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Slaves can't think for themselves. Coriel thank you for bringing the perspective of a resident irregardless of color, who is unjaded & disturbed by the actions of some police in do or die Bed-Stuy.

Good for you Coriel.

I am shocked at how many comments tried to portray Ms. Gaffney in such a condescending light. What, a young white woman cannot possibly understand the workings of her own community?! And because she does have a strong opinion on these issues, it must be coming from a negative place due to her "white guilt"?! Unbelievable.

Beyond age, race and gender, I see a person who wants to protect and uplift their home, their community. This is an admirable desire that should be encouraged, not chastised.

There are different ways in which racism rears its ugly head. When bullets and beatings are involved, it's harder for people to ignore. But the more subtle form of racism is just as hurtful. When people are constantly treated and talked to as though they are unworthy of this great gift of life, they often end up believing this lie and the vicious cycle of the ghetto continues.

And to the haters; what exactly are you doing to improve your community??

We are all in this together. We are all equally responsible for the world we inhabit.

The assumptions being made about me are not really shocking, something I was prepared to deal with. They are, however, mostly inaccurate, and oversimplifying. But let's move past them to the real issues. I am not attempting to "speak for" others. I am speaking from my own perspective as a resident of this neighborhood in the hopes of continuing a dialogue between the NYPD and residents and instigating a change in the way officers interact with residents. I don't think I should stand by silently as I witness offensive behavior because I am white or because I am a new resident. Isn't a huge part of the problem with gentrification, that people live in communities that they are not invested in? I love Bed-Stuy. I love that it's not as transient as other neighborhoods. I love that it's not homogeneous. I did not grow up in a homogeneous environment and I do not wish to live in one now. I love that it's a beautiful neighborhood. I love that there's a sense of community. I would like to be a part of that community. That said, I definitely agree that people of color speaking out against this mistreatment should be heard more often and I absolutely recognize institutional racism as the main reason for why they are not. For further evidence of police misconduct, much of which I did not have the time to address, please read my editorial in last week's City Limits weekly on www.cityLimits.org.

If it wasn't for the NYPD Ms. Gaffney would not
be able to live in Bed Sty or a similiar neighborhood with identical demographics.

She should count her blessings, or otherwise,
move out.

NYPD as do other Police Departments,
police neighborhoods according to the level
of crime in that area.

The way that the NYPD polices a neighborhood,
like Gramercy Park, Soho, Tribeca, Battery Park City, South Bronx, Bed sty, Central
Harlem is going to be different because
the residents of the neighorhoods are different
and demand different type of policing.

If Ms. Gaffney has a hard time adjusting,
let her move out.

wow this girls is annoying! she is definitly not from NY. Go home white girl! stop butting your nose in things you dont understand. cops can be rough but so are these neighborhoods.

Brian bring in some ethnic real new yorkers on the show to discuss their neigborhoods, that they have lived in all their lives, and the probems in them. Not some hipsters that move in for a few years and then leave.

John, if you think Brian Lehrer's show is racially insensitive or otherwise incompetent, I find it impossible to believe that you've been listening for years. Perhaps as a former law enforcement officer this hits a little close to home for you. Please ask yourself where else you might go for a civil discussion of black and white issues before leveling a charge of racism at Brian Lehrer.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Civilian Complaint Review Board of NYC. Most of the incidents these people are complaining about (with exception of Coriel's clearly minor complaints) could have been submitted as complaints against the NYPD and investigated.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/html/mission.html

I think there is a profound disrespect toward the public within the NYPD. When my apartment was robbed the police were so condescending and rude that dealing with them was much more traumatic than the robbery. They actually suggested it was MY fault because I hadn't changed my locks after moving in.( Later I found out 5 other apartments in the same building were robbed.) Then one cop said, "maybe you shouldn't be living alone downtown, time to go back to the upper eastside". I'm from CA. and have been living on my own for 20years. If reporting crime is such a negative experience to the victim why are surprised that people are reluctant to help the NYPD?

If the police did not do a good job reducing crime in Bed-Stuy I doubt very highly Coriel and other young professional types would have ever moved there. Many moving to these new "trendy" areas of the city did not live here during crack and crime days of the 1980's; and coming from other places they lack particular experience and exposure.

I am really jaded by nyc cops' arrogance and flaunting of their authority. It seems they relish their power and are just itching to ruin your day if your not completely compliant and docile. It turns all conversation one-way: yes officer, I understand officer. If it were up to me, they would be sent to finishing school. I am a white male, I can't imagine how much people of color cope.

Having a diverse police department does not take away the institutionalized negative attitudes towards the black population. It’s the overall training that needs to be addressed.

What we need in NYC's outer boroughs is a same borough residency requirment for all emergency services, combined with incentives for fire/police/emt to live in low income communities of color, especially, "impact zones". Incentives should include major housing subsidies to live in low income communities of color.

Unless emergency services live in the poor communities they serve, they will always have the attitude of an occupying army in low income communities of color.

An occupying army has no soladarity with their community. That leads to the disrespect from fire/police that we experience in areas like mine, around Yankee Stadium. And it means emergency services have no moral standing in a community. Like the moral authority to close or cap a fire hydryant on a 90 degree day.

Brian notice how the commissioner left out the race of the person..

please address whether neighborhood patrol is basically a rookie assignment, whether assigment to a high crime neighborhood is viewed by officers as an undesirable assignment or as a plum assignment? how are officers assigned? all of this affects the attitude of officers on the street....

I am also a white female living in bed-stuy. To begin with, I think there is a wiff of condecending air in a white woman trying to fight the black population's fight for them. They are not helpless and are able to fight their own battles. Bed stuy has a very orgenised black community and activists.
As for the examples that Ms Gaffney is giving, they really should be taken in proportion. The large picture of crime ridden neighborhood and their residence-police relationships is complicated.
Ms. Gaffney would be chased out of bed-stuy in a hurry if it wasn't for the police work.
I'm sure the police officers your guest is talking are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but some of the population they have to deal with on a daily basis are not saints either.Disrespect goes both ways.
The neighborhood is definitely safer and crime is down. We live in a complicated reality and we need to stop pretending that anything in this complicated reality can be done in a perfect and politically correct way. There is always room for improvement, but its easy to dish out criticism towards the police, sitting in the neighborhood they made nice and safe enough for you to live in.

Vince been listening for years and as an hispanic, former police officer, can tell you Brian cannot deal with Black and White issues. She would not be on if she were black, she is on because she is white and offended by law enforcment.

All this is very interesting but please ask Asst Commr Brown what, specifically, the police are doing to reduce the climate of hostility and suspicion?

I lived in Brooklyn for 8 years and I as an immigrant with accent I experienced and witnessed several abuse by the NYPD. Some of the them simply do not belong there and they know very well they can do whatever they want and they act like they are above the law and for the person there is basically nothing to do about it to prevent the everyday abuse by them. It can be a simple traffic stop incident or car accident etc.., but the general impression when you get in contact with them is that they treat you without any respect even if you are the victim.
In general people do not want to put up with that kind of abuse of power situation and they rather avoid to get in contact with them.
If that is the price of fighting the crime then it makes more damage then good, and regular people feel in many cases that they are harassed constantly for no reason at all.

Why do NYPD representatives never seem able to separate the successes of the force with its flaws? Discussing points that need improvement does not stain what benefits officers have brought to the city.

A brief metaphor: If you spill wine on the dinner table, you don't fix it by talking about how good the food is. You clean it up, then enjoy yourself...

"Furthermore, how is your guest's assertions about the differences in attitude between black and white cops not considered racist?"

Because making distinction between how blacks and whites respond to different situations is no more racist, a priori, than your own affirmation of the distinction between black and white cops--fundamental "generalization" from the get go. People leap to accuse whites who make such distinctions as racist and yet, given that the charge is warranted, which it often is not, pointing out that racist behavior correlates with whites is no more racist than pointing out behavior that correlates with blacks. The idea of racial differences, the very real cultural differences that often correlate with the physical characteristics identified as race, are differences we all live with. You wouldn't be wagging your finger if they didn't. So your own accusation is something of an answer to your question: because it's not necessarily racist--unless your own accusation is racist as well.

Is there a way to drive crime down without dehumanizing the law abiding citizens of black neighbors.

Hey Patrick!

I heard she hates apple pie and little league as well. Right on, man!

To "john from office:"

Totally! Right on. I've never once heard a person of color on this show and I've been listening for the past 30 seconds too!

I appreciate her coming forward, and telling it like it clearly is, but also note that she didn't quite acknowledge her own complicity in this.

Of course, people of color have been saying this for years.

This girl needs to stop what she's doing and read some Foucault or Wendy Brown. Does she understanding what policing means? Clearly not. Does she understand that a decrease in civilian "violence" necessarily means a rise in police force (in all the ways it manifests itself). If you're gonna criticize the police then do so and stop being mealie mouthed -- oh yeah, I forgot, she's a liberal.

Seeing that it''s so cool for black guys to profile as thuggish and gangsta, does that play a role in perceptions of who is a potential threat?

I'm white and I've spent a lot of time working in neighborhoods like Bed-Sty and Crown Heights in Brooklyn and other parts of the City for many years - I can honestly say that the only people that have ever harassed me on the street are the local police officers.

Aditionally, knowing several police officers in my personal life, I can attest to the fact that many of them have a real disregard for the communities in which they work. I've seen this in their pervasive use of language such as crack-heads, dirt-bags, losers, etc. to describe the people they come into contact with. I've seen these folks distribute very disparaging email jokes, videos and facebook postings and I've heard about and seen outright theft from suspects or just persons of interest or violence against them. I understand that the police have a hard job, but this ugly side of their culture creates a real barrier between then and the larger community.

I think what we NEED from the emergency services in NYC's outer bourough's is a SAME BOROUGH RESIDENCY requirement. Combined with incentives to police officers to choose to live in low income nieghborhoods. Incentives should include major subsidies for police housing in low income neighborhoods.

Without this sort of initiative police will always behave like an OCCUPYING ARMY, in low income neighborhoods of color. This is not undoable, it is done in many other cities.

Brian,

You need to take into consideration that it's not just middle class white people who might be effecting the increased police presence in Bed-Stuy. There are many, many (especially in Stuy Heights) educated, upper-middle class African Americans who are new to the neighborhood, and/or who have returned to the neighborhood recently. These are the children of the older people who lived through the difficult years, and they have completely different expectations and motivations than the older generation.

I also live in Bed-Stuy, having written a piece on my block association for City Limits...

I am not surprised by the findings of your guest. As an African American man who has lived in NYC all my life I take her findings as no great surprise. It's not just in Bedstuy but in all heavily minority areas of New York where the NYPD has shown no great love or respect for African American or Latino residents.

What I find more surprising is why these stories are of interest to members of the media when reported by Whites and shrugged off when African Americans or Latinos complain and report these instances of injustice.

Please get her off the radio, she knows nothing!!!!!!!!
I thank god everyday for what the police do for us including that ignorant "woman" she most likely DOES NOT support the troops over seas as well.

Brian would you have given her the forum if she were black, I dont think so.

I have had some good experienced with the cops, but there is nothing isolated about cops throwing garbage, spitting, speaking dis respectively about people they don't know, etc.

Just look at the way they park their personal cars!

I am white, Detective Dellomo (white) of the 84th precinct asked me "what am I doing in this neighborhood" (black). When I gave him a plausible answer him, he screamed at me and gave me a ticket for driving on the sidewalk, I had done no such thing.

Dozens of time white cops "being friendly" told me how bad the people and the neighborhood were.

I was forced to move my business by gentrification.

The probabbly had to be quite aggressive initially to bring the crime rate down but they seem to be keeping that level of intensity with the remaining residence. They need to be trained to tone that down.

gentrification is a good thing. and by that i mean, increasing economic diversity and bringing in new blood improves neighborhoods. regardless of race, as you go up the economic scale you find that people are more aggressive about demanding services.

Wait, a police officer said something about someone's dog??? That's messed up.

I'm a white guy who got my skull cracked two years ago by a group of teeneagers. I met two pairs of cops at the hospital, and all four said the exact same thing: "What are you doing living among these animals?" Neither sympathetic to the hopelessness of those teenagers, or helpful to a crime victim. This was technically in Crown Heights, but I think the cops are much the same in these sister neighborhoods.

This is an interesting discussion. I am a white man in an inter-racial marriage. I have lived in Bed-Stuy for 9 years and have become more and more reluctant to call the police when I see minor infractions. obviously, anything major, I will call, but when teenagers are acting out and one might expect the police to send a patrol car by in a white neighborhood, I have seen police officers grossly overreact in my own neighborhood. the result is you let things go because you don't trust the police to give only a stern word to Black kids where they would give a warning to white kids; they will arrest them instead.

No, you saw something and you interpreted it. You didn't "see what [you] saw!" GEEZ! What the hell is wrong with people and their opinions?

So cops need to reach out further to the community and the community is justified in their resentment of cops. Very constructive. Furthermore, how is your guest's assertions about the differences in attitude between black and white cops not considered racist?

So many lovely people posting here. White people and black people should keep to themselves! Cops don't bring crime down professionally, they bring it down by throwing their egos around and by violating the rights of their constituents, who, as tax payers, are their employers. Great.

Worth noting that crime statistics are based on what people actually bring to the police. If people get robbed but feel that the police won't do anything and have no insurance, they won't go to the police and the stats will go down.

Other than that, this seems to be anectdotal.

The 90th Precinct in Brooklyn has a bit of a parking problem. They always double park out in front of their precinct and usually block a whole lane of Union Ave. When I'm taking a taxi home, the taxi often has to go into oncoming lane to avoid all the cop cars parked out front, causing a rather unsafe condition, and adding to gridlock in the local neighborhood.

However, that said, I live in the 79th Precinct.

I work as an ER nurse and deal with a lot of police officers. Although I do respect what they do, there is some truth to what your guest is saying - there are many officers who say or act very differently towards people depending on how they look or where they are on the socioeconomic ladder.
At work, I tend to always be on the side of protecting the patients from their arresting officers. and on some occasions, I am shocked at the insensitivity of these officers.

NYPD needs to be more community minded in all neighborhoods. The police need to keep in mind that they are working for the neighborhood. They could approach the job as creating a peacful happy community. Enough on the tough love!

who does that woman think she is? I would like to see her in the cops shoes for one day. She is complaining about a cop making a comment about a sickly looking dog !!!!!!???????? I wish i had the time to sit around and notice these kinds of stupid things.

since I don't live there I cannot comment on the reality of Bed-Stuy. But Gaffney's argument is laughable. She has no statistics to back anything up and keeps citing her anecdotes as if they are conclusive proof. How does she know that the old African-American woman's anti-cop attitude didn't precede Gaffney's presence? And her recommendations such as sending in fewer white police officers is absurd. Brian challenged her perfectly: you want a segregated police force? What planet is this woman spending her time on?

Do you think you would be living in this area if it wasn't for the police? Do you know what kind of horrors these officers witness on a daily basis? When the average person has to have an interaction with a cop, based on the situation it is probably the worst day of their lives, a regular day for the average cop. So yeah lets have the officers trained to positively talk about these neighborhoods with such horrible social problems, as opposed to trying have them understand what these people have to live in. And the interaction with the lady and the dog, your just not a real New Yorker to understand it. Move back to Williamsburg.

Will somebody please mug this woman so she can feel better?! God is she annoying. SHE is the reason there are so many cops in these gentrifying neighborhoods! And that's a whole other issue. I guess she feels guilty.

Hint: Get to know the police and get to know your neighbors and everything will be fine. Is it so complicated?

This woamn has no idea what she is talking about, she never lived in a "bad" neighborhood or dealt with high crime areas.

People of Color shold treat each other better and not let the police deal with their social problems.

I applaud your guest. For her article and for sundry comments on your program.

I used to live in Bed-Stuy and what she speaks of is my experience as well.

It is particularly good that she is not an African American, and so, she can be seen as neutral or objective-dispassionate.

I have also seen, a police officer drop empty coffee cups on the street from a patrol car... some fifteen years ago in Bed Stuy.

I have no desire to generalize about police officers in Bed Stuy, but, I have in fact seen the sense of siege described by your guest.

I saw police officers rescue and protect citizens in Bed Stuy, that is, doing their jobs well.

Most sincerely,
Paul I. Adujie
New York City

I have lived in Harlem for the past 4 years. I am a young Hispanic woman who loves the neighborhood despite the rough moments that I have had there. There is often harassment from African American men who do not want new, young professionals living there. Despite this, I am very protective of the neighborhood that I now call home. Perhaps one of the most disturbing moments in my time there was seeing several police officers trolling the 125th st. ABCD subway stop with their batons out and "clinking" them against the metal gates. There was nothing wrong going on; it was a typical Saturday afternoon. This sort of behavior breeds fear and resentment towards the police force. It made me sick to my stomach and very sad.

In Chicago, there is a persistent belief that we need to "turn the cops loose" on gangbangers and "let the police be the police" in order to restore order to neighborhoods where the majority of shootings take place.

Of course, there was also an infamous district here where it is alleged that confessions were obtained by torture.

Left to their own devices, people do awful things. You have to have continual training.

Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly must go now. The Black community is sick and tired of the blatant disrespect, brutality and murder of our innocent people. The new white resident's report isabsolutely right. Black neighborhoods are targeted and overkill tactics dominate. Everyone knows drug
used and distribution is dramatically more
prevalent in white suburban areas.

The objective of the police across the country has been to lock up as many Black people as possible, while whites walk carefree. This method occurs in all areas of law enforcement.

But we will never give up. We will fight and win by any means necessary. Self determination and self-defense.

Re: Training and Challenging Situations

A similar trend can be found in teaching, where the most inexperienced teachers are placed in the most challenging schools.

Stuff White People Like #101: Being Offended.

...white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people...they can leap into action with quotes, statistics, and historical examples...

I would venture a guess that while this is bad, I wonder what another, an actual victim's, view might be?

The Audre Lorde Project, a local community organizing group for people of color, has a safe-neighborhoods campaign in Bed-Stuy called "Safe Outside the System," promoting safe spaces without police control and intervention.

This is a ridiculous woman. Her 'complaints' are laughable. What a joke.

Tell this woman to move back to the upper westside.

3 years in a neighborhood, not counting weekend trips to connecticut and summers in europe makes your white guilt a little hard to swallow

Why are you discussing this issue and not talking to African Americans or people of color who live in Bed Stuy who are from the neighborhood, especially community groups and leaders that I'm sure would be happy to talk on WNYC about race relations with the police?

Another liberal white elitist, trying to save the world.

Has she ever been a cop, worked with cops, respected cops ?

She would not live there is crime was not down.

My two friends and I moved to Bed-Stuy about three years ago. Although most of our neighbors were extremely friendly, we moved after only a few months because of men from the neighborhood threatening one of us multiple times, telling him he did not want white people to live in their neighborhood. Our apartment was broken into the day after we left.

Police I saw in the neighborhood never left the cars, parked directly across the street from a well-known bodega selling crack.

Police always looked skeptically at me when I walked in the neighborhood, as if I, as a white woman, did not belong.

I am a white female who has lived in a number of predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Brooklyn, including Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, and I can tell you that I, having witnessed what Gaffney has time and time again, am no longer surprised or shocked, just outraged at how easy it is to dehumanize whole swaths of people in this country.

I have also witnessed this "trend" in a number of city and state social service agencies.

In my mind, it constitutes verbal and emotional abuse.

And I get why Professor Gates got so angry at that cop on his porch.