The Next Mayor: An NYPD Still Outside the Law?

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http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-08-08/news/nypd-ray-kelly-next-mayor-bloomberg/

On June 13, 24 City Councilmembers—11 votes short of a veto-proof majority—voted for a bill that would create an inspector general to monitor this city’s police department. As of this writing, as I expected, the bill remains immobile.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s most ardent fan, Mayor Bloomberg, scoffed at such brazen ignorance: “This is the most regulated department in the entire city. You have five district attorneys. You have the Civilian Complaint Review Board. I think we’ve got enough supervision and oversight.”

What apparently slipped his mind was that he, Ray Kelly, and former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, remain defendants in a case on physical police abuses of our public school students, mainly blacks and Puerto Ricans, often for less than misdemeanors—by Kelly’s School Safety Agents.

After one of many columns documenting this disgrace to the city, let alone the kids (“The Strip Search Room,” January 7, 2009), a cop I didn’t know called me in a fury at what he called “the slipshod so-called training” Kelly authorizes for these plainclothes prowlers with the authority to arrest students who have scrawled on their desks or slipped a cell phone into school if their mother wants to contact them.