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New York City Police Department Street Crime Unit

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 93.170.114.151 (talk) at 21:33, 2 July 2020 (‘Controversial killing’ is not a suitable description of the murder it is referring to. In 2020 we call things what they are. Claiming it was a ‘controversial killing’ is a good way to satisfy people who understand ‘controversial’ as referring to the outcome of the murder as a controversy. However, it could also imply that perhaps it wasn’t a ‘kkkilling’ but an act of ‘self-defense’ or whatever lies those officers tried to come up with.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The New York Police Department's Street Crime Unit (motto: "We Own The Night") was a plainclothes anti-crime unit. The SCU was formed in 1971 as the "City Wide Anti-Crime Unit" and operated for decades tasked with the apprehension of armed felons from the streets of New York City. The unit was disbanded in 2002, following the murder of Amadou Diallo. The unit was disbanded after a Federal Investigation found that the unit routinely engaged in racial profiling.

On January 14, 1999, shortly before the Diallo incident, two officers from the Street Crimes Unit fired eight shots at rapper Russell "Ol' Dirty Bastard" Jones, a member of the multiplatinum group Wu-Tang Clan. The officers later accused Jones of firing at them after they stopped his car in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.[1] Jones was cleared by a grand jury and insisted that the officers had been scared by his cellular phone. No weapons or shell casings besides those of the officers were found in the vehicle or near the scene.[2]

Methods

From 1971 to 1999, the unit was made up of 60 to 100 members. In 2000 it expanded to 300 members. It employed innovative methods, including possibly the earliest coordinated sting operations to elicit potential muggers. According to Criminal Justice Today: "The SCU disguised officers as potential mugging victims and put them in areas where they were most likely to be attacked."[3]

The SCU would go into high-crime neighborhoods and make a much larger number of firearms-related arrests in comparison to uniformed patrol officers. In 1973, the SCU won recognition as an Exemplary Project from the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. The LEAA was the United States' leading crime-reduction and crime-prevention funding agency. "In its first year, the SCU made nearly 4,000 arrests and averaged a successful conviction rate of around 80%. Perhaps the most telling statistic was the 'average officer day per arrest'." The SCU invested 8.2 days in each arrest, whereas the department average for all uniformed officers was 167 days."[4]

References

  1. ^ Lowe, Jamie. "Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB", 2008. Faber & Faber.
  2. ^ Kocieniewski, David. "Success of Elite Police Unit Exacts a Toll on the Streets", "The New York Times", February 15 1999. Retrieved 03/12/2014.
  3. ^ Schmallager, Frank. Criminal Justice Today, 8th Ed., 2005. Pearson Education, p. 195.
  4. ^ National Institute of Justice, The Exemplary Projects Program (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1982), p. 11.
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