On the heels of a sketchy police shooting in a Brooklyn housing project Monday and almost a year since Timothy Stansbury Jr. was killed by a housing cop nearby, civil rights activists are calling for changes in the way housing projects are policed. "The key issue here is vertical patrols and whether or not police officers should continue vertical patrols in housing developments with their guns drawn," said Norman Siegel in front of the building where Stansbury, 19, was shot and killed Jan. 24 by a housing cop on a vertical patrol. "We call upon the Police Department, at the minimum, to have a town meeting within the community and explain to us what has been done since the Stansbury issue to look at a hard question on vertical patrols," said Siegel, who was joined by Stansbury's mother, Phyllis Clayburne, Eric Adams of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, and Angel Yulfo, 37, who recently filed a lawsuit in federal court in Brooklyn against the city, the police and five unnamed police officers for shooting his dog and for holding a gun to his teenage son's head in the same building where Stansbury was killed. "At a minimum, the Police Department needs to explain this issue because when they don't explain it, people become cynical and distrustful of the police, especially in poor neighborhoods," Siegel said. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had an immediate answer at his daily news briefing Thursday. "Vertical patrol is a very important aspect of what we do in housing projects in particular. We're going to continue vertical patrols," Kelly said. "We look at all our procedures all the time, but we have no immediate plans to change it." [more]
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