In a Doll’s Head, Some in Harlem See a Setback
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and JASON GRANT
Published: July 26, 2008
Though accounts vary, the basics of what happened on Tuesday evening in Harlem are not in dispute: an unmarked police car with two white officers inside drove around with the head of a black doll on the rear antenna.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, center, said the officers’ report that they were unaware of the head was “plausible.”
The officers said they did not know it was there. Some witnesses said they must have because the head was life-size. The Police Department said the car was patrolling the streets for only a short time that day; some witnesses said it was hours. The police are trying to determine who attached the head to the antenna. Some witnesses say an officer laughed as he tossed the doll’s head into the car trunk.
While a doll’s head on a police car might not seem generally offensive, in Harlem, residents’ relationship with the New York City Police Department has long been fraught with tension and distrust.
In a highly publicized case in the 1990s, officers from the 30th Precinct in Harlem — called “the Dirty 30” — pleaded guilty to or were convicted of crimes including robbing drug dealers, selling cocaine and taking payoffs. And police statistics show that far more people are stopped and questioned in Harlem than in the nearby Upper West Side, even though the overall crime rates in both neighborhoods are similar. In addition, Harlem riots in 1935, 1943 and 1964 were partly attributed to problems with the Police Department.
So the doll’s head may mean more here than elsewhere.
“This is a significant marker of a deteriorating relationship,” said State Senator Bill Perkins, who organized a march on Thursday to protest the doll’s head. “This incident opens up the Pandora’s box. It reminds people there have been other incidents.”
Mr. Perkins said the episode was a setback for a police-Harlem relationship that had been improving. (Parts of Harlem are in the 25th, 28th and 30th Precincts.)
“There has been less of an aggressive anticommunity stance expressed” during the Bloomberg administration, Mr. Perkins said. He added, however, “To the extent there’s been some repair, this tears that repair apart.”
In Harlem, it is not difficult to find a male African-American who says he has been stopped or harassed by a police officer. This is how many residents here have encounters with the police. And for many young, black residents, this is often the seminal event in their relationship with the law.
Data about those encounters — known as “stop-and-frisks” — obtained by the New York Civil Liberties Union from the Police Department show that the department has relied increasingly on such tactics in Harlem and elsewhere since 2003, the first year data are available.
The figures reveal, for example, that more people have been stopped by officers in the 28th Precinct, in central Harlem, than in the 24th Precinct, on the Upper West Side, even though the precincts have similar crime rates.
From April through June 2006, for example, officers made 2,365 stops in the 28th Precinct, compared with 409 in the 24th Precinct. During the first three months of this year, there were 514 stops in the 28th Precinct and 460 in the 24th. The police say that officers make stops based on the descriptions of suspects.
The 28th Precinct has also had four murders and 131 robberies so far this year, while the 24th Precinct has had two murders and 135 robberies. In 2007, the 28th Precinct had four murders and 275 robberies, while the 24th Precinct had two murders and 248 robberies.
While the murder numbers are double in the 28th Precinct, they are remarkably lower than the numbers from a decade ago.
Darrin Murray, 19, of Harlem said that half an hour before he was approached by a reporter on Thursday, he had been questioned by officers in a van outside his apartment building.
Mr. Murray said that an officer told him, “Come here,” and the 19-year-old, who was carrying a black plastic bag containing a Sunkist soda and a plastic foam cup with ice, approached the van.
“ ‘Let me see what’s in the bag,’ ” Mr. Murray said one of the officers ordered. After inspecting the bag, he said, the officer told him, “ ‘Oh, yeah, that’s the type of stuff people have when they’re doing something.’ ”
When Mr. Murray’s mother, who saw the encounter, approached the officers to ask why they were questioning him, the police van abruptly drove away, Mr. Murray said.
A police spokesman said that Mr. Murray may have been questioned because the police had received two calls about drug sales in the area.
Mr. Murray said of the police in Harlem, “More people are scared of what they are going to do to them than what anyone else would do.” He added, “I’m scared all the time.”
At a news conference a few hours after the doll’s-head allegation came to light, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said he believed that the rapport in Harlem was as strong as ever.
And he said that the neighborhood’s gentrification had actually strengthened the bond between officers and the community.
Mr. Kelly tends to be popular in African-American neighborhoods and has been credited with tamping down a rancorous relationship between the police and African-Americans during the Giuliani administration.
“I would describe our relations as good in Harlem and, quite frankly, throughout the city,” Mr. Kelly said. “We are always going to have some pockets of tension because of what we do, because of the enforcement aspects of the work that police departments do.”
He added, “With the so-called gentrification of the neighborhood, I think there are even stronger relationships than those that existed in the past.”
Mr. Kelly said that Harlem home owners worried about crime seemed to be among those most apt to reach out to officers.
“We have a lot more ownership of property in the neighborhood,” he said. “Brownstones are obviously going for significant amounts of money.”
Wayne Dawson, 45, the director of the Dunlevy Milbank Community Center in central Harlem, said the neighborhood’s relationship with the police “appears to be a little bit more polarized than I have ever seen it.”
“There is an unusually high demand for kids to be stopped and show identification,” Mr. Dawson said.
While crime has decreased, it is not extinct. Officers who patrol Harlem point out that the area has had a number of shootings since January, including an episode in which six young people were shot and wounded on Memorial Day. No one has yet been arrested in that case.
The doll-head case seemed to resonate with many Harlem residents.
Clarence Jones, 28, said he saw the doll’s head on the antenna and tried to take a photograph, but one of the officers stuffed the head into the trunk.
The police said the officers reported that once the doll’s head was pointed out to them, they tossed it away.
Mr. Kelly said the police were analyzing surveillance video from the area to try to determine what happened.
But he said the officers’ explanation that they were unaware of the doll’s head was “plausible.”
Some in Harlem, however, question whether the department is committed to a thorough investigation. Mr. Perkins has criticized Mr. Kelly and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for not forcefully denouncing the episode.
“There’s nothing more symbolically terrifying than that in this community, given the history of slavery and the K.K.K. and night riders,” Mr. Perkins said.
When asked about Harlem residents’ denunciations of the Police Department, Mr. Kelly said it was the nature of the job.
“That is the world in which we live,” he said. “We accept that.”
Awesome. I live in the 32nd Precinct. The 32 is the only precinct in Manhattan that maintained its “Impact Project,” which consists of a nonstop foot patrol of every area in the neighborhood.
I could walk the streets wielding a bloody knife and they wouldn’t do shit. Other than hit on me. Their faces light up when they see me, and I glare at them.
Because I’d bet my life that they’re thinking, “Yay! More whites in Harlem!”
Do they harass blacks? Yes. There is no “rapport” between Harlem residents and the NYPD. There is mutual hatred and distrust.
Was a black doll’s head on a cop car’s antenna a “setback?”
Nah. It was a demonstration of the fact that what used to be true continues to be.
