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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, sitting in for Brian today. When it comes to public safety, there's a persistent debate over how the NYPD should handle low-level offenses. If someone operates an unlicensed pedicab or shoplifts food, are those crimes that warrant an arrest and arraignment, or can those matters be handled with a desk appearance ticket? This debate takes on new urgency and complexity with the news of five deaths this year of people in police custody. That comes on top of a report of 40 deaths in custody in the previous two years.

Last week, the Legal Aid Society sent a letter to the New York City Inspector General, calling on the office to investigate all deaths in police custody. For more on this story, I'm joined by Meghna Philip, Director of the Special Litigation Unit at Legal Aid. Meghna, welcome to WNYC.

Meghna Philip: Thank you for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Now, Meghna, I want to take a step back. Before Legal Aid sent a letter to the NYPD's inspector general for the police department last week, there was another letter that you sent back in March. Can you talk about what prompted that?

Meghna Philip: That's exactly right. Back in March, we sent a letter to the inspector general about two deaths that had happened at courthouses of people that we would have represented had we had the chance to interview them. They were awaiting the chance to see a judge on low-level charges, and instead they were experiencing medical crisis. They needed urgent attention, and they died in holding cells in criminal court without getting that attention. That happened within a two-week span in March.

Soso Ramishvili was the first of those people who died in custody, in NYPD custody in Brooklyn Criminal Court. He had been arrested for allegedly shoplifting, and he was detained for an extended period of time. He died in a holding cell at a courthouse. Then I think within two weeks in a Manhattan criminal courthouse holding cell, a 43-year-old man who had been arrested on a non-violent, low-level drug possession charge died waiting for the chance to see a judge. This is just unacceptable. These are human beings, people that we serve. These are low-level, non-violent alleged offenses, and they both died in custody.

This is related to a bigger pattern and trend that you just referenced of the NYPD returning to discredited tactics of broken windows policing of racially biased, aggressive policing of non-violent, low-level offenses. The commissioner is calling this so-called quality of life policing an initiative. It's certainly not improving the quality of the lives of the people we serve. We sent that letter in March. We didn't receive any response, and now we are seeing this crisis continue to play out.

Brigid Bergin: Let's talk about how the crisis has continued, because this letter that you sent last week came after additional deaths. One of your clients, Christopher Nieves, died in custody. Can you tell us that story?

Meghna Philip: Yes, that's right. In the end of August, August 29th, Christopher Nieves had been arrested again on a charge of shoplifting, stealing food from a grocery store. He was being held at Brooklyn Criminal Court, awaiting the chance for an arraignment to see a judge. One of our attorneys actually was able to interview him, encountered him, and observed that he was clearly in a state of medical crisis. He was jaundiced. He was in and out of consciousness on the floor of the holding cell. He reported that he had been recently hospitalized with a blood infection. He was not well, and it was clear to that attorney. Mr. Nieves asked the NYPD to give him medical attention.

Brigid Bergin: Meghna, what is supposed to happen in these circumstances? How is the NYPD supposed to respond, and what have they told you so far about how he died and why he was not provided with medical care?

Meghna Philip: We have almost no information from the NYPD about any of these deaths. That is part of the problem. There's a real lack of transparency and oversight, and that is part of what we are calling for here in these letters. We didn't even find out about Mr. Nieves's death. It was not reported by the NYPD officers to the attorneys in the courthouse. The next day, the Legal Aid Society found out because reporters contacted us about someone dying in the courthouse. There have been no facts issued by the NYPD about what happened here.

What we're seeing, what is obvious, is that there is no urgent medical attention being promptly provided to people who need it at police precincts, at courthouses. There have been nine deaths in NYPD custody this year alone. When we're talking about NYPD custody, we all are also aware of the deaths that are happening at Rikers Island and the horrible conditions in the jails there. Part of the reason we're aware of that is because there are mandates of immediate public reporting. There's an immediate independent oversight investigation that happens by the Board of Corrections. Within five days, they issue a preliminary report, and then they issue an ultimate final report.

Wth the NYPD, we don't have any of that. There is no transparency. The police are policing themselves when it comes to deaths in custody. That's part of what we're asking for, is independent oversight by the Inspector General, by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the ability for them to immediately have access to the facts on the ground and to be simultaneously investigating what happened because the NYPD has a force investigative division that is supposed to be investigating these deaths, but they do not issue any timely reports or facts to the public, and they have routinely delayed their investigations. They have not been transparent about what's happened in cases.

As an example, in the shooting death of Allan Feliz, who was shot to death after a traffic stop, it's a high-profile case, FID delayed its investigation for over two years.

Brigid Bergin: Meghna, I just want to make a point of clarification. A listener texted to say that people who are in custody at courthouses are not technically in NYPD custody. They're in the custody of the Department of Correction. Can you clarify who is responsible for those people who are being held at courthouses?

Meghna Philip: Sure. Actually, they are in NYPD custody until they see a judge for the first time to be arraigned on a charge. When someone is picked up and arrested by the NYPD on the street, they are then in NYPD custody. If they're held in custody, they're taken to a police precinct. They're then taken to Central Booking, they're taken to the courthouse, and they sit in cells where the NYPD is actually responsible for their custody until they go before a judge.

If bail is set in their case and they are then sent to Rikers Island and awaiting trial, then they're in the custody of the Department of Corrections. When they're at a courthouse, they're actually in NYPD custody. It is the NYPD who our attorney asked for urgent medical attention after Mr. Nieves himself asked to be taken to a hospital. For hours, nothing happened. Then he was found dead in a holding cell.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners help us report this story. Do you work for the NYPD or for the courts? What are you seeing in courthouses or in the precinct? How are you expected to treat people in custody, particularly people who have medical issues? Are you someone who has been in police custody or another criminal defense attorney? What was your experience like? How were you or your client treated, again, especially if you needed any medical care while in custody? Any criminal justice professors out there who want to weigh in on how New York City handles things compared to other cities? The number, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text.

If you're just joining us, I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. My guest is Meghna Philip, Director of Special Litigation at the Legal Aid Society. Meghna, you have now sent multiple letters to the Department of Investigation, the NYPD's Inspector General. What is Legal Aid asking for the NYPD to do in terms of changing its protocols?

Meghna Philip: Thank you. First, we are asking-- this is a crisis. This is people dying in custody, many of whom are just being held on low-level, non-violent charges. Our first and primary demand is urgently, that the NYPD give people medical attention when they need it from a medical professional who can give them the care that they need. NYPD officers clearly are not adequately monitoring what the status is of people who are held at police precincts or in custody at courthouses, and when they need urgent medical attention.

Some serious breakdown is happening, and people need unfettered, especially in courthouses, unfettered access to medical care when they're in crisis, whether that is medical or mental health crisis. We need an end to this broken windows policing, this aggressive return to what they're calling so-called quality of life policing, but really it's just targeting the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

There have been a number of quality-of-life initiatives rolled out by Commissioner Tisch and this administration in the last few years, and they have all been found to be resulting in unconstitutional policing as well. A return to the kind of things we saw during the height of stop and frisk. There's an ongoing federal monitor who monitors whether the NYPD is in compliance with the Constitution when it comes to stop and frisk. They have said that these teams are conducting what is unconstitutional stop and frisks. They need to stop doing that and targeting poor, low-income, and people of color in the city.

Another piece of this is that the NYPD is violating a law that requires appearance tickets to be issued in the vast majority of low-level cases. When you're talking about something like fare evasion or taking up two seats on a subway, we are seeing a massive increase of people being held in these dangerous conditions of detention through precincts and at courthouses for hours and days on these kinds of charges. It just defies logic in terms of the use of our city's resources and the NYPD being the ones to respond to those kinds of issues in that way.

It's against the law. They should be issuing appearance tickets in the vast majority of these cases. What we've seen is, this year alone, over 66,000 arrests for these types of low-level offenses. That's based on the NYPD's own data. In only less than a third, I think, of those cases, it's in our letter, have given appearance tickets. People are just being held in on these types of charges.

Brigid Bergin: Meghna, just for people who are less familiar, what qualifies as a low-level offense? What are we talking about here? One of the things that we have seen, it pops up periodically in terms of concerns in communities about maybe you do have an issue with shoplifting and everything's behind lock and key into your local drugstore. For people who are repeat offenders, who maybe have received these death tickets, are those the same groups of people that we're talking about here, people who are potentially repeat offenders, or people who are being caught for the first time? What are we actually talking about in terms of what they're being charged with or the offenses they're being accused of?

Meghna Philip: Sure. As an example, Soso Ramishvili, who died in Brooklyn Criminal Court in March of this year, had no criminal record, and he was arrested for allegedly shoplifting from a Home Depot. Christopher Nieves, again, was arrested for taking food from a grocery store. These low-level offenses, these shoplifting offenses, are part of what's covered under the law, but also violations like disorderly conduct, like I mentioned, taking up multiple seats on the subway, or non-payment of subway fare.

Some are non-criminal violations, some are misdemeanors. They're all encompassed in this category of low-level offenses that should be given appearance tickets. We're seeing just an increase across the board in people being arrested and subjected to these dangerous conditions on those types of allegations.

Just on the broader point that you're making about concerns regarding public safety, I think we can all agree that dying in police custody at a precinct or in a criminal courthouse, waiting for the chance to see a judge and pleading for access to medical care, that is not safety. Of course, these people are part of the public. Their families are part of the public that we serve and that the NYPD is supposed to be protecting and that this city is supposed to be caring for.

This is a serious failure in public safety, in people who are experiencing medical or mental health crises, not getting the appropriate care, and just being funneled into the criminal legal system that is not equipped to help them or care for them. Again, in terms of those issues of public safety, it's not helping that problem. It's really just an unacceptable thing. In 2023 and 2024, we just are finding out that there were these 40 deaths in NYPD custody, twice the number of any other two-year period in the past decade. Then again, this year, nine deaths in custody. That's just unconscionable.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we invite you to be part of this conversation. As I said before, the invitation is open to people who work for the NYPD, who work for the courts. How are you expected to treat people in custody, particularly people who have medical issues? Are you someone who has been in police custody or perhaps another criminal defense attorney? Have you experienced some of what Meghna is describing, or have your clients? Any criminal justice professors out there who want to weigh in on how other cities handle this compared to New York City? The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text.

Meghna, one of your colleagues who works at Legal Aid texted to say, "I want to be very clear, it's not only people who are held on low-level charges, but the justification they use to arrest rather than ticket people. In the first place, people with warrants out. Often, those warrants are decades old for effectively nothing. I arraigned a street homeless woman Tuesday night, who was so ill in court, who was accused of taking up two seats on the subway. The warrant they used to justify holding her was a 2009 allegation of disorderly conduct. A violation, not a crime. It sounds like you're seeing this trickle into other parts of police enforcement.

Meghna Philip: That's absolutely right. I'm so glad that one of my colleagues brought up that situation because, first, we're talking about the NYPD systemically is violating a mandate to issue these appearance tickets on low-level cases, but they also can use their discretion in cases like that. Why is someone being held in custody on a stale warrant that should have been expunged?

Another thing we're calling for, that has happened in the past, is amnesty and expungement of stale warrants like that that are not contributing to public safety in situations where people urgently need access to care. We're seeing the NYPD exploit other exceptions in the law, saying that they're holding people in because they don't have a photographic identification that they've presented.

That is not a valid exception under the law because there are a lot of New Yorkers who don't have photo ID for a variety of reasons, including vulnerable immigrant New Yorkers. If they identify themselves or if they're already in the NYPD's system, the NYPD has all the information available to them on the street to be able to identify someone, in the vast majority of cases. That's another exception we see them exploiting.

This all goes back to this directive, I think, from this administration and from this commissioner to focus in on the most vulnerable New Yorkers on overpolicing of communities of color and poor communities as a decades-long problem in New York City. We're seeing a real backsliding now into regressive policing tactics that have been proven to be racially biased and unconstitutional and lead to escalations and lead to situations like what we're seeing here, where people are dying.

Brigid Bergin: You have referenced it, but the federal lawsuit against the NYPD over stop and frisk found that the agency was using racial profiling, which drove up the numbers of Black and brown people who were subjected to that tactic. You've said, I think, that the racial disparities when it comes to people who are being detained for these low-level offenses is showing a similar pattern. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Meghna Philip: Yes, we are seeing a similar pattern. Based on our own analysis of publicly reported data from the courts, we know that people of color in New York City are being arrested on low-level offenses: misdemeanors, non-criminal violations, at eight times the rate of white New Yorkers.

Brigid Bergin: Wow.

Meghna Philip: Based on the NYPD's own self-reported data for crimes like fare evasion and other low-level offenses, we're seeing four times the rate of arrest of Black New Yorkers compared to white New Yorkers. Black New Yorkers receive appearance tickets at the lowest rates of any other demographic. These are the same kinds of racial disparities that, over a decade ago, were found unconstitutional, and that monitorship is still in place.

Just in June of this year, that federal monitor weighed in on these so-called community response teams that Commissioner Tisch has put in place to help enforce this so-called quality of life protocol and found that those community response teams are engaging in the same old unconstitutional, racially biased stop-and-frisks and unconstitutional stops.

Brigid Bergin: We have a listener who texted that was retired NYPD officer from 20 years ago. The Listener wrote, "If a prisoner in our holding cell was visibly sick, EMS was called ASAP. Based on what I've been seeing in person and reading, hearing on local news, I believe there's a wilting in the leadership. Also, low-level crimes are a result of social and economic issues, not appropriate for law enforcement to be the solution." That's a text from a former NYPD officer.

Meghna, you mentioned that you have not yet received a response to the letters that you have sent to the Inspector General, correct?

Meghna Philip: That's correct. We have just received an acknowledgement that we sent those letters, but we're not aware of any ongoing investigation yet, and we have not received any details of that investigation. We are calling for there to be a serious investigation into the policies and practices of the NYPD that are resulting in these failures. That goes to exactly the point your caller made, which I completely agree with. There seem to be some fatal deficiencies in how the NYPD is handling their protocols around how to respond to people in crisis. There are also serious deficiencies in their own investigation when that happens.

What we are demanding is, automatically, for the CCRB and the OIG to begin investigations into every death in custody that occurs and for the OIG to focus on the systemic issues and problems that are happening, that are leading to this, and for CCRB to focus on the individual instances of deaths, which is what they're best equipped to do. We have examples in other cities like Seattle and Denver, where independent investigative agencies respond immediately and do their own investigation into what happened. The police, again, are not policing themselves when something obviously has seriously gone wrong.

Brigid Bergin: I want to bring in one caller because we're running out of time. Andrew in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC.

Andrew: Hi there. I'm a 40-year-old white man. I'm gay. I was at a friend's birthday party last winter on a Sunday night, and I was wearing a large coat. I was dressed very elegantly, and I had trouble going through the turnstile at 72nd Street on the Upper West Side. When I got down to the subway car, I got on the car and no sooner did I sit down than two uniformed NYPD officers forcibly removed me from the car, threw me face down onto the subway platform, and detained me at the local precinct for over an hour.

It turned out that I had actually paid my fare. My jacket had gotten caught. My knees were in pain for several days after that. It was just an overly aggressive situation for an alleged fare evasion that actually wasn't a crime. It never happened. It's unfortunate that this is happening, and it's happening across the board, I think.

Brigid Bergin: Andrew, thanks so much for that story. I want to acknowledge that we've had other callers call in, and we haven't had as much time because I wanted to get through everything that Legal Aid was calling for in their letter, and just understand the parameters of what is really a chilling story. Meghna, I want to give you a chance to respond to Andrew.

Meghna Philip: Andrew, thank you for sharing that. I'm so sorry that that happened to you. I think it's emblematic of the approach here to policing, aggressive and violent policing of, again, these low-level offenses, things like fair evasion. There's no reason you should have been subjected to that. I think that's what we routinely see our clients subjected to. Of course, they are overwhelmingly and disproportionately low-income and people of color who are dehumanized and subjected to bias in every aspect of the system. I think that's part of what goes to what happened, possibly in these cases, and what happens in a lot of cases.

I don't know if their reports of being in medical crisis, of what they're experiencing, are being taken seriously. If NYPD is doubting them or skeptical of what they're reporting or what we are reporting as advocates, why should people not be getting urgent medical care when they say they need it? It goes to a fundamental dehumanization in this whole system and a tendency to view people who get caught up in the criminal legal system and shouldn't be, should be receiving care as less than human. It's this lack of dignity, this lack of humanity, and it's the reason police should not be the ones responding to the conditions of poverty and unaffordability in the city.

Brigid Bergin: Meghna, you've laid out what Legal Aid is asking the city for. What's next if you don't hear anything?

Meghna Philip: On Monday, the City Council is holding a hearing on oversight and NYPD accountability, and the public defenders in the city, we've all come together to come up with demands and a plan of action, urgent action and long-term steps that need to be taken that we will release on Monday and that we will be testifying to at that hearing. We welcome the involvement of City Council in oversight and in pushing for much-needed reform here and an urgent response to stem this crisis.

Again, we call on the NYPD to follow the law, to issue appearance tickets in low-level cases where they are mandated to do so, to stop unconstitutionally and racially biased policing. Those are our next steps. We also intend to ask the Inspector General for a meeting, and for these agencies, like the DOI and the CCRB, to be adequately resourced and staffed. That's just another piece that we all know this administration has just cut back completely on those agencies.

Brigid Bergin: We're going to leave it there for now. My guest has been Meghna Philip, Director of the Special Litigation Unit at the Legal Aid Society. Meghna, thanks so much for coming on the show. It sounds like there'll be a lot more to cover in the next few weeks.

Meghna Philip: Thank you for having me.

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