4,336 Summonses Issued in the 70th Precinct

That’s out of about 350,000 tickets city-wide in 2011, according to a report in The New York World. The “pink slip” summonses are for things like open containers of alcohol, loitering, and bicycling on the sidewalk, and also some driving infractions. What the NYW sees in the data, however, is that with a couple of exceptions, most of the summonses are being issued in largely black and Hispanic neighborhoods:

Citywide, 90 percent of the roughly 7,000 unreasonable noise summonses issued in 2011 came in precincts that are 70 percent or more minority.

That’s not to say they all make it through the system–NYW says that “roughly half of all summonses are dismissed in court,” and that one class action lawsuit against the city has the plaintiffs claiming that “police officers are explicitly instructed to issue summonses regardless of whether violations have occurred, in order to ‘artificially create the statistical appearance of increased ‘activity.'”

So what does it look like in our 70th Precinct, where according to these stats the population is 37% white, 63% non-white? Here are the stats:

Summonses in the 70th Precinct in 2011
Open Container/Public Drinking: 1,228
Disorderly Conduct: 707
Bicycle on Sidewalk: 1,116
Public Urination: 74
Trespassing: 237
Failure to Comply Sign in a Park: 122
Driving in Violation of Safety Rules: 4
Reckless Driving: 194
Littering of Liquids: 140
In Parks after Hours: 95
Unlawful Possession of Marijuana: 148
Driving without a License: 62
Unreasonable Noise: 111
Unlicensed General Vendor: 87
Driving with Suspended Registration: 11

Having the Parade Ground in our precinct, which seems like a nice place to sit and have a drink, it’s not surprising that public drinking was the number one summons issued. But here’s hoping that the low number of driving summonses just means people were issued traffic tickets instead. And when you look at the categories, you can understand that one of the reasons so many are dismissed is because the interpretation for several of them is fairly wide open.

So, is the issuing of summonses (or, similarly, stop and frisk) a sign of racial bias in minority communities? At least one person, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute named Heather Mac Donald, tells the NYW it’s about crime, not race:

“The positive effects far outweigh the inconveniences of being stopped when you’re innocent and I don’t think it’s racism that’s sending cops to these neighborhoods. It’s high crime,” said Mac Donald. “People are as concerned about disorder in poor neighborhoods as they are in wealthy neighborhoods, and they have the same right to order in the streets as they do on Park Avenue.”

Sounds similar to what Fatima Gordon’s aunt said at her vigil this week.