The New York Police Department announced on Monday that it is disbanding its anti-crime unit, which is a group of 600 officers who wear plainclothes to blend into the community in an effort to fight crime.
“The NYPD is disbanding its undercover anti-crime unit — after being involved in a ‘disproportionate’ number of shootings,” The New York Post reported. “The roughly 600 cops, spread out at precincts and PSAs across the city, will be reassigned into other posts, including the detective bureau and neighborhood police, the city’s top cop said.”
“This is 21st-century policing: intelligence, data, ShotSpotter, video, DNA, and building prosecutable cases,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said. “It continues to be building these cases—cases on a small number of people that unfortunately still terrorize a part of this city. I would consider this in the realm of closing on one of the last chapters on stop, question and frisk.”
“When you look at the number of anti-crime officers that operate within New York City, and you look at a disproportionate, quite frankly, percentage of complaints and shootings — and they are doing exactly what was asked of them,” Shea said. “It will be felt immediately throughout the five district attorney’s offices, it will be felt immediately in the communities that we protect.”
Shea added, “This is a policy shift coming from me, personally, in men and women in the police department we’re doing what I asked before me asked, they have done an exceptional job, but again I think it’s time to move forward and change how we police in this city.”
The NYPD says it will disband its anti-crime unit, reassigning 600 plainclothes officers to other units pic.twitter.com/2dKndHv5ep
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 15, 2020
The move comes after the death of George Floyd a couple of weeks ago who died in Minneapolis after he was taken into police custody and video of the incident allegedly showed a police officer kneeling on his neck for several minutes while Floyd told the officer that he could not breath.
Leftists have responded by demanding that police departments be defunded across the country while violent rioters have burned down buildings, attacked law enforcement officials, and looted.
The constant demonization of police officers has already started to take a toll on police forces as many are quitting or are looking to quit.
“I wouldn’t wish this job on my worst enemy,” Tulsa Police Maj. Travis Yates recently wrote in an op-ed. “I would never send anyone I cared about into the hell that this profession has become … I used to talk cops out of leaving the job. Now I’m encouraging them. It’s over, America. You finally did it You aren’t going to have to abolish the police, we won’t be around for it.”
Yates later told Fox News: “Officers are afraid to speak out, they are afraid to talk. You are only your next call away from being canceled or destroyed, and so officers feel very limited. I think citizens do, too, and we had just as many citizens comment on that article and send us emails.”
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