Ray Kelly Says Proactive Policing Is a Necessity

When former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was asked about rising crime rates in New York City and other metropolitan areas on the FOX Business Network he said:

“I think you see a certain hesitancy among police officers to engage in what I call, what a lot of people call ‘proactive policing.’ Over two decades, NYC has been made safer as a result of proactive policing, police using their own initiative.”

However, Kelly said: “All signals that have been given lately to police officers has been don’t get engaged, don’t practice this type of practice.”

Kelly pointed out that “We had a terrible lawsuit here that held the police responsible for something called ‘indirect racial profiling.’ Nobody knows what this is, a term that was never used before, as a result you have a monitor that was put in place here, you have a Mayor that refused to go forward with the appeal on that case.”

He noted that “A lot of signals have been given to police officers, certainly here and the other cities which is: don’t engage in ‘proactive policing’, be reactive, wait for that 911 call to come in. Here those signals are coming from the Mayor, in other cities you have to look from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, certainly the media.”

Kelly stated that he’s been around policing a long time, and police are more professional, better trained, better educated, more restrained, more diverse than ever before. It noted that it doesn’t mean there are not problems, but those problems are being addressed and can be addressed. Earlier this week, CBS New York reported the Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) will be joining the NYPD to stem gun violence.

Regarding a war on cops, Kelly mentions high-profile incidents, certainly, the shooting in Ferguson, the horrendous incident in North Charleston, SC, which everybody saw it on tape. So you have these high-profile cases that have focused a lot of attention on the police and I think the media here and others, political leaders, just have taken that ball and run with it. And the natural reaction for police officers, who are human beings will be to hold back at some point.”

In terms of stemming the violence, Kelly believes it would be a good idea to go back to the practice of the Bloomberg administration, under which he served as New York City Police Commissioner,  where “we had a record low number of murders in our last year, a record low number of shootings.”