Why Ray Kelly shouldn’t run Homeland Security
OPINION - When it comes to the police commissioner’s record on racial profiling, the facts suggest Kelly is not doing the 'extraordinary job' President Obama thinks he is...
Apparently President Obama thinks Raymond Kelly, the NYPD commissioner, would make a great choice to replace Janet Napolitano as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The White House has been floating the idea, but given Kelly’s record on race, African-Americans should be wary.
In an interview with Univision, Obama had words of praise for Kelly, saying he would be “well qualified” to run the department.
“Well, Ray Kelly has obviously done an extraordinary job in New York and the federal government partners a lot with New York, because obviously our concerns about terrorism oftentimes are focused on big city targets,” the president said. “And I think Ray Kelly is one of the best there is. So he’s been an outstanding leader in New York.”
He added, “Mr. Kelly might be very happy where he is. But if he’s not I’d want to know about it. ‘Cause you know, obviously he’d be very well qualified for the job.”
Kelly has his share of cheerleaders
Leading Democrats seem to agree, including Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who hopes to nominate Kelly for the post, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who said New York’s top cop is “uniquely qualified.” Rep. Pete King, a Long Island Republican, said, “I expected him to call me and tell me to knock it off, and he hasn’t yet,” adding that “I think he’d consider it.”
Kelly’s boss, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, like many Democratic leaders in Washington, is progressive-leaning on social issues and gun control, but not so concerned about those civil liberties issues such as stop-and-frisk and other heavy-handed, problematic police tactics. The Democratic base, however, does care about racial profiling and stands against the practice, as reflected in every party platform since 2000.
However, not everyone on Capitol Hill is buying what Kelly’s cheerleaders are trying to sell.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) believes Kelly would be a “poor choice” for DHS chief. On MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, the congressman urged the need for “an effective balance between national security or effective law enforcement on the one hand and a healthy respect for our civil rights and civil liberties on the other.”
“He’s been a good administrator, and perhaps I could even support his potential appointment to this position in the absence of the massive aggressive stop-and-frisk program that he’s run, and the unconstitutional Muslim surveillance program, but that’s kind of like saying, I had a good year, if you don’t count the winter, spring, and fall,” Jeffries added.
Record on racial profiling
When it comes to the police commissioner’s record on racial profiling, the facts suggest Kelly is not doing the “extraordinary job” President Obama thinks he is.
Under his watch, the NYPD has been a hotbed of racial profiling. As The Atlantic reported, the NYPD has kept tabs on the Muslim community, infiltrating, using informants to bait Muslims, spying on hundreds or even thousands of Americans of the Islamic faith at mosques, colleges, the workplace, and the home—not for anything they did, because they committed no wrongdoing, but rather due to their religion and ethnicity.
In 2007, an NYPD report, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” offended Muslims by equating their religious customs with radicalism. And Kelly was interviewed for a 2009 NYPD “training film” called “The Third Jihad,” which was viewed by 1,500 officers and portrayed all Muslims as potential terrorists. The NYPD’s profiling of Muslims bore no fruit, no leads and no proof of acts of terrorism, and in any case compromised any investigations the feds were undertaking.
Not surprisingly, Muslim civil rights groups would oppose a Kelly nomination, and a coalition of these groups wrote Obama a letter telling him why.
Further, let us not forget that massive class action lawsuit filed against the city on behalf of black and Latino men who claim the NYPD stop-and-frisk policy is unconstitutional. The lawsuit, Floyd v. City of New York, was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the law firms of Beldock, Levine, and Hoffman and Covington & Burling, LLP.
CCR compiled a report for the case based on NYPD stop-and-frisk data from 2010 to 2012. The group found that black and Latino New Yorkers are far more likely to be stopped than whites, accounting for 84 percent of stops.
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