CM Cabán on police violence exclusion from crime statistics
Cabán asks whether police violence is counted in crime statistics. Gerber says if an officer commits a crime it's included, but justified use of force is not. Cabán argues excessive force settlements show a gap in crime data, noting police account for up to 5% of U.S. murders.
Now, is police violence counted in your crime statistics?
What do you mean by police violence?
Well, when a police officer commits an assault on the job.
Is that included in the crime statistics that the NYPD puts out?
If you're talking about a police officer who goes and commits a crime, right?
If a police officer goes, commits a crime for which a person will be arrested and prosecuted, would that go into our statistics?
Yes.
When officers, as they sometimes have to do, unfortunately, use force in connection with policing, and that is at times necessary and appropriate, consistent with the law and consistent with our policy.
No, of course that would not count.
Does it get included in the crime statistics when they use excessive force?
If an officer has committed a crime, if we have a member of service, like anyone else in the city, who commits a crime, that will be included in the crime data.
So it shows a gap, right?
Because we're seeing, and we still see them in the millions and millions of dollars of settlements we get because of instances of police brutality, of excessive force, that no, those officers aren't being charged with a crime.
If they were in civilian clothing, they probably would be.
Let me finish.
And so there might be a settlement saying, this officer, this officer.
Used excessive force.
Outside of this context, that would be a crime, but it's not included in the crime statistics.
So I guess what I'm saying is that the crime statistics don't really show the full picture of what we're looking at, and I would hope that we start
using a metric of data that is a little bit more comprehensive than that.
For example, police are responsible for up to 5% of murders in the U.S.
That's not captured in crime statistics, right?
And I would like to know if the crime statistics also are, are they measuring other
parts of public safety, like do our crime statistics measure how many people die because they're sleeping out in the cold?
Councilmember, our crime statistics, it will not surprise you to learn, measure crime.
There are many other important data sets out there in statistics that are not measured through NYPD crime data.
So our crime statistics and, listen.
Indulge me in this exercise.
Our crime statistics also don't reflect the number of people who die because they didn't get medical care, mental health care, etc.
Correct?
Correct.
It doesn't account for people who die or left unsafe because of workplace conditions, anything like that.
It doesn't.
It just is.
Right.
Our crime data reflects.
Crime complaints in the city.
So do you think...
That we're measuring.
Sure.
Do you think it's a good and accurate measure of the overall safety of our city, our crime statistics?
I think it is a very good measure, an outstanding measure of crime in New York City.
Again, there are many other things that are incredibly important and significant and need to be measured, but they're not measured through NYPD.
Crime statistics.
Right.
Listen, I just want to get that on the record.