When Mayor Bill de Blasio fends off hard questions about the NYPD, he often touts his “neighborhood policing” program as a cure-all.

From cracking down on a recent wave of shootings to repairing the NYPD’s tarnished relationship with New York’s Black and Hispanic communities amid recent anti-police-brutality protests and the legacy of stop-and-frisk, de Blasio invokes neighborhood policing as “the way forward.”

Last week, he publicly referenced the program — which calls for cops to try to forge community bonds in the neighborhoods they patrol — on no fewer than three different days.

Behind the scenes, however, it’s a different story.

In January, the NYPD quietly hired a white-owned firm to “revisit” de Blasio’s signature reform effort — zeroing in on aspects of his much-touted campaign that the consultant described as “stalled,” THE CITY has learned.

Virginia-based Guidehouse LLP won a $150,000 contract to produce a “high level status report on all of the recommendations” on so-called neighborhood policing, according to contract documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Law. 

The report was to examine the “strategic plan” of the 2018 expanded version of neighborhood policing, looking at “what challenges prevented the implementation of less-completed recommendations,” the NYPD’s request for proposals states.

The request — stamped “law enforcement sensitive” — goes on to say, “Two years into this plan’s implementation, NYPD is seeking to revisit the strategic plan to evaluate progress and assess how the vision and objectives could be amended to better meet the current needs of the new executive staff, the department and New Yorkers.”

Post-Bloomberg Reform Bid

Neighborhood policing — first announced in 2015 and expanded in 2018 — marked de Blasio’s response to the damage caused by the NYPD’s overuse of stop-and-frisk during the istration of Mike Bloomberg. 

Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers — almost all young Black and Hispanic men — were stopped without cause, a tactic ultimately ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.

De Blasio saw the focus on creating on-the-street relationships between cops and neighborhood residents as the way to mend fences, and he has since repeatedly praised this effort as an unqualified success — while offering no metrics.

Last Friday brought just one recent example, when he was asked at his daily press briefing about protesters who’d attacked police during a confrontation near the Brooklyn Bridge.

“For six full years, we implemented neighborhood policing to move this city forward, and we will continue that work and resume that work no matter what, and that’s the way forward,” he said.

He has so far not mentioned the Guidehouse report, which was due at the end of February and has not been made public.

Contract documents state Guidehouse wouldn’t get paid until the report is finished —  and records show Guidehouse has been paid in full. The NYPD has declined THE CITY’s repeated requests for a copy of the report.

Process ‘Paused’

On Tuesday, NYPD spokesperson Al Baker said that the department was in the process of “incorporating the latest information to what the vendor delivered when COVID hit, which had a major impact on the NYPD and city at large. This process was paused.”

He added, “As New York City and the NYPD embarked on police reforms, we have been updating the (neighborhood policing) plan. This process is currently ongoing.”

Councilmember Alicka Ampry-Samuel (D-Brooklyn), who has called out police brass about over-aggressive tactics by precinct cops in her Brownsville district, said she’d like to see a copy of the report as soon as possible.

“While some of your strategic initiatives have been achieved, others have stalled.”

“I would like to get my hands on it, especially to read the recommendations,” she said, questioning how the report played into Police Commissioner Dermot Shea’s recent decision to disband a plain-clothes anti-gun unit.

“Now that some anti-crime officers have been reassigned to ‘neighborhood policing,’ I wonder if that move is in direct contrast to what the report speaks to or part of the suggested strategy moving forward,” she said.

For Councilmember I. Daneek Miller (D-Queens) the non-disclosure of the Guidehouse deal reinforced his concerns about what he sees as “the glaring lack of transparency” in the NYPD’s awarding of contracts.

And he questions the wisdom of hiring a non-minority-owned firm to assess neighborhood policing’s effect on Black and Hispanic New Yorkers, Miller’s spokesperson, Jalissa Quigley, said.

“He is deeply concerned with the process that leads up situations such as these, where an outside consulting firm is tasked with doing important work that is supposed to take into the lived experiences of Black and brown communities,” Quigley said.

In seeking advice in January, the NYPD was looking for a consultant “to conduct a comprehensive review of the department’s strategic plan and recommend updates to the vision, objectives and evaluation metrics,” the department’s request for proposals states.

Guidehouse LLP’s proposal documents outline its approach, making clear the firm intended to look at both victories and failures of neighborhood policing to date.

“Opportunities to improve on the NYPD strategy and its execution remain. While some of your strategic initiatives have been achieved, others have stalled,” Guidehouse’s proposal states.

The Guidehouse proposal notes the possibilities at the time for changes to existing neighborhood policing strategies with the November departure of Police Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill and the appointment of his replacement, Shea.

“Recent changes in leadership, including the appointment of Commissioner Shea, provide a rare opportunity for a strategic assessment — shifting focus from old ideas that are no longer relevant, and deepening or expanding focus on strategies such as targeted youth strategies, that have succeeded,” the proposal states.

It also refers to changes made in Albany and at the local level that affect policing, such as the laws ed last year that greatly reduced the types of charges for which judges are permitted to impose bail.

“It also is important for us to review the strategic plan in light of recent policy changes like criminal justice reform and how that affects the NYPD’s operations,” Guidehouse noted.

Anaita Kasad, the Guidehouse partner who signed the contract in January, did not respond to THE CITY’s emailed questions regarding the firm’s specific findings or explain which aspects of neighborhood policing Guidehouse contends had “stalled.”

A spokesperson for the company, Cecile Fradkin, said Guidehouse “cannot comment on the work they do for their clients. We will have to politely decline your request at this time.”

Call for Transparency

Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a non-partisan group that promotes law enforcement innovations in New York City, praised the NYPD for bringing in an outside expert to take a fresh look at the mayor’s police reform campaign. He noted that neighborhood policing calls for dramatic broad-based changes to longstanding tactics.

“In my view it’s a very important change — ironically particularly for now,” he said. “It’s a particularly important tool to develop in-depth trusting relations with neighborhoods…. Like any big change in policing strategy, it’s going to have to evolve. Some things will work well in the beginning, and some things will have to be re-tooled. I think it’s smart that they’re doing it.”

But, he added, the report should be made public.

“Transparency only helps the NYPD and unless there’s some operational reason to keep this report secret, I think the public is served by transparency,” he said. “The minute any government agency starts hiding documents, it raises questions about them.”

An analysis by THE CITY recently found that the NYPD has spent $321 million over the last decade on a wide variety of consultants — 96% of them white-owned firms. That included several enlisted to examine tactics that affect the NYPD’s relationship with Black and Hispanic New Yorkers.

Non-Black or Hispanic-owned firms were hired to advise the department on issues such as stop-and-frisk, implicit bias training and an effort to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of the uniformed force.

Over the last four years, the de Blasio istration has spent more than $1.2 million on two other non-Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise consultants related to the design of neighborhood policing.

In 2017 the NYPD awarded a $479,000 contract to the major ing firm Price Waterhouse Cooper to help craft the expansion of the program. That contract subsequently grew to $832,000 and was completed in 2018.

The Department of Social Services awarded a $490,000 contract to the Rand Corporation in 2018 for a two-and-a-half-year study of neighborhood policing. According to Rand’s website, “a final public report synthesizing all findings will be released in 2021.”