March 22, 2007
THE LAW, THE CASH, AND THE PUBLIC GOOD
A few weeks ago, I wrote about what a bad idea it was to align economic interests with a propensity to increase jail populations [see REAPING WHAT WE'VE SOWN, 3/3/07]. I know; it's a fairly far-fetched idea that law enforcement would allow itself to be slowly affected by base matters such as cash on the table, political pressures to provide it, or political pressures to demand it. On the other hand, sometimes one doesn't have to go that far up the ladder for examples:
On January 1, caps on the amount of overtime a police officer can accrue were removed, leading to a spike of more than 10,000 more arrests than in the same 2 1/2 month period in 2006. Two weeks ago the caps were restored at 60 hours of overtime a month, and the arrest rate has since dropped, sources said.
The NYPD is quick to provide an explanation for the increase:
The police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said at a budget hearing on Tuesday that many of the new arrests were due to a narcotics initiative at the beginning of the year, but a spokesman could not be reached yesterday to clarify the details of the initiative.
That sounds reasonable, except for the fact that this particular article is about how courts are so clogged with cases of no consequence that a lot of arrested people are being released due to legal restrictions on how long one can be jailed before being charged. Also, the lede of the article described a 15-year-old girl who was held for 30 hours in a NYC jail for passing between two subway cars while the train was in motion. Up until this was made illegal two or so years ago, I did the same thing every single day for 10 years.
If cops can get paid for arresting someone for doing anything illegal at the end of their shifts, when it can net them an extra few hundred dollars of overtime a month, expect an increase in law enforcement harassment beyond what is prudent or reasonable.
Posted by Lexiphane at March 22, 2007 11:41 PM
| Politics & PolicyTrackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1156