For 15 years, voters suffered through Christine Quinn's self-interested dealings as she hitched her political wagon to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Speaker Quinn's close working relationship with Mayor Bloomberg is turning off voters from supporting her mayoral campaign. Now that Speaker Quinn is desperate to rescue her political future, she is about to throw Mayor Bloomberg and his legacy under the bus. Her efforts to divorce herself from Mayor Bloomberg may be too little, too late.
Christine Quinn Watered Down Rudy Giuliani's Abner Louima NYPD Police Brutality Task Force Recommendations.
Quinn Then Went On To Enable NYPD Culture Of Racism And Brutality.
Before the evening of August 9, 1997, was out, NYPD police officers had brutalized and tortured Abner Louima inside a police station house in Brooklyn.
After the tremendous public outcry, then Mayor Rudy Giuliani appointed a police brutality task force, and among the task force members he named was Christine Quinn. She was one of the driving forces to weaken the task force's recommendations, and eventually her efforts lead to a split among the task force members.
The weaker recommendations, which Quinn championed, went on to be represented in a majority report of the task force, while a set of more aggressive recommendations were formulated in a minority report. Read this excerpt from a report published by The New York Daily News :
Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union and a task-force member, spearheaded a dissenting report that made a connection between race and police misconduct. "On issues like police brutality and race, you never compromise," Siegel said. But Quinn said her strategy was to make it easier for Mayor Giuliani who called some of the report's recommendations unrealistic to adopt reforms quickly in the wake of the sodomy and torture of Abner Louima, allegedly by police. (NYDailyNews * Saturday, February 20, 1999, 12:00 AM)
On the anniversary of Mr. Louima's torture and brutality, let us not forget who Speaker Quinn sides with.
Christine Quinn Supports Ray Kelly. Does She Endorse Police Brutality ?
A new video posted on YouTube shows New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn heaping praise on NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, even though the NYPD has had a record of racism and brutality under Commissioner Kelly. The new YouTube video shows six real examples of how law enforcement officers have a pattern of using excessive force.
Links to examples of excessive force used by NYPD and by peace officers :
Chapter 7 of Roots of Betrayal : The Ethics of Christine Quinn, which is being serialized this summer, addresses the NYPD’s history of violating the civil rights and civil liberties of activists. The conversation around reforming the NYPD needs to be enlarged to also address the police department’s persistent violations of civil rights and civil liberties. A task force should be empaneled with subpoena power and charged with investigating and issuing binding recommendations to finally overhaul the NYPD.
In the Department of Justice's brief filed with the Stop and Frisk trial court judge, attorneys for the federal government stated that the DOJ has an interest in the outcome of the Stop and Frisk trial, because Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits "discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, or national origin by police departments receiving federal funds." Why couldn't anybody in a position of authority in the City Council make a determination that Stop and Frisk represents discrimination that is prohibited by the Civil Rights Act ? In its filing, the DOJ, which has generally been impotent and misguided in its prosecutions under the Obama administration, has somehow managed to put the City Council to shame with this filing. This is a stinging assessment of Christine Quinn's failure as a leader of the City Council. Now, will the other Councilmembers demand any City Council hearings into the NYPD's violations of the Civil Rights Act ?
New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Thompson’s restrained approach to ending stop-and-frisk policing has paid dividends with the endorsement from a coalition of city law-enforcement unions, the NYTimes writes. (via City & State First Read)
From the NYTimes :
Jumaane D. Williams, a city councilman from Brooklyn who has sponsored legislation against stop-and-frisk tactics, bluntly suggested that Mr. Thompson was taking the allegiance of black voters for granted.
“I think he believes that the color of his skin is what’s needed to get to communities of color, rather than standing on the correct substance of issues,” he said.
Speaker Quinn Uses Bloomberg Events To Fluff Campaign, Turns Back On Bloomberg-NYPD Discrimination Against LGBT Community
Christine Quinn's mayoral campaign is increasingly seen as desperate, since her poll numbers are beginning to fall, now that more and more voters are tuning into her dismal political record -- and to her close relationship with the unpopular mayor, Michael Bloomberg.
For the second time in a week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has allowed Christine Quinn to take center stage at a big announcement by his administration. More and more, Speaker Quinn has come to be seen as interchangeable for Mayor Bloomberg during big policy announcements. “The mayor, without officially endorsing her, is helping her with his administration,” said George Arzt, a Democratic consultant. The strategy is a calculated risk: much of the criticism leveled at Ms. Quinn has been about her coziness with Mr. Bloomberg, particularly her support of the mayor’s successful effort to overturn the city’s term limits law and run for a third term. (Bloomberg Helping Quinn's Fledgling Mayoral Campaign With Media Events : NYTimes)
Meanwhile, as Christine Quinn uses Bloomberg administration press conferences to help rescue her sinking mayoral campaign, the Bloomberg administration continues its attack on safe sex. Advocates say too many New Yorkers land in jail after cops confiscate condoms. Clara Sierra was falsely arrested her and charged with prostitution by police, after she was found carrying condoms. She served 10 days in Rikers. On this serious issue, which affects the LGBT community, Christine Quinn sides with Mayor Bloomberg, so that she won't jeopardise his backroom support for her mayoral campaign. Speaker Quinn puts her own political ambitions over the needs of the LGBT community. It hasn't been the first time, and it certainly won't be the last. (Transgenders Face Discrimination, False Arrests By NYPD : Metro)
At Thursday's rally by LGBTQ groups outside the U.S. District Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street, where the Floyd v. City of New York class-action, stop-and-frisk trial was in progress, only one mayoral candidate showed up to express solidarity -- and to renew a call for an end to stop-and-frisk. And it wasn't Christine Quinn.
Thank you, John Liu, for showing leadership, courage, and solidarity with the LGBTQ community.
Maybe New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has not been able to hear the pleas from the LGBTQ community, because her office is soundproofed ?
During Michael Bloomberg's three terms as mayor, over 5 million New Yorkers have been stopped and frisked. During the over-lapping time that Christine Quinn has been Speaker of the City Council, over 3.9 million New Yorkers have been stopped and frisked.
Many politicians act powerless in the face of the NYPD's use of brutality, discrimination, and excessive force, but the members of the City Council, which each year approve the NYPD budget, simply rubber stamp Mayor Michael Bloomberg's attack on due process, the Bill of Rights, other civil rights, and civil liberties. If the City Council actually stood up to the mayor in the budget process, then maybe the City Council could legislate change without having to use the court system, like what is happening right now in the Floyd trial, a lawsuit that is challenging the NYPD's unconstitutional stop-and-frisk practices.
The description at Thursday's rally by members of various LGBTQ groups of how the NYPD target, harass, and even falsely arrest LGBTQ New Yorkers was tragic, and the pleas for help were compelling. But one must wonder why Speaker Quinn was absent from the rally, why Speaker Quinn did not express solidarity with the LTGBQ community's efforts to end stop-and-frisk, and why the Floyd trial was being used as a backdrop for this demonstration ?
Because so many non-profits took part in Thursday's rally, one must wonder if an explanation of the lock-step could not be found in a demand for an election year political favour ? We know that how Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn manufacture political patronage support is by making private donations or distributing discretionary City Council funds, respectively. Were the members of the LGBTQ groups manipulated into showing up outside the Floyd trial in order to distract from the fact that Speaker Quinn supports stop-and-frisk and has expressed her desire to continue NYPD Commish Ray Kelly's policies of harassment, profiling, discrimination, and brutality ?
Indeed, last December, activists in Jackson Heights organised a demonstration to highlight Speaker Quinn's failure to end stop-and-frisk. Speaker Quinn is a high-profile LGBT leader, but she turns her back on LGBTQ New Yorkers, who are deliberately profiled and targeted for harassment and arrest by the NYPD, said activists during last December's demonstration.
New York City mayoral candidate John Liu is the "only candidate who has called for eliminating the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practice, and increasing the minimum wage to $11.50 per hour, significantly higher than the $9 supported by President Obama. He is also the harshest critic of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ; he describes Mr. Bloomberg as a 'grumpy' man who 'checked out a long time ago,' ” reported The New York Times.
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives. (Wikipedia) This case overturned the 1879, Victorian era law in Connecticut that banned the use of prophylactics by couples. Fast-forward to 2013, and we find the NYPD is arresting people for carrying prophylactics. What's going on here ?
Discriminated Against and "Profiled" by NYPD, Transgenders in New York Fear Carrying Condoms. Would Heterosexual New Yorkers be Arrested for Carrying Birth Control ?
The harassment of innocent people carrying condoms has now reached absurd levels that some claim that the NYPD's discriminatory use of stop and frisk and arrests over the carrying of birth control may pose a risk to public health.
"Those who have been targeted by the police, or who know people who have, are so afraid of carrying condoms that they often don't," The Village Voice has reported.
"In a 2012 study by the Sex Workers Project and the PROS Network, a New York City coalition of sex workers, organizers, and service providers, close to half of the participants reported not carrying condoms at some point out of fear of police repercussions. Among participants who identified as either transgender female or another gender identity besides male or female, the rate was a staggering 75 percent," The Village Voice has reported.
"The New York City Department of Health has been giving away free condoms since 1971, and has made condom distribution a centerpiece of its public-health program over the past six years," added The Village Voice.
"The Department of Health is flooding the city with free condoms, and the police department is using those very condoms to make the quality-of-life arrests that are clogging the courts. It is difficult to avoid the impression that the NYPD is deliberately seeking to increase quality-of-life arrests—perhaps even meet quotas—with arrests that are blatantly at odds with the city’s own public-health policy," The Village Voice has reported.
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn looks the other way, because she wants to stay in good standing with Police Commish Raymond Kelly. She puts political expediency over privacy and civil rights.
Man who claimed cops beat him during gay pride party says police made multiple return visits to his home and conducted illegal searches of his apartment.
Christine Quinn, the openly lesbian Speaker of the New York City Council, used to be the director of the Anti-Violence Project. Back when she was head of AVP, Ms. Quinn used to advocate on behalf of victims of violence.
But now that Speaker Quinn is running for mayor, she is afraid to aggravate her close relationship with Raymond Kelly, the commish of the NYPD.
If LGBT New Yorkers get beat up by haters, you can count on Speaker Quinn to elbow her way in for photo opportunities. But if the haters are NYPD officers, you can count on Speaker Quinn to look the other way.
Jabbar Campbell — a Crown Heights man who claimed cops disabled his apartment’s security camera before beating him during his gay pride party in January now says 77th Precinct cops have since made multiple return visits to his home.
Campbell, who had already filed a notice of intent to sue the city, said plainclothes cops illegally searched his place last week. Campbell said he turned over the footage to investigators.
The Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating both incidents, police said.
At tremendous political peril to Christine Quinn, the leader of the NAACP plans to make ''stop-and-frisk'' a major mayoral campaign issue.
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has been so close and chummy with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's and NYPD Commish Ray Kelly's unconstitutional and racist policy of ''stop-and-frisk.'' She has been waging a neoliberal campaign that is hard on crime by being harder on people of color.
But now comes NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, who is sick and tired of the racial profiling that underpins the entire ''stop-and-frisk'' program, The New York Post reported.
Mr. Jealous "trashed" the stop-and-frisk program during remarks he made at Nazarene Congregational Church in Brooklyn yesterday, and Mr. Jealous's comments were seen as criticism of Mayor Bloomberg's and Police Commissioner Kelly's ill-conceived support for the use of stop-and-frisk. Indeed, Mr. Jealous portrayed Mayor Bloomberg and Commish Kelly as "villains."
“We intend to ensure through every legal means that stop-and-frisk becomes a thing of the past with the next mayor of this town,” Mr. Jealous said.
Three of the four major Democratic candidates — Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former city Comptroller Bill Thompson — have all said the practice should be reformed but not scrapped. Quinn has yet to take a position on a package of bills before the Council to scale back the program.
City Comptroller John Liu wants to abolish stop-and-frisk altogether.
Jealous also said he wants the next mayor to get rid of Kelly, who consistently polls higher among Democrats than any elected official.
Quinn has signaled she would keep Kelly on board if she won the race and Kelly was willing to stay.
Her competitors in the primary have not made the same commitment.
Christine Quinn has transformed into the worst about neoliberalism.
Speaker Quinn has embraced a culture that can only be described as "pay to play." She accepted $30,000 in campaign donations from the owners of Rudin Management Company before the City Council approved the zone-busting Rudin luxury condo conversion plan for St. Vincent's Hospital. Speaker Quinn supports hospital closings, so that billionaire real estate developers can capitalise and profit off of the assets of public charities. To that end, Speaker Quinn has curried favour with Brad Hoylman, Kathy Wilde, and the Partnership for New York, of which Rudin Management Company is a member. Speaker Quinn has supported all of Mayor Bloomberg's most controversial initiatives, from mayoral control of the school system, to the outsourcing of top education posts to business CEO's with no education credentials. Speaker Quinn also supports the racist NYPD commish Ray Kelly, which puts Speaker Quinn at odds with various minority communities in New York City.
This is a political parody slideshow that was composed with editorial criticism and satire.
During a peaceful and legal protest against the mayoral campaign of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, NYPD officers used physical force to attempt to move protesters off of a wide public sidewalk and onto the other side of the street. When we refused and maintained our right to free assembly, they used the bodies to block us from distributing leaflets.
Are the NYPD blocking anti-Quinn protesters again, because she has agreed to retain Ray Kelly as Police Commissioner ?
Speaker Quinn has become emboldened ever since she overturned term limits, got away with using millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars in an illegal slush fund, weakened the campaign finance laws, and used major real estate projects to extract campaign donations from developers in a system that many describe as a "pay-to-play" culture. Now, she is using the NYPD as her own private army. The impression that Mayor Mike Bloomberg has influenced her is an understatement.
Because of her record of corruption, activists are basically waiting for Speaker Quinn to be caught in more scandals, before the mayoral election this year.
The protest last night took place at a "housing debate" in Brooklyn.
The Man Pulling The Levers, Turning The Knobs, And Flipping The Switches Behind The Curtain
Josh Isay is New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's campaign spokesman. Mr. Isay is a major political consultant in New York and Albany, with an outlet in Washington. He is one of Sen. Charles Schumer's main political consultants and advisors. So, when we wonder : why is it that no matter who gets elected, nothing seems to change, it is because the paid political consultants are the ones who keep pushing politicians into certain agendas that make them "electable." Who is advising Speaker Quinn to make these backroom deals, to keep NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, in spite of the fact that we need a federal commission to investigate the NYPD ?
When all of us keep working to demand reforms from government, who are the people behind the scenes, who are saying, "No." We only see Christine Quinn, but do we ever know to take a look at who is Josh Isay. Josh Isay worked for Bill Rudin. When the community kept demanding a full-service hospital to replace St. Vincent's, Josh Isay was advising Christine Quinn that it was O.K. to make the community of the Lower West Side of Manhattan into paws in their game to help Josh Isay's other clients, the Rudin Family. And when we wonder what happened to Speaker Quinn's former progressive roots, all you have to do is to look at her political advisors. If you vote for Speaker Quinn, because you are under the impression that you are going to get the "old" Christine Quinn of 13 or 14 years ago, then I invite you to please take a look at who decides what Speaker Quinn is allowed to do.
''Stop-And-Frisk'' Violates Title III Of The Civil Rights Act ; Why Is Christine Quinn Using Taxpayer Money To Pay For State-Sponsored Forms Of Discrimination ?
Title III of the Civil Rights Act prohibits state and municipal governments from denying access to public facilities on grounds of race, color, religion, or national origin. Access can be construed to be peaceful enjoyment.
Yet, the NYPD deny access or peaceful enjoyment of public facilities, such as sidewalks, streets, and subway stations based on a person's race, color, religion, or national origin when the NYPD ''stop-and-frisk'' people of color, of a certain faith, or of a certain nationality.
Since Christine Quinn has become speaker, 3.7 million New Yorkers have been stopped-and-frisked.
Black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. See the NYCLU Stop-And-Frisk Fact Page for more information.
Quinn's NYPD Strategy Will Cost Her Votes, Warns Joe.My.God.
LGBT blogger ''Joe.My.God.'' warns supports of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn that police issues may cost Speaker Quinn electoral support in her race to become mayor of New York City.
Republicans have longed for Kelly to run for mayor as the two other declared GOP candidates (MTA head Joe Lhota and billionaire grocer John Catsimatidis) are considered very long shots against Quinn or any other Democrat. While Quinn's alleged "secret deal" would take out her best-polling GOP opponent, keeping Ray "Stop-And-Frisk" Kelly in the top cop job will surely sour many prospective Quinn supporters, who could turn to Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, one of stop-and-frisk's loudest detractors.
One will see if Josh Isay, one of Speaker Quinn's political handlers, will heed the call ?
''Christine Quinn is a great example of why we shouldn't just blindly vote for someone just because they are LGBT,'' wrote KT.
''Quinn has been saying for more than a year now that the next mayor should ask Kelly to stay on. Apparently, Christine is a big fan of Stop and Frisk,'' wrote band.
''This all reminds me of the ending of The Devil Wears Prada,'' wrote Joe.My.God.
The tone of the blog post and the comments was very critical of Speaker Quinn for making backroom deals, for supporting Commissioner Kelly, and for supporting stop-and-frisk.
Dozens of activists blasted the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program yesterday and called on City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to reform it.
“We expect her to share the sensibility that people in this community have when they are being targeted based on the color of their skin and who they are and their identity,” Louis Flores said before a march in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Quinn, a leading Democratic hopeful for mayor next year, has called on Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to reform the controversial practice. She has not yet taken a position on the four bills before the council to curtail it.
The group called on Quinn to cut the NYPD’s budget in order to do away with stop-and-frisk.
Although she negotiates and must approve the city budget every year, she can’t tell Kelly which programs to drop for lack of funds.
Critics decry as racist the practice of cops searching individuals they deem suspicious; Bloomberg and Kelly insist it has led to the city’s dramatic drop in murders.
Únase a nosotros para marchar y exigir que el Concejo Municipal reduce los recursos proporcionados a la policÃa de Nueva York que permite a la policÃa para continuar con su práctica inconstitucional de "parar y revisar" a personas inocentes.
Traiga pitos. Nos reuniremos en la calle 74 y la Avenida Roosevelt. Entonces, nos marcharemos a lo largo de la avenida Roosevelt. Y soplamos nuestros pitos contra la programa de "parar y revisar."
