NYPD
for hire: how uniformed New York cops moonlight for banks
No
one begrudges an officer doing security work in his own time, but the
Paid Detail Unit creates worrying conflicts of interest
Naomi Wolf
17
December, 2012
I
was surprised two weeks ago to walk into my local TD Bank, on
Greenwich Avenue in the West Village, New York to find that the
security officer who was usually standing by, on alert, had been
replaced by a uniformed, armed, radio-carrying New York Police
Department officer, Officer Battle. I confirmed from him that he was,
in fact, an NYPD officer – and was working part-time for TD bank.
Of
course, this raised red flags for me. After the violent crackdown
onOccupy
Wall Street in
November of 2011, when that group was having some of its most
significant successes in protests and actions that challenged private
banks and Wall Street institutions,
many wondered what had motivated the unexpected aggression against
protesters by local police officers tasked, at least overtly by
municipal law, with upholding their first amendment rights.
The
NYPD became, at the time, coordinated in its crackdown once
Occupy had started to target banks.
Was there a relationship behind the scenes of which we were unaware?
Chase
bank had made a gift of $4.6m to the Police Foundation –
boasting on its website that this "was the largest" in that
group's history, and hoping that the money would allow the
NYPD to "strengthen security". This police fund, as well as
some details of a Rudi Giuliani-initiated program by which police
officers had been hired by corporations, created a brief stir online.
But
were Chase, TD, Bank of America and others, which had been targeted
by activists, actually now employing our police forces directly?
The
answer is yes. A nontransparent program called "Paid Detail
Unit" has been set up so that private corporations are actually
employing NYPD officers, who are in uniform and armed. The difference
is that when these "public servants" are on the payroll of
the banks, they are no longer serving you and the impartial rule of
law in your city – despite what their uniform and badge imply.
Neither New York Councilwoman Christine Quinn's press office nor an
NYPD's spokesman responded to my queries regarding this program.
I
went to a second TD Bank, on Third Avenue in Manhattan. There was
NYPD Officer Kearse, also armed and in uniform. I asked him who paid
him to watch the bank: he confirmed that the Paid Detail Unit did so.
The bank pays fees directly to the NYPD, and the NYPD then pays him,
after taking a cut. Kearse works at the bank 6.5 hours per shift,
twice a month. That's not much, he said, compared to many NYPD
officers "who do lots more".
"What
would you do if there were protesters in this bank branch?" I
asked.
"I'd
remove them," he said.
"What
if there were a conflict of interest between what the bank wanted him
to do and what the rule of law was for citizens?" I asked.
He
did not reply.
I
asked a manager at the branch what the role of the NYPD officer was
in the bank. She said, "All I know is he is there to watch
us." She called a more senior manager to answer the rest of my
questions, Patrick O'Toole:
"They
are New York City police officers off-duty, paid by the Paid Detail
Unit," he said. This is a program "that various
corporations are able to use to obtain off-duty police officers
for whatever purpose they need them. The bank supplies every branch
in New York City with an off-duty police officer."
In
the event of a protest, I asked, whom would the officer be
working for? The bank, or the city and the citizens of New York?
"I wouldn't know," he said, and referred me to TD Bank
corporate security. "He's working under us when he's here: we
pay Paid Detail and the NYPD writes the checks."
Crooksandliars.com shone
rare light on the size of this program. According to that report, the
city gets a 10% administrative fee, which, in 2011, amounted to
$1.18m – meaning that PDU wages netted NYPD officers a total of
$11.8m, an amount which had doubled since 2002.
But
who indemnifies these cops working for banks from lawsuits that might
arise from possible illegal actions against citizens while working
this kind of job? Not the banks, it turns out, but you the taxpayer.
In other words, you pay the bill to protect that officer from
lawsuits incurred if he breaks the law in protecting the bank.
This
is a trend confirmed to be taking place in cities across the country.
San Francisco has the San
Francisco patrol special police, a private police unit that
is indistinguishable from municipal units. Citizen reporters in my
social media community confirmed that nonprofit organizations in
Houston hire Houston police; a Portland citizen reporter confirmed
that he saw Portland cops hired by local banks in that city, as well;
and Autumn Smith, a Michigan citizen journalist, has written
about seeing Michigan police in uniform to protect Best Buy and other
corporations, so they can save on hiring private security with
officers on the taxpayer's payroll.
At
the same time, privatisation is also moving apace, as Wall
Street Journal reports that several municipalities,
including Oakland, California and Chicago, have bypassed local police
and are hiring private security forces to take over many of the
police departments' traditional functions.
Of
course, many would think that the chance to let hardworking,
underpaid cops make more money by moonlighting for private business
is no big deal – or, since the NYPD gets a cut of these
officers' hours of serving private industry, a win-win for the
municipal budget in Manhattan. Indeed, moonlighting, out of uniform
as a private citizen, is fair enough. But in uniform, armed, with the
backup of the whole NYPD? That is another story.
The
conflicts of interest potential in this arrangement soon become
clear. Whom is that cop serving if there is a dispute between a New
York City (or Houston or Portland) citizen and the bank or
corporation that hires cops, and on which those cops' own mortgages
and kids' college fees are now dependent? I had the bizarre
experience of witnessing an NYPD investigation at Chase stop cold, as
an NYPD detective told me that "Chase's investigators said
there was no problem."
What
if is it is the bank that is committing a crime against the
citizen: will NYPD investigate impartially? What if the bank
instructs the NYPD officer to commit a crime – make a wrongful
arrest, say – against a New York citizen during a lawful protest?
Will the officer decline to do so, bucking his bosses? Indeed, does
the off-duty cop in the bank have police powers or just private
security powers? What powers of arrest does he or she have?
And
if bankers or the senior heads of corporations that hire the cops
themselves commit crimes in other areas, will those crimes be
fully investigated. Or will those executives, now police employers as
well, have what Russians call "protektsia"?
Those
are all questions that NYPD spokespeople should be willing to answer,
but won't.
And
then, there are the fiduciary questions. Your tax dollars trained
that officer; dressed him in uniform; equipped him with weapons and
technology. Should all of that expensive public benefit be farmed out
to private corporations, along with the intimidating prestige of the
brand of a real NYPD or Houston or Portland police officer?
Finally,
the wrench that this program throws into impartial adjudication of
the rule of law is obvious. The NYPD won't answer questions about how
much revenue it generates from PDU. But given that it is a
significant portion of the paychecks of your local cops on the beat,
then how can brave advocates for banks' paying the price for crime,
such as New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermann, work
effectively to hold banks accountable while the city law enforcement
officers under the DA are employees of those same banks? The branches
of municipal government are now at cross-purposes when it comes to
who has access to law enforcement and who is indemnified from
prosecution or investigation.
An
independent, uncorrupted municipal police force should be our thin
blue line: defenders against crime, protectors of public safety,
guarantors of citizens' rights. If these officers of the law become
or have already become a private militia for hire, to whom can we
turn on the frontline of justice?
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