Archival recordings and recent interviews are woven together in this hour-long documentary that tells the story of the New York Police Department from the 1940s to the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. From Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's famous, "sock 'em in the jaw," speech to new police officers in 1942, to first-hand accounts of a 1964 Harlem riot in which the police fired thousands of rounds of live ammunition, to the gripping story of police officers running for their lives after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, this program opens a window into the NYPD's fascinating history and the complex relationship between the police and the citizens of New York . With a score that includes music from cop shows like "Car 54 Where Are You" and clips from films including "Shaft" and "Serpico,? this program is a compelling examination of the one of the world's leading leading law enforcement organizations before and after 9/11. Among the topics covered - corruption scandals, struggles by police officers to win union representation, and conflicts between the police and New York's African-American and immigrant communities. You'll hear the voices of cops over the decades - emotional, colorful and controversial - along with their critics, their supporters, and scholars who have studied the NYPD. "Stories from the NYPD" is the latest in a series of historical radio documentaries about New York City by award-winning independent producer John Rudolph. Earlier programs (produced with WNYC, New York Public Radio) focused on New York City's waterfront; the career of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan; and the '60s civil rights movement in New York.

ZIMRING INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

Zimring on the Unprecedented Decline in New York City's Crime Rate:
“Four-fifths of the crime rate in this large American city has disappeared in a two-decade period. The homicide rate in 2009 in New York City is 18% of what the homicide rate was in 1990. The robbery rate is 16% of what it was. And all the all-time award winner is auto theft… The auto theft rate in New York City in 2009 is 6% of what it was in 1990. This is a substantial decline of a kind that no American city has ever experienced in the recorded history of crime statistics.”

Zimring on the Lessons from New York City's Crime Decline:
“The thing that is being missed about the lessons from New York City is that the two largest assumptions that have been driving crime policy in this country are probably the wrong way to go about things. Our theory was that… only incapacitation works. New York has disproved that. Their incarceration rate is down 28% and their crime is down 80%. So we now know that you don’t need mega-imprisonment policy to have substantial decline in crime… The second article of faith in America is that you can’t get crime control without winning the war on drugs. But when you take a look at New York City’s drug overdose death rate, and it’s down 15 or 20%, but their drug killings are down 90%, all of a sudden you realize that drug violence and illegal drug use may be two different problems. ”

Zimring on His Advice to a Mayor on How to Reduce Crime:
“The first thing I can tell the mayor in city X is that we now know for the first time that policing really matters. And I can give him two or three different things to do with policing that have been proved to work:… problem solving policing, hot spot techniques, if you have any open air street drug markets, close them fast. Those are off the shelf technologies that are going to work very well.”

MANHEIMER INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

Manheimer on Taking Operational Assignments as a Woman
“I really enjoyed staying operational. I felt as a woman it was important not to be niched into the sort of support roles or domestic violence or women and children criminal investigations, and really make my bones, if you will, as a rough and tumble cop and do the hard work to show and get the credibility with the department.”

Manheimer on Building Trust with the Community in San Mateo
“The day that I realized that we truly had made a change [in San Mateo] was when I came to a community meeting and we had some great community outreach workers that we really put there recognizing that we needed some facilitators to help with this. And one individual had a past gang history, he had credibility within the community, and we put together this first really big community meeting. And I was pleased to see that he had all these translator headsets there and translators, and I said, ‘well how wonderful you’re going to translate for everyone’ and he said, ‘no Chief, I’m going to translate for you.’ And so myself, and the mayor, and the city attorney, city manager, and others put the headsets on, and we had to walk in an immigrant’s shoes at that point frankly, because we were the ones that weren’t privy to the conversation, we were the ones who were waiting for the translator to tell us what was going on. And it was a profound change. It was then that the community really started to trust us.”

Manheimer on Working with the Community in San Francisco’s Tenderloin
“The difference in the Tenderloin is the whole web and network of others who are so dedicated: the non-profits, the service providers, the faith community. Working with them just made it truly an opportunity for change there. The cops need to operate with the support of the community and everyone else. As I held community meetings, it wasn’t just the police standing up there telling everyone about the crime that was happening. It was allowing the community to tell us, the police, about the crime and the quality of life issues that were happening that were concerning them. And then having all of the different resources, to expect the city service to really align together. So at that table were Public Works, Parks and Recreation, Mental Health, and Health Department, and all of the different things that contributed and had to be part of the solution: Public Works for lighting, Parks and Rec for cleaning up the parks, and Mental Health for dealing with the substance abuse.”

The Santa Cruz Police Departments is the first in the country to experiment with predictive policing, a mathematical approach to detecting and preventing crime waves. KALW's Nicole Jones checked in with how the new procedure is working.

Who polices the police? Do you or your neighbors have any say in the way your town’s cops and sheriffs do business? For more than 35 years, cities around the country have been creating civilian oversight agencies - trying to make local police and sheriffs accountable to the communities they serve.

On this edition we take a look at the Police killing of Oscar Grant in Oakland, and the debate over who gets to decide when an officer has done something wrong.

Featuring:
Barbara Attard, civilian oversight consultant, former San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints investigator and former Berkeley Police Review Commission Director; Marcel Diallo, artist and victim of police harassment; Rashidah Grinage, PUEBLO Executive Director; Jason Wechter, National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement Board Member; Reginald Lyles, BART consultant and former Berkeley Police Officer; Gary Gee, BART Police Chief; Jesse Sekhon, BART Police Officers Association President; Quintin Mecke, California State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s Communications Director; Greg Kaufory, attorney; Omar Osirus, Jan, and Bo, protestors; Daniel Buford, Allen Temple Baptist Church Reverend; Joyce Hicks, San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints Director and former Oakland’s Citizens Police Review Board Director; Patrick Cacares, Oakland Citizens Police Review Board acting director; Paulette Hogan, tasered Oakland resident who filed complaint with Internal Affairs; Chris Shannon, Oakland Police Lieutenant; Cephus Johnson, Oscar Grant’s uncle; Mark Kroeker, Portland Police Chief;

BATTS INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

Batts on His Goals for the Oakland Police Department: 
“I’m trying to build a more efficient, productive, well-run, well-managed organization, which is polished, and professional, and highly ethical. And trying at the same time building a greater openness to our community, to listen to what the community is telling us, not for us to tell them what we want them to do, but to listen to them and turn their wishes and dreams into our imperatives that we’re going to complete.”

Batts on the Importance of Working with the Community:
“We really have to start coordinating better with the community as a whole and participating. Right now we don’t have police officers in uniform that go to neighborhood watch meetings. That’s where you get to talk to people, that’s where you get to break the barriers down. We don’t have police officers in uniform going to schools to do programs. Now people may say ‘that’s not what I hire police officers for’ but that’s where you break down those barriers and you build strong relationships.”

Batts on Earning a Doctorate Degree:
“I went back to get my doctorate in the 1990s. It was very demanding, it was very tough, especially being a single dad and trying to give the time that the kids needed at the same time of completing a research degree. But it has worked very well for me. I think I call on the experience I learned going through that on a daily basis and it allows me to look outside of what I know to bring in answers.”

We all need to do what we can to prevent petty crime.

It's been 20 years since four white police officers were cleared of unlawfully beating Rodney King in Los Angeles. But we might never have heard of Rodney King had it not been for an amateur cameraman who caught the whole thing on tape. On this edition, we hear how video cameras have changed the way we see the police. In a special radio adaptation of the film "Police Tape," journalist Josh Wolf investigates how law enforcement and amateur videographers across the country have responded to changing technologies.

Featuring:

Chris Drew, artist; Charlie LeDuff reporter; David Greene, First Amendment Project attorney; Mark Weinburg, American Civil Liberties Union attorney; Geoffrey Fieger, attorney for the family of Aiyana Jones; William Kilgore, cop-watcher; Holly Joshi, Oakland Police former spokesperson


Producers: Kyung Jin Lee, George Lavender
Host/Producer: Andrew Stelzer
Contributing Producer: Josh Wolf
Executive Director: Lisa Rudman
Development Associate: Steph St Clair
Web Editor: Irene Florez
Organizational Volunteers: Dan Turner, Alton Byrd, Dan Turner, Salima Hamirani and Barbara Muniz

Program #17-12- Begin date: 4/25/2012. End date: 10/25/2012.

Please call us if you carry us - 510-251-1332 and we will list your station on our website. If you excerpt, please credit early and often.

Working at a call center can be an extremely stressful job, whether you're fielding customer service calls for a bank, a computer company, or any other large organization. Chances are, when the phone rings you'll be dealing with someone who's got a problem. This is a story about a phone center where the callers' problems are about as bad as they can get...

A civilian oversight board is now responsible for hearing a wide range of alleged BART police misconduct at their meetings every month. With the help of a new, independent police auditor they can recommend disciplinary action to the BART Board of Directors. Nicole Jones reports.

Similar to prison guards, police unions advocacy for their members has helped perpetuate cycles of criminalization and incarceration that plague America’s low income neighborhoods, especially communities of color. New York City’s police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, is the biggest, and of the most powerful in the country, But as Jaisal Noor reports, recent controversy over a law enforcement tool called ‘stop and frisk’ has exposed some cracks in the union, and may be opening the door for reform.