A published report reveals that “rank and file” New York City police officers have been warned not to take sick days or vacation until the summonses and “low-level” arrests return to the usual levels. “Everyone here is under orders — no time off” during the summons catch-up blitz, said one cop at the 105th Precinct in Queens.
“Police officers around the city are now threatened with transfers, no vacation time and sick time unless they write summonses,” one union source said.
Officers are being ordered to bring in activity sheets, listing the number of arrests and summonses made during each officer’s shift in order to keep track of how much “work” is getting done.
The reported emphasis comes after New York Police Commissioner William Bratton publicly acknowledged Friday that officers in the city had stopped writing tickets and making low-level arrests, though Bratton declined to call it a “slowdown.”
“They never stopped working,” Bratton said. “911 calls were responded to, arrests continued to be made, crime continued to go down.”
Low level arrests for minor crimes like public drunkenness have dropped by half and summonses for criminal activity were down by 90% since the December shooting deaths of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
Bratton said he didn’t think the decrease was warranted and promised “we’ll work to bring things back to normal.”
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