{"id":377973,"date":"2025-11-14T09:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T09:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/377973\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T09:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T09:08:10","slug":"opinion-fear-isnt-leadership-new-york-needs-policing-built-on-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/377973\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Fear isn\u2019t leadership \u2013 New York needs policing built on trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a cold night in February 2012, and I was a sergeant in the 44th Precinct. My team had been sent to the 47th Precinct in the Bronx after a police shooting left a young man dead in his own bathroom. The neighborhood was tense. At roll call, our lieutenant ordered each officer to bring back two stop-and-frisk reports and one summons by the end of the tour.<\/p>\n

When he left, I told my cops something different: Do your job honestly. Don\u2019t stop people just to fill numbers.<\/p>\n

We came back with five reports instead of dozens. My lieutenant yelled, but I could live with that. What I couldn\u2019t live with was fueling the mistrust already hanging over the community. Every unnecessary stop meant another person losing faith in us.<\/p>\n

That night captured what was wrong with the NYPD\u2019s stop-and-frisk era under then-Commissioner Ray Kelly. When he took over in 2002, there were under 100,000 stops each year. By 2011, nearly 700,000 people \u2013 mostly young Black and Latino men \u2013 were being stopped and humiliated, often without cause. A federal court later ruled the practice unconstitutional. Crime didn\u2019t surge when the policy was scaled back; it stayed historically low. The numbers game never made us safer \u2013 it only deepened the divide.<\/p>\n

Kelly also oversaw the NYPD\u2019s infamous Muslim surveillance program<\/a>, which mapped mosques, tracked student groups and monitored businesses without any evidence of wrongdoing. Those actions alienated entire communities and destroyed the very trust effective policing depends on.<\/p>\n

Now, years later, Kelly has resurfaced to claim that \u201ccops will flee in droves\u201d<\/a> once Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes office. That\u2019s not analysis \u2013 it\u2019s fearmongering. Officers are already leaving the NYPD in record numbers under the current administration, driven by low morale, forced overtime, long shifts and the toll on their families.<\/p>\n

To suggest that police would abandon their oath because a new mayor expects fairness and accountability insults every honest officer I ever worked with.<\/p>\n

After 21 years in uniform, retiring as a lieutenant commander, I know most cops simply want to fight crime, make a difference and go home with their integrity intact. They don\u2019t want to chase quotas or enforce unconstitutional directives. They want leadership that lets them focus on real crime \u2013 violent crime \u2013 the work they signed up for.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Mamdani\u2019s vision for public safety represents. His plan would allow officers to concentrate on violent offenses while a new Department of Community Safety handles nonviolent crises<\/a>, such as mental health emergencies and homelessness \u2013 situations best managed by trained professionals rather than armed officers. That\u2019s not anti-police; it\u2019s smart governance. It ensures the right responders answer the right calls and frees police to do what they do best.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen what happens when trust erodes. When people feel targeted, they may still dial 911 \u2013 but that\u2019s often where cooperation ends. They hesitate to testify, give statements or help investigations. Public safety suffers when witnesses go silent and victims lose faith.<\/p>\n

New Yorkers have heard this fear playbook before. We were told ending stop and frisk would unleash chaos. It didn\u2019t. We were told ending Muslim surveillance would make us unsafe. It didn\u2019t. The city remained secure because good policing doesn\u2019t depend on violating rights \u2013 it depends on professionalism, fairness and community trust.<\/p>\n

Kelly\u2019s latest warning belongs to the past. New York deserves leadership that learns from mistakes instead of repeating them.<\/p>\n

That night in the 47th Precinct, I told my officers to do what was right. The same principle applies to our city today. We don\u2019t need fear. We need vision \u2013 and policing rooted in respect for both the people we serve and the badge we wear.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the future Mamdani represents. And that\u2019s the kind of New York worth fighting for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a cold night in February 2012, and I was a sergeant in the 44th Precinct. My…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":377974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5257,1269,5292,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-377973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-nypd","16":"tag-opinion","17":"tag-public-safety","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}