Christopher McCormick and the seedlings of social change

While the nationwide battle with COVID-19 carries on, recent events have brought to the forefront another pandemic that faces our country — police brutality. Most specifically, police brutality as it affected Black and Brown communities, which have historically been targeted, overpoliced and, shockingly, over-reported. It's been horrific to watch the videos and hear the accounts of the senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Jacob Blake...and those are just a few of the most prominent ones from the last few months. Not only have these murders been unprompted, unwarranted, and unacceptable public acts of outright cruelty, but they also have gone largely unpunished. George Floyd's murderers were only taken into custody after weeks of looting, rioting and deafening protesting across the country. The police officers responsible for Breonna Taylor's death have yet to be apprehended at all, much to the dismay of hundreds of thousands of Black Lives Matters supporters. Police brutality is one of the most tangible examples of the systemic racism embedded in our societal structure, and it's quite literally a matter of life-and-death. The failure of the police system, or, more accurately, the purposeful design of the police system to target and incarcerate people of color and to protect itself from scrutiny or liability, allows police officers to walk away scot-free even after countless occurrences of excessive force and, in some cases, murder.

A recent story from ProPublica dove into the story of just one police officer who, despite (and, in many ways, because of) his aggressive policing tactics, was promoted to one of the highest-ranking positions in the New York Police Department. The piece of investigative reporting showed up on my Twitter feed via a ProPublica reporter with the caption:

"Meet Chris McCormack, NYPD assistant chief with rep for rough tactics. 16 misconduct allegations confirmed. Dozens more closed as inconclusive, incl. 6 searches of mens' genitals. City settled 11 lawsuits + paid $415K. He got promoted, not punished."

This is not an unfamiliar story. Yet, it remains just as jaw-droppingly horrifying as ever.

A lengthy read of nearly 6,500 words, Joaquin Sapien, Topher Sanders and Nate Schweber details an extensive investigation into McCormack's history, allegations, relationships, and career. McCormack, nicknamed "Red Rage" was known for being aggressive in his police style, always being the first to stop and frisk Black and Latino men in 'high-crime' neighborhoods, even when his position demanded less time on the streets and more behind the desk. He received praise for his readiness and willingness to do the dirty work, seen as a hard worker and a team leader. As he worked his way up the chain of the command, he received nothing but affirmation from his superiors, as stops, searches and arrests all increased, apparently the only metric necessary to deem a community 'high-crime.' With the uptick in those numbers also came an uptick in misconduct allegations against McCormick, many of which included strip searches and other physical violations of citizens, many of which directly violated policy. These grievances were filed to the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), which would conduct an investigation, substantiate the claim if deemed appropriate and recommend a course of action to the police commissioner. However, beyond the fundamental problem that most of the accusations relied on he-said-she-said testimonials in which McCormick's word usually took priority, even the claims that were substantiated resulted in no disciplinary action against McCormick. The police commissioner, the current one with whom McCormick is known to have a cozy relationship, is not required to follow the recommendations of the CCRB, allowing McCormick and all the others like him to climb the ranks undisturbed, harassing, humiliating, degrading, abusing, arresting and violating countless people of color in the process.

Sapien, Sanders and Schweber do a masterful job of capturing not only the severity of his violations, giving detailed descriptions of his assaults, while also broadening the scope to force readers to recognize that the problem extends far beyond just McCormick. He is one cop who has molested and abused many civilians in his life, yet his promotion and encouragement throughout the NYPD exemplifies the much larger systemic issue at hand — the unwillingness of the police system to hold their officers accountable. This kind of investigative work is incredibly important in order to give people hard evidence that racial discrimination and violence is embedded in our society. I commend reporters like Sapien, Sanders and Schweber who understand that getting these individual stories is the first step to forcing people to recognize that these problems do exist beyond the 'bad apple' excuses.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. And it's a journalist's job to open to public's eyes and force them to reckon with that problem.

Now go and read about police brutality. Then, let's do something about it.