HITS MINORITIES HARDEST
COURIER LIFE, MAY 15-21, 2020 5
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
New Yorkers of color
made up 93 percent of
COVID-19 related arrests in
the city since mid-March,
acording to newly-released
Police Department data.
Between March 16 and
May 10, cops made 125 arrests
citywide that were in
some way related to the novel
coronavirus — and 116 were
people of color, stats show.
In Kings County, black
people accounted for 28 of
the NYPD’s recorded arrests
— or about 72 percent — despite
making up just 34 percent
of the total population,
according to census data.
Police also say that they
arrested eight Hispanic
Brooklynites, according to
the data.
Finally, just three white
residents were arrested —
or 8 percent of the borough’s
total — on COVID-19-related
charges, despite comprising
50 percent of the borough’s
population.
Brooklyn notably had
more virus-induced summonses
than all other boroughs
combined during a
similar time frame, according
to data police released on
May 8, with black residents
making up two-thirds of cop
stops in the borough.
Both sets of data come
after a string of high-profi le
violent arrests that emerged
on social media, including
several in Brooklyn’s 75th
Precinct, the most-sued precinct
in the city. On May 11,
protesters marched from Foley
Square to NYPD headquarters
at 1 Police Plaza in
Manhattan to condemn the
clear enfrocement disparities.
However, the Police Department’s
numbers don’t
exactly match previously-released
fi gures for social-distancing
related arrests by
Brooklyn District Attorney
Eric Gonzalez.
Brooklyn’s top prosecutor
counted 40 arrests in the
borough between March 17
through May 4 — one more
during a shorter time frame.
He also had demographic
data showing a higher
amount of detainees that
were black or Hispanic, with
35 arrested who were black,
four who were Hispanic, and
only one who was white.
The discrepancy is likely
due to the fact that there is
no clear criminal charge for
social distance-related violations,
as would be for a robbery
or an assault, leading to
differing analyses of recent
arrest data by the police and
the DA’s offi ce, one law enforcement
source said.
Many of the police arrests
include charges like
“obstruction of governmental
administration,” a misdemeanor
which essentially
means a person did not follow
a police offi cer’s orders.
In the department’s release,
NYPD offi cials emphasized
that the arrests
were not for social distancing
violations per-say, but
rather described their data
as “COVID-19-related” arrests
— many of which, they
said, had a clear victim, such
as hate crimes, domestic violence
incidents, and even
one bank robbery in which
a suspect allegedly told a
teller, “This is a bank robbery,
I have COVID.”
The NYPD press offi ce
did not, however, provide a
more detailed breakdown
of how many of the arrests
were for violent crimes compared
to more minor violations.
A lawyer for the Legal
Aid Society, a non-profi t legal
aid provider, slammed
the department’s parameters
as “meaningless,” and called
on police to provide more
detailed data to address the
racial disparities of enforcement
during the pandemic.
“The release of this data
is in no way responsive to demands
from elected offi cials
and community leaders for
the NYPD to be more transparent
about how it is policing
social distancing requirements,”
said attorney
Corey Stoughton in a statement.
fi rst violent encounter with law
enforcement — and, he said,
the takedown left him with an
injured leg, which he has yet to
have a doctor examine because
he fears getting infected with
COVID-19 at a medical facility.
“I can’t walk properly right
now due to the incident,” he
said. “I couldn’t go to the hospital
because of all the coronavirus
there.”
The attacking cop’s badge
matches that of Sergeant Adnan
Radoncic of the 75th precinct,
who is named in at least
six lawsuits between 2012 and
2018, four of which have combined
to cost the city $433,000,
according to the nonprofi t Legal
Aid Society’s database,
CAPstat.
The 75th precinct, which
is by far the most often sued
precinct in the Five Boroughs,
was named in 91 federal lawsuits
between 2015 and June
2018, which totaled to cost taxpayers
more than $9 million in
settlements, according to the
society’s tally.
And the eastern Brooklyn
precinct might face yet another
legal battle, as Atunbi says that
he is considering fi ling charges
stemming from the incident.
The police report from the
hostile encounter states that
offi cers on patrol attempted to
break up a group of between
six and eight men, who had
gathered on the corner at 6:50
pm, and were “engaging in aggressive
and confrontational
behavior.”
Offi cers tried to disperse
the group but some of them
allegedly resisted, including
one 31-year-old, who cops say
tried to fi ght offi cers, before
they used “necessary force” to
take him into custody — and
charged him with menacing a
police offi cer, resisting arrest,
Photo by Todd Maisel
and obstructing governmental
administration.
Authorities also slapped
two other men, including
Atunbi and the man who stood
beside him in the video, with
disorderly conduct and violating
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s social
distancing laws.
Brooklyn District Attorney
Eric Gonzalez has launched a
probe into at least three similarly
violent social distancing
arrests that happened on the
weekend of May 2 after politicians
and advocates slammed
the Department for brutally
enforcing the law in black communities.
“It is abundantly clear
that the same historical disparities
in police enforcement
are refl ected in and magnifi ed
by the COVID-19 pandemic response,”
said Public Advocate
Jumaane Williams in a statement
condeming the situation.
Non-white New Yorkers
disproportionately arrested
for COVID offences
GOING TO DIE’
distancing arrest in East NY