NEW YORK – Professor Babe Howell has released a new report that examines the storied Bronx 120 raid orchestrated by city and federal law enforcement officials on April 27, 2016.
Her findings reframe the growing trend in the city’s targeting of alleged gang members through overbroad sweeps, militarized raids, and conspiracy laws: of the 120 individuals, roughly 60 are not alleged gang members, 80 were not convicted based on violent conduct, and only 40 individuals had prior felony convictions.
The report, completed with support from Priscilla Bustamante, a doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center, compiles information from publicly-available court documents. The report’s findings will disturb members of the public and media who were told by former U.S. Atty. Preet Bharara that the raid targeted “two violent street gangs.”
“The truth is that many targeted and convicted were neither gang members nor violent. The question that needs to be answered now, is whether the prosecutors knew their targets were not violent gang members and mischaracterized the raids to the public or whether they acted on misinformation from law enforcement,” says Professor Howell of the findings in her report. “By using the gang label, which mobilizes fears of violent young men of color and immigrants, these raids evade public scrutiny.”
Dawit Getachew, Associate Counsel to the Criminal Defense Practice at The Bronx Defenders, said Howell’s findings “suggest that, like the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy, this form of policing targets communities of color under the auspice of public safety while ignoring the far-reaching and devastating consequences of an approach that criminalizes entire communities.”
Included in the published report are stories of several defendants named in the indictments whose lives were upended. The report also includes data and statistics on the ages, racial backgrounds, and more compiled from the publicly available documents surrounding the indictments.
Read the press release below.