Incarcerating people for being poor and homeless is a tragedy that requires our attention.
Photo Credit: TomoNews US; Screenshot / YouTube.com
April 11, 2014
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The recent death of homeless veteran Jerome Murdough in a Rikers
Island cell should be more than a temporary debate in a
blink-and-you'll-miss-it New York media cycle that often desensitizes us
to tragedies. I know it hit close to home for myself — Mr. Murdough
sought refuge the night of his arrest in an East Harlem public housing
staircase three blocks from my home and across the street from my where
my kids go to school. When sleeping in a staircase, I thought, lands you
in a Rikers cell, something is wrong.
Murdough's death laid bare
some of our collective disregard for the poor as well as an aggressive
police department with an obsession for law and order rivaled only by
military dictatorships and science fiction characters (i.e., RoboCop,
Judge Dredd). Is it enough to have roundtable discussions lamenting the
case of Mr. Murdough as one of someone slipping through the cracks? What
happened to him is the not-so unpredictable outcome of a society
heavily invested in enforcement by way of zero-tolerance policing and
criminal justice system. It's an approach that is neither humane nor
sustainable. But as some debate what stop-gap reforms or long term
legislation might be crafted, let's not lose sight of how Murdough
arrived at the cell he would die in: the NYPD and the low-level
crime-focused Broken Windows theory that guides it.
This Thursday
marks the 100th day of the Bill Bratton's 2nd stint as NYPD
Commissioner. Bratton famously helped to introduce and popularize Broken
Windows policing theory — which seeks to crack down on small, low-level
crimes as a means to fighting crime overall — into one of the most
dominant policing philosophies across the country. A country with a
prison population that many recognize as untenable.
My
own brushes with the law give me insight. I look back to a late night
coming come on the A train when I would spend the night in jail after
having my foot up on empty seat in front of me. Another man recently
filed
a lawsuit against the NYPD after an incident where he was charged with
also having his foot on a subway seat. I didn't know it then, but this
was my first encounter with Broken Windows policing and how the theory
actually plays out in the lives of everyday people — not just hardened
criminals or the homeless. I also got a sense of how easy it is to end
up in jail.
After a night of hanging out with friends in 2010, I
peered through the scratchy subway windows to see how much longer my
ride home to the Rockaways would be. The train had been held in the
station for a while, it seemed. Out of the corner of a sleepy, blurry
eye I saw two cops poking their heads in and out of the train. They were
looking for some knuckleheads, I thought. Not my problem. I was a
27-year-old student with a full time job and two kids. Just get this
train moving already, the New Yorker in me demanded.
Then they asked me to step out of the train.
In
all my years growing up I knew cops were sometimes trouble but I
fortunately didn't have much first-hand experience. As the son of a
working-class Colombian mother who had kept me out of trouble growing
up, I was always reminded to not embarrass her or gain the attention of
police. And I knew what cops were capable of. If you're a young man of
color, you know. That's what made me shoot up onto my feet and step out
as quickly and as politely as possible, even as small part of me was
incensed that my train was going to leave and that I'd have to spend
eons waiting for the next one.
A cop asked me to show him ID. I
didn't have it with me. I had left my bag — with my wallet and phone
inside — in my friend's car earlier that night. I knew that it wasn't
against the law not to have ID, so I didn't think much of it. As my
train left, my politeness gave way to me asking questions about why I
was being detained. The initial response was that that I had my foot up
on the seat. Then I was told that I "fit the descript" of someone. Since
I didn't have ID and I was being detained then they'd have to confirm
my identity by calling a family member, they told me. It was about 4:30
a.m. and without my phone the only number I knew offhand was my
mother's. No. I refused to put my nervous mother through hell by having a
cop call her at 4:30 in the morning about her son. Consequently I soon
found my head being pushed down into a cop car for the first time in my
life. The moment was now dawning on me and tears of rage filled my eyes,
which were fully awake now.
I ended up spending that night and
the next morning in a transit jail efficiently located in the back of a
subway station in Rockaway Park. It was a tiny, brightly lit cell where
it seemed no one could hear you scream. After confirming my identity
(which I still haven't figured out how), the cop told me that I was
getting a summons for having my foot up on the subway seat. He handed me
the summons along with my shoelaces as I walked out wondering how many
people had passed through these doors.
While I was lucky enough to walk out and pay a fine, Jerome Murdough's night didn't end so easily. The same might be said of
Kalief Browder,
the then 16-year-old teen who spent 33 months in Rikers without a
conviction or trial. So while horror stories like those of Murdough and
Browder force some of us to snap to attention, it's clear that any
restructuring of a broken criminal justice system must also include a
restructuring of policing. Our court system convicts masses of people —
most of them poor and from communities of color — and our jails are a
teeming with mentally ill New Yorkers. Sweeping up people for the
smallest of crimes will only add water to a sinking ship.
Josmar Trujillo is an activist and organizer with New Yorkers Against Bratton.
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