>This looks like a call to action, but it's actually a call to *inaction*.
>We're being called on to "struggle with contradictions", a damnably
>pointless activity if ever there was one. The problem here is that the
>group wants severe penalties for offences, but doesn't want them to be
>inflicted on people. Or more likely, that this sentence represents a
>consensus between people who want to chop the knackers off the Central Park
>mob and people who don't want anyone to be arrested for anything ever.
No, the problem is that while feminists of color want those who committed sexual assaults to be arrested for their crimes, we don't want this incident to be used as an excuse for looking at all young men of color as if they were criminals or potential criminals and for continuing the policy of zero tolerance & war on crime and drugs. Two legitimate desires, if you ask me. The manner in which the attacks on women in the Central Park get discussed should concern all of us who see a problem in the growth of prisoners in America, because it will have an effect on more people than the actual attackers in this case. In case you are not aware of how the media, police, & politicians may use the Central Park assaults, see below:
***** The New York Times June 15, 2000, Thursday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 27; Column 1; Editorial Desk HEADLINE: The Vigilance That Can't Let Up BYLINE: By William J. Bratton; William J. Bratton was New York police commissioner from 1994 to 1996.
The outrageous and violent behavior of a large gang of young men who were totally out of control in Central Park on Sunday was a troubling reminder of the bad old days that most New Yorkers, myself included, had felt were behind us. It seems inconceivable that over two dozen women could have been assaulted in broad daylight. Fear is now consuming the public -- a fear that was compounded by a weekend that also saw seven homicides and 28 shootings in the city.
When I first came to New York from Boston in 1990 as chief of the Transit Police, the city was still reeling from the Central Park jogger case. A woman running in the park had been viciously assaulted and left for dead by a marauding "wolf pack," as the gangs of young men roaming the streets and subways had come to be known. Their "wilding" attacks came to epitomize just how unsafe New York had become and contributed to a pervasive fear.
So deeply scarred was the city by the jogger incident and other crimes symbolizing a city out of control that even now one weekend of violence can shatter our still fragile belief that we have truly turned a corner, that New York is, as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani correctly proclaims, "the safest large city in America."
In dealing with the crime of the 1980's and early 1990's, the police and politicians learned not only to improve their response to crime but to accept responsibility for controlling it and to focus more of their efforts on preventing it. Government, not the mob, must control the streets.
What is particularly troubling about Sunday's incident, which took place amid the crowds that remained in Midtown after the annual National Puerto Rican Day Parade, is the apparent deficiency of both the crowd control strategies that the Police Department has become so famous for and the initial response (or lack of it) by some officers to the victims' reported pleas for assistance.
The horror for the victims subjected to sexual assault and degradation is that the memories will stay with them forever. The tragedy for New York itself is that as videotapes of the attacks have been widely broadcast (some of the victims were European tourists, and their ordeals were widely covered at home), the still forming image of a safer city has been tarnished around the world.
The truth is that New York is a much safer city than it was a decade ago. But we must also focus on perception. The reality for the victims of Sunday's assaults is that they happened; overall crime statistics are of no consolation to them. The perception of most other New Yorkers, particularly women, is that somehow in a day New York became a much more threatening place.
The mayor and the Police Department must move aggressively to investigate not only the incident itself but police planning and actions. New York's police are practiced in tactics that are known to work in managing large gatherings like New Year's Eve in Times Square or the big parades.
Before any such event, a strong message must go out that law breaking and drunkenness will not be tolerated. At the event itself, there must be a strong and visible police presence to control the ground and make sure rowdiness has no chance to get out of hand. Afterward, officers should not be relieved of duty until it is confirmed that there is no longer a need for police presence in a particular area. And all day there must be continuous reassessment and follow-up to make sure that problems and disturbances have not migrated to areas with thinner police coverage.
But as the investigation determines where the lapses were on Sunday, the mayor and the police must also, through their expressions of outrage, sympathy and determination to get at the facts, begin to deal with the fear. Fear, if left unchecked, will allow perception to overcome reality.
The public needs meaningful reassurance that Sunday's crime spree is not a precursor of more bad times ahead. The Police Department must use the events as a spur to remain constantly vigilant and not be lulled into a sense of complacency. The statistics and the accomplishments of the past deserve to be celebrated, but they cannot be substituted for a Police Department that is compassionate to victims, responsive to the public and intolerant at all times of criminal behavior. *****
***** The New York Times June 17, 2000, Saturday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk HEADLINE: A Volatile Mixture Exploded Into Rampage in Central Park BYLINE: By DAVID BARSTOW and C. J. CHIVERS
....Even as detectives continue to round up suspects -- 8 more were arrested yesterday, bringing the total to 16 -- another police investigation is focusing on how the 4,000 police officers assigned to the parade were deployed, when officers were sent home and how senior commanders communicated with one another about the movements of more than a million people.
"We're going to critique this very closely to make sure that it doesn't happen in the future," Police Commissioner Howard Safir said this week.
Any examination of the department's performance during and after the parade will have to try to reconcile a certain indisputable level of enforcement -- the department wrote hundreds of citations for public drinking, which is illegal -- with a widespread sense among people at and around the parade that gross misconduct went virtually ignored.
All week, for instance, city officials have battled direct or implicit accusations that the police deliberately took a hands-off approach because of the department's tense relations with minority groups.
Mr. Giuliani has strongly disputed this notion, and police officials have provided statistics showing, if anything, a history of somewhat tougher enforcement.
During this year's St. Patrick's Day Parade, for example, the police confiscated 200 open alcohol containers, compared with 2,601 confiscations during this year's Puerto Rican parade.
"Maybe we're in a period of time in which the police can't win," Mr. Giuliani said yesterday on his weekly radio program.
Police officials said there was no letup this year, and according to police figures, officers issued hundreds more summonses for petty crimes and noise complaints than they did at last year's parade.
There have been "a lot of complaints fairly recently that the police have become too strict in quality of life enforcement," one police official said. "That in my mind is one of the main things that keeps the control of various types of events, such as parades, such as New Year's Eve in Times Square. The enforcement is necessary. That helps to set the tone."
But according to a growing number of witnesses, police officers failed again and again on Sunday to provide even the mildest of responses to scenes of obvious disorder and lawlessness.
What's more, several witnesses have alleged in interviews this week, some officers failed to react to specific complaints about women being mistreated and harassed.
"Is it normal to just turn the city over to those kinds of people?" asked Mrs. Brown, of Texas, expressing one common view.
The Police Department reported that it made one marijuana arrest during the parade and confiscated 16 bags of marijuana. But many witnesses described dozens, if not hundreds, of people openly smoking marijuana, many of them in plain view of police officers.
"I was concerned about secondhand smoke, that's how bad it was," said Shelly English, 37, who was jogging in Central Park on Sunday.
Deputy Chief Thomas P. Fahey, a department spokesman, denied those claims, arguing that it did not make sense for officers to ignore blatant drug use. "If I have a parade detail and I walk my route and smell marijuana, I'd go ballistic," he said. "Why? Because I know my boss is going to come along soon, and if he smells something, he's going to ask me what the hell I'm doing."
Special police teams, each with 24 officers, roved along the parade route, confiscating open alcohol containers and writing summonses, but many thousands more teenagers and young people clearly drank alcohol with impunity, many people at the parade said.
Some men circulated in the crowds openly hawking miniature bottles of rum and vodka. "There was alcohol all over the street, bottles of liquor, people offering shots," said Nathan Poe, 27, a Web site developer from Brooklyn.
Chief Fahey said that officers sometimes decide, quite properly, that it is a better use of their time to direct traffic than to go after someone with an open can of beer.
But police officials have acknowledged in interviews that the department's tactical and strategic decisions may have contributed to a set of circumstances that permitted some of the worst incidents of violence to go forward unchecked.... *****
From these two examples, you get a hint of how public discourse on the Central Park attacks on women get framed by the media, police, and politicians: no attention to sexism, but lots of attention to the need for zero tolerance. I wonder how discussion is proceeding among NY feminists about how to reconcile the need for arrest of the men who committed the crimes with the urgent need to stop zero tolerance and more generally the wars on drugs & crime.
Yoshie