong vs. weak), the race of the defendant (Black vs. White), and the race of the victim (Black vs. White). Attorneys made judgments that were sensitive to the base rate of guilt, but self-report measures demonstrated that they did not understand the extent to which the base rate of guilt influences the reliability of eyewitness evidence. Participants also rated the strength of the preidentification evidence as stronger for Black than for White defendants. Although attorneys are intuitively sensitive to the strength of preidentification evidence, they lack conscious awareness of how a suspect's prior probability of guilt affects likelihood of a mistaken identification, which may have implications for their ability to make race-neutral evaluations of preidentification evidence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The association between street construction projects and community violence in New York City.

Community violence is a major cause of injury and death in the United States. Empirical studies have identified that some place-based interventions of urban private places, such as remediations of vacant lots and buildings, are associated with reductions in community violence in surrounding areas. The aim of this study was to examine whether routine maintenance and repair of urban public places (e.g., street construction projects) are also associated with reductions in community violence, proxied by violent crime. This staggered adoption difference-in-difference analysis investigated the association between street construction projects and community violence in New York City from 2010-2019, divided into 40 calendar quarters. The units of analysis were street-quarters (n = 155,280). Intervention street-quarters were those with completed projects in 2010-2019; control streets were those where projects were scheduled but not completed before 2019. The outcome of community violence was proxied by counts of crime and violence incidents reported to the New York Police Department, within street-quarters. There were 79,592 street-quarters with any community violence incidents (51.2%). We found that street construction projects were associated with a decrease in reckless endangerment (ATT = -0.013; 95% CI = -0.021, -0.004), robbery (ATT = -0.035; 95% CI = -0.063, -0.007), and weapons offenses (ATT = -0.016; 95% CI = -0.031, -0.001) occurring on street-quarters. Street construction projects may be yet another type of place-based intervention to reduce community violence.

Association of mesenteric volvulus in police working dogs with and without a prior prophylactic laparoscopic gastropexy.

To evaluate the association of mesenteric volvulus (MV) in New York Police Department police working dogs (PWDs) with and without a prior prophylactic laparoscopic gastropexy (PLG). 370 PWDs (82 with and 288 without PLG). Medical records and surgery and radiology reports were reviewed from 2012 to 2022. Signalment, pertinent history (medical and surgical), gastropexy status, temperament, and training type were recorded. Statistical analysis was used to identify the relationship between prophylactic gastropexy and MV within the patient population. 3 cases of mesenteric volvulus were noted in this patient population. Two (2.4%) of the 82 PWDs that had undergone prophylactic laparoscopic gastropexy developed MV, whereas 1 (0.3%) of the 288 PWDs that had not undergone a gastropexy procedure developed MV. Police working dogs with PLG were estimated to be at 7.2 times greater odds of MV (point estimate OR, 7.18; 95% CI, 0.642 to 80.143); however, the low incidence of MV in this population limited statistical power, and thus this effect did not achieve statistical significance. Evaluation of MV incidence in additional populations of working dogs will allow greater precision in the point estimate. Prophylactic gastropexy may be associated with an increased risk for MV. However, patients without prophylactic gastropexy are at risk for gastric dilatation and volvulus, which is more common than MV. Therefore, the authors continue to recommend prophylactic gastropexy to decrease the risk for gastric dilatation and volvulus.

An absolute shield: Qualified immunity, police misconduct and black lives matter

Before the global spotlight ascended upon nationwide efforts to codify into law that Black Lives Matter, specifically, police accountability against the use of excessive force against unarmed civilians, qualified immunity has silently flourished throughout America. Created to shield police officers and other government officials for the actions they engage on the job, this long-standing judicial doctrine continues to proliferate a culture of near-zero accountability when police officers engage in misconduct, which for communities of color, oftentimes results in deadly outcomes against unarmed civilians. This article will first revisit the development and legacy of qualified immunity, followed by analyzing its universal defense from police unions, then shifting to a data-rich illustration of disciplinary data highlighting the systemically designed outcomes of qualified immunity via the New York Police Department, before providing concluding thoughts. Ultimately, this article asserts that the retrogressive outcomes of police disciplinary inquiries, especially with respect to communities of color, is operating as designed, whereas efforts to review and revisit its structure and practices threaten a longstanding culture of disregard and near-zero accountability.

"Would I Feel More Secure With a Robot?": Understanding Perceptions of Security Robots in Public Spaces

Robots are increasingly being deployed as security agents helping law enforcement in spaces such as streets, parks, or shopping malls. Unfortunately, the deployment of security robots is not without problems and controversies. For example, the New York Police Department canceled its contract with Boston Dynamics in response to backlash from their use of Digidog, an autonomous robotic dog, which sparked fears in the public. However, it is unclear to what extent affected communities have been involved in the design and deployment process of robots. This is problematic because, without input from community members in the processes of design and deployment, security robots are likely to not satisfy the concerns or safety needs of real communities. To gain deeper insight into people's perceptions of security robots - including both potential benefits and concerns - we conducted 17 semi-structured interviews addressing the following research questions: RQ1. What characteristics do people ascribe to security robots? RQ2. What expectations do people have about the function and role of security robots? RQ3. What are people's attitudes toward the use of security robots? Our study offers several contributions to the existing literature on security robots.

Settling institutional uncertainty: Policing Chicago and New York, 1877–1923

AbstractWe show how both the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department sought to settle uncertainty about their propriety and purpose during a period when abrupt transformations destabilized urban order and called the police mandate into question. By comparing annual reports that the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department published from 1877 to 1923, we observe two techniques in how the police enacted that settlement: identification of the problems that the police believed themselves uniquely well equipped to manage and authorization of the powers necessary to do so. Comparison of identification and authorization yields insights into the role that these police departments played in convergent and divergent constructions of disorder and, in turn, into Progressivism's varying effects in early urban policing.

Authorized Vehicles Only: Police, parking, and pedestrian access in New York City

Sidewalks and crosswalks do not benefit pedestrians if they are blocked by automobiles. In New York City, local media have documented that cars outside of law-enforcement offices routinely park on sidewalks and in crosswalks. This study systematically and longitudinally pursues this topic by tracking the geographic extent of this obstructive parking via in-person observation of the streets surrounding all 77 New York Police Department (NYPD) station houses, across all five boroughs. Combined with review of historical street imagery, this approach reveals widespread and longstanding parking on sidewalks, and to a lesser extent, in crosswalks. Of 77 NYPD station houses, 70 (91%) exhibited parking of at least one of these kinds, with sidewalk parking often extending along the entire block (and not simply in front of station houses), on adjacent blocks, and on both sides of the street. This renders many sidewalks impassable – forcing pedestrians into traffic – and in many cases directly abuts residences and businesses, curtailing access to such destinations. Longitudinally, such obstructive parking was present across 82% of 703 street-imagery data points, indicating this has largely become the default (and not occasional) use of adjacent sidewalks. In-person observation also demonstrated other ways this parking has had negative effects surrounding NYPD station houses, including double parking, obstruction of bus and bike lanes, and blocking of fire hydrants. These findings broaden the study of pedestrian accessibility and safety beyond the quality and design of sidewalks and intersections, to include chronic automotive obstruction, and indicate that parking behavior surrounding public-sector offices, if left unchecked, significantly degrades walkability.

Clarence Taylor. Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City.

Arguing that “the fight against police brutality has been one of the longest civil rights struggles in American history” (6), Clarence Taylor’s Fight the Power examines efforts by Black residents of New York City and their allies to improve local policing from the 1930s to the present. While the author narrates countless high-profile acts of police brutality throughout, the heart of the book centers around Black people fighting back. Indeed, Taylor’s purpose is to examine “the activist groups that carried out long campaigns … to end racially targeted police brutality” long before the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement of the 2010s and the explosion of civil unrest in 2020 (4). In addition to chronicling residents’ demands for liberal reform and community control of police, however, Taylor also explores how police officers, administrators, elected officials, and other police advocates resisted reform, shored up police power, and cracked down on crime. Even as sensational acts of racist police violence stirred community action, members of the New York Police Department (NYPD)—with the help of politicians and journalists—exploited citizens’ fears of crime in order to deny or justify brutality in the name of law and order. If the pattern of police scandal, community protest, and limited reform outlined by Taylor seems timeless—even repetitive—it speaks to the “extraordinary resistance by the police and their allies to altering the power dynamics between people of color and law enforcement” (6). As Taylor concludes, “despite the gains made by the anti-police brutality movement, such abuse continues to plague New York City” (246). Taylor hopes to “bring attention to this long fight,” give voice to survivors, and empower communities in the ongoing fight for racial justice (245).

The Harlem Uprising: Segregation and Inequality in Postwar New York City

Christopher Hayes shows in his aptly titled The Harlem Uprising that the unrest that swept through central Harlem and Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood during July 1964 emerged from a longer history of racial segregation, economic transformation, and political marginalization. The first five chapters detail the “vast system of structural discrimination” that became worse, not better, during the heyday of civil rights activism (p. 2). Duly attentive to the seemingly impersonal forces that bounded the promise of postwar prosperity, Hayes repeatedly and rightly emphasizes the role of policy choices and political calculation in stymying Black New Yorkers' efforts to secure access to housing, jobs, unions, schools, and policing. That confluence of “rising expectations” and “declining fortunes” was central to the six days of demonstrations that followed the July 16, 1964, shooting of fifteen-year-old James Powell (p. 5). In the book's most original contribution, the middle six chapters examine the response of a Black community that had already become rapidly disillusioned with nonviolence and racial integration. Reconstructing the week's developments in remarkable detail, Hayes recounts days filled with meetings between civil rights leaders who had little local credibility and city officials who had little desire to address the deeper roots of the crisis. While movement veterans such as James Farmer and Bayard Rustin pleaded for peace each evening, a growing number of Black Harlemites and Brooklynites turned to bottle throwing, window breaking, and store looting to protest both systematic abuses by the New York Police Department and a much broader range of grievances. After six days, the protests petered out and a superficial calm returned, but never again would Black New York invest the same faith in liberal politics.

Stages of Indoctrination and a Pathway into terrorism: A perspective from Bangladesh

In a time and age of identities, violent extremism fueled by identity-based ideology comes as no surprise. Terrorist attacks from numerous groups take place globally, and Bangladesh has also encountered decades of terrorist violence since its independence particularly from groups that include Jamaat Ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Harkat Ul-Jihad Al-Islami Bangladesh, among others. An aspect that requires deeper understanding is the process of how individuals make their way into terrorist organizations. This paper examines the stages of indoctrination experienced by individuals who were recruited into Bangladeshi terrorist outfits. . The research was conducted with grounded theory methodology, using the bottom to up inductive process, for construction of an explanatory framework. Primary data was collected from in depth semi-structured interviews of individuals who had been recruited into Bangladeshi terrorist outfits and law enforcement officials. Findings have identified stages of indoctrination inspired by Sageman’s model of radicalization (Sageman, 2007), Moghaddam’s Staircase to Terrorism (Moghaddam, 20017) and the New York Police Department’s four factors (NYPD, 2007).

Patrolling and Controlling the Streets: The Origin of School Safety Patrols in New York City

The rise of automobile use in New York City in the 1920s placed pedestrians, particularly children and adolescents, in a new danger. Fatalities and injuries among youth involving automobile accidents created a public health crisis, especially as children navigated streets to and from school each day. The New York Automobile Club and the New York Police Department partnered with the school district to sponsor school safety patrols to educate children and protect them from this newfound danger. The motives of both sponsors, along with the increased expansion of police presence of school grounds, provide complexities, though, to this origin story. As scholars today intensify their explorations and investigations of police and carceral history in the United States, particularly involving black youth in urban centers, the origin story of school safety patrols in New York City has much to say about controlling and patrolling the nation’s streets and beyond.

Hot Spots of Commercial Sex Activities in New York City Neighborhoods: Lessons Learned

Understanding the spatial distribution of commercial sex activities (CSA) in urban environments is important in addressing the harms against sex workers and identifying sex trafficking operations. Guided by crime pattern theory, using Census data and New York Police Department (NYPD) prostitution-related arrests data ( N = 29,075) from 2010 to 2019, this study examines the “hot spots” of CSA in New York City. Local Spatial Autocorrelation Analysis (LISA) identified distinctive spatial clusters of CSA, whereas logistic regression explained their significant congregation in immigrant and racial-ethnic enclaves. The heterogeneity of clusters by boroughs portrays the convergence of activity space of sex workers, patrons, and sex business opportunities reflecting the high-demand locations of CSA and human trafficking in NYC.

Police culture and officers' receptivity to body-worn cameras: a panel study

PurposeThe objectives of this research were to examine how officer perspectives on body-worn cameras (BWCs) are patterned by broader occupational attitudes, and to analyze stability and change in officers' attitudes toward BWCs before and after the deployment of the technology.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyze panel survey data on individual officers in the Albany (New York) Police Department (APD).FindingsPre-BWC deployment, officers varied in their occupational attitudes and BWC perspectives, and the officers' BWC outlooks bore relationships to several occupational attitudes. BWC outlooks were largely stable following deployment. Individual changes in BWC perspectives were related to officers' assignments and unrelated to officers' occupational attitudes.Originality/valueThe authors use panel survey data to test hypotheses about the effect of broad occupational attitudes on officers' receptivity to BWCs and to analyze change pre-/post-BWC deployment.

“The Great White Mother”: Harriet Maxwell Converse, the Indian Colony of New York City, and the Media, 1885–1903

AbstractThis article reveals the history of the unstudied “Indian Colony” of Gilded Age New York City through the life of its founder and governor, Harriet Maxwell Converse. Converse was a white woman adopted by the Senecas and a salvage ethnographer, a potent combination of Indigenous “authenticity” and scholarly authority that made her an object of fascination to white New Yorkers who read about her in extensive newspaper coverage. The Colony itself was composed of boarding houses, Converse’s own townhouse-turned-museum, and was connected to the New York Police Department. It provided housing and support to resident and visiting Native Americans who found work in the city’s “Indian trade” and booming entertainment industry.By highlighting the extensive newspaper coverage of Converse and her Colony, this article reveals a hidden history of the Indigenous people who lived and worked in the city. It also pushes the periodization of the earliest urban Indian communities backward in time by more than a decade and shows how the media fused the daily life of Converse and the Colonists with popular stereotypes of “savage” and “vanished” Indians, immigrant stereotypes, assimilation, gendered expectations, and the predatory academic desires of museums and salvage ethnographers.

Gender differences in serious police misconduct: A machine-learning analysis of the New York Police Department (NYPD)

PurposeDespite a considerable body of research on police misconduct, findings have been mixed, with little consensus regarding its causes and best practices for prevention. Emerging research has focused on the role of gender in understanding and preventing misconduct. The current study examines the extent to which the features associated with serious misconduct differ between male and female officers. MethodsUsing a unique complaint dataset from the NYPD, we apply a sequence of machine learning analytics to consider if it is possible to predict serious misconduct among either group, and whether key predictors differ between groups. ResultsThe results show that it was possible to predict serious misconduct among each group with considerable confidence, while there were notable differences in prevalence, and type of misconduct between sexes. ConclusionsFindings hold important implications for policy, prevention and analytical approaches to police misconduct.

Harvey Schlossberg (1936-2021).

Memorializes Harvey Schlossberg (1936-2021). Author of Psychologist With a Gun (1974), Schlossberg was the first New York Police Department (NYPD) police officer with a PhD in psychology, and a pioneer in police psychology. With the help of two other patrolmen, he developed a program that would evaluate the recruits who entered the Police Academy. He was featured in the 1999 documentary "The Sons of Sam: A Decent into Darkness" in which David Berkowitz was investigated by the NYPD and Schlossberg helped solve the crime. By 1974, Schlossberg began teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. After leaving the NYPD in 1978, he served as chief Psychologist for the police department in Rye, New York (1988-1994), and for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (1990-1999). He continued to expand the Psychological Services for the NYPD and pioneered treatment for violence-prone police. Schlossberg passed away peacefully on May 21, 2021. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Artist Portfolio: Posters About Policing

Artist Portfolio: Posters About Policing

IMPACT OF BIG DATA ANALYTICS ON GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS

One of the most significant research topics that draws considerable attention and interest around the world is big data. This analysis covers the literature relevant to the standard of big data and the impact of it on the quality of decision-making. A descriptive strategy was also used by going over the literature of printed and published structured research, together with a survey of questionnaires concerning individuals coming from the New York Police Department (NYPD. The result from the literature evaluation and survey resulted in proposing a theoretical, conceptual based on the numerical and quantitative strategy. The results of this analysis have discovered that the quality of big data predicts the standard of decision-making in the government sector. Therefore, the standard of big data within NYPD does a tremendous job in the quality of decision-making.

The Cumulative Discretion of Police over Community Complaints

Many policing practices that scholars have identified as deeply flawed are precisely those demanded in police-community meetings. How do initiatives intended for police reform become dominated by demands for more policing? I analyze 1.5 years of ethnographic data on the New York Police Department’s neighborhood policing meetings. Amid highly publicized police violence, America’s largest police force is curating the public’s complaints—not ignoring them—from constituents strategically cultivated through community initiatives. Whereas existing studies conceptualize complaints as grievance tools or liability risks, this case reveals how police conceive community complaints as endorsements of services. This conception guides “cumulative discretion” or selective decision-making across multiple stages: police mobilize, record, internalize, and represent complaints demanding police services, while excluding those seeking reforms to over- and unequal policing. Gaps thus persist between the reforms that some residents seek and the services that police offer. This article offers insights into how organizational imperatives for legitimacy can undermine institutional reforms.