By Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times
A group representing black police officers called on the New York Police Department yesterday to suspend all undercover operations until an investigation into the deaths of two undercover detectives earlier this month is completed and new safety procedures are put in place.
Calling undercover officers soldiers “abandoned on the front lines of the city’s war on crime,” Lt. Eric Adams, of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, said the Police Department was sending officers to conduct dangerous buy-and-bust operations with outmoded equipment and insufficient backup support.
“After the horrific shooting and assassination of both officers 10 days ago, there has yet to be one new proposal or procedure the New York City Police Department has handed down to ensure the safety of undercover offices,” Lieutenant Adams, a co-founder of the group, said at a news conference outside police headquarters in Lower Manhattan.
“If those problems were not in place, possibly these officers would still be alive today,” Lieutenant Adams said.
In a written statement, the department’s spokesman, Michael O’Looney, said that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly had already ordered a review of undercover procedures, and that the department would take the concerns of the black officers’ group under advisement.
However, undercover investigations will continue, he said.
“Undercover work is dangerous by its nature,” Mr. O’Looney said. “But it is too important to suspend and must go forward for the safety of the city.”
The black officers’ group also called on undercover officers who conduct drug and gun investigations to refuse to perform undercover operations if they do not feel that the department has ensured their safety.
The group’s demand came after two detectives were killed on March 10 in an undercover operation on Staten Island, where they tried to buy a Tec-9 semiautomatic pistol from suspected gun dealers.
Investigators already know that several things went wrong on the night that James V. Nemorin, 36, and Rodney J. Andrews, 34, detectives with a combined 15 years on the force and five children between them, were killed. The detectives allowed two men to get into the back seat of the Nissan Maxima they were driving, something that all officers are trained to avoid. Then the backup cars lost the detectives’ car, and a small transmitter attached to the Maxima, known as a kel, failed in the hilly terrain at the north end of Staten Island. Minutes later, the backup officers found the detectives on Hannah Street. Both were dead from gunshot wounds to the back of the head.
Officials from 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement and the National Latino Officers Association said that kels like the one that failed that night have been used by the department for two decades, though better technology is now available.
“Those are the same kels we used when I was undercover in the 1980’s,” said Anthony Miranda, executive chairman of the National Latino Officers Association.
The groups also issued a letter to the police commissioner outlining 11 changes that they maintain are needed to make undercover operations safer. These include upgrading equipment and increasing backup staffing. They also called upon the department to diversify the pool of officers doing undercover work, saying that the vast majority of officers who conduct dangerous buy-and-bust operations are black or Latino.