A Case where a City Council Policy Analyst Called the Police Chief a Liar

On Monday, September 8th, a 30-year-old policy analyst working for the New York City Council was upset. That day, he had heard William J. Bratton, the city’s Police Commissioner, testify before the council that the use of force by NYC police officers has been steadily declining. According to Bratton, two decades ago police used force in 8.5% of arrests. In contrast, in the most recent year, just about 2% of arrests (roughly 8,000 in 400,000) “involved force use recorded by an officer.” Bratton’s testimony came in wake of concern about the deadly use of force on a man suspected of illegally selling cigarettes on a Staten Island sidewalk. Bratton said that his figures show “an extraordinary record of restraint” by the city’s police department. [1]

When policy analyst, Artyom Matusov, heard Bratton’s claims, he was sure they were wrong. Although his job as legislative analyst for the city council’s consumer affairs committee did not address criminal justice issues, he had data on the use of force that he thought contradicted Bratton’s figures.  His data showed that in 2011 a program called “Stop and Frisk” resulted in 40,880 arrests and officers self-reported the use of force in 19,360 (47.4%) of them. According to Matusov, this “Stop and Frisk” program continued in 2013 as the “Broken Windows” program, and assuming that approximately the same levels of force used in 2011 were used in 2013, the use of force by the NYPD in carrying out “Broken Windows” far exceeded the 8,000 claimed by Commisssioner Bratton.

Upset with what he thought were Bratton’s mischaracterizations (he later called them “lies”), Matusov notified the Mayor’s press office the next day (Tuesday, September 9) that Commissioner Bratton had misinformed the city council in his testimony. According to Matusov, he “was told in writing that they did not want to hear about such things from me, that it put them in an awkward position.” [2]

Loyalty and Ethics in Policy Analysis

At this point, Matusov had to decide what he would do next, if anything, to bring Bratton’s “misleading” testimony to light.  In making this decision, Matusov had an impressive education and plenty of experience to help him sort through the options. He had graduated from a top policy school, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, in 2009 with a Master of Public Policy degree, and he had been working for the NY city council for more than three years.

With his education and experience, he likely understood the nature of his conflict with his bosses. Analyst-client conflicts are not rare because the job of a policy analyst is often incompatible with the goals of his or her clients – people with responsibilities to make public policies.  Analysts in a legislative policy shop like that in which Matusov was working are typically expected to provide “objective” nonpartisan advice and information to help inform clients on policy issues. However, clients – especially elected officials – operate in political environments, and frequently politics or personal beliefs are more important than objective analysis in determining their position on an issue.

Often analyst-client conflicts raise questions of loyalty and ethics that are not easy to answer. In regard to loyalty, analysts may have different beliefs about to whom they owe their primary loyalty. Most analysts are loyal is to their immediate clients, the people who hire them, give them assignments, and evaluate them. These clients – their bosses – determine if the analysts will get rewards such as praise, promotions, and pay raises, and they likely have the power to punish or fire them.  Given the powers of their bosses, policy analysts –- most of whom are at-will employees –- do not cross their bosses if they want to be successful within their organizations and keep their jobs.  

Some analysts, however, have different perspectives on loyalty. Idealistic analysts may believe that their first loyalty should be to the “public,” the citizens who pay their salaries. Their primary concern is not the interests of their clients, but the broader idea of “public good.” 

Other analysts may believe their primary loyalty should be to the values of their profession, and they may refuse to do things they are told to do by their bosses because they view such actions as not professionally acceptable. Alternatively, some analysts may feel they should be most loyal to their own personal values and beliefs. These analysts will not be loyal to clients whom they perceive are making bad decisions.

Loyalties are important because, depending on an analyst’s hierarchy of loyalties, he or she will make different decisions when in conflict with a client.  If the conflict raises a question of the ethics of a particular action, primary loyalties will be an important consideration when an analyst decides what to do.  Consider this example:

A policy analyst has completed a professionally competent and objective policy analysis that recommended a specific policy action. The analyst’s client favors an alternative action because of his or her political beliefs or because political considerations make it preferable. The client tells the analyst that the work should not be made public (i.e., distributed to anyone, including the press, outside the organization).

Faced with this situation, analysts loyal to their client would have no problem following their client’s orders. However, analysts with primary loyalty to “the public interest,” “professional values,” or “personal values” might decide that because of their personal sense of ethics they could not withhold the analysis. 

 

Source: http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/
images/RV-AK035_HIRSCH_DV_20130322181849.jpg

When in a conflict with their bosses, analysts might turn to a classic book by Albert Hirschman to understand better their alternatives.[3] Using his framework, an analyst who strongly disagrees with the behavior or action of his or her client could consider three main alternatives:  The analyst can quit in protest if he or she feels strongly enough about the issue; the analyst can speak publicly about the issue against the wishes of the client; or the analyst can be loyal and do nothing beyond discussing it with the client.  These “exit, voice, and loyalty” options have a couple of overlaps. For example, the analyst can keep his/her job, but anonymously leak information (loyalty and voice) or can quit the job and go to the press with information he or she thinks should be made public (exit and voice). 

These various options were open to Matusov on Tuesday, September 9, after the mayor’s press office had told him to go away.  In choosing a course of action, he had to decide to whom he felt his greatest loyalty and, based on that loyalty, what action would be the most ethical. If he were a practical person, he would also have to think about the likely costs and benefits of his various alternatives, especially the likely consequences of doing anything other than keeping quiet.

Matusov’s Choice and the Aftermath

On Tuesday, September 9^th, after the mayor’s office indicated it had no interest in his allegations, Matusov chose to bring the alleged inaccurate statistics of Commissioner Bratton to the public’s attention by taking his own information to reporters.  He explained why he did so:  

After receiving [the negative] response from the executive branch of the city of New York, I knew that I had no other recourse than to go to the press, which I did immediately thereafter, since I had already informed the highest levels of government and had been informed that there was no interest. On the same day that I informed the press, I also informed the deputy chief of staff to the speaker of the facts, including sending an email to him listing the allegations I had sent to the press (emphasis added). [4]

Why did he choose to go to the press?  He explained to a newspaper reporter that he thought that following the chain of command would not have been productive:

Matusov concedes that he could have gone through “normal channels” instead of dealing directly with the media – something that’s gotten him questioned in the past, although he says he was never told to stop.

This time Matusov felt so strongly that he wouldn’t wait.

If he’d followed the usual procedure, Matusov said, “It would go up the chain, there would be some meetings about what to do, somebody would reach out to the mayor’s office. It would be soft-pedaled.”
…          

Matusov says he has no regrets about speaking his conscience – and says he’s gotten lots of support for doing so…”
“People on the Council are fed up with this,” he said. “They’re tired of being lied to.”  [5]

On Friday, September 12, three days after talking to reporters, Matusov was dismissed from his job. When a reporter interviewed him that day, Matusov asked him, “Why should I be fired for going to the Council and saying, ‘someone is lying to you’?” He told the reporter that no reason was given for his dismissal, but he think he knows why:

He’s convinced he got booted because Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito wanted to punish him for blowing the whistle on Mayor de Blasio’s police chief. “It means confronting the mayor and the mayor has a lot of goodies he can hand out,” he said. “Remember, he appointed the speaker. [6]

The following week, he filed a complaint against Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito with the city’s Department of Investigation. According to an article about his complaint, “Artyon Matusov says he was fired…for going public with allegations that Police Commissioner Bill Bratton deceived lawmakers at a Sept. 8 hearing by lowballing how often his officers use force on the job.  Matusov argues that he deserves whistle blower protections after speaking to reporters about his accusations.” [7]

A couple of weeks later, civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel told a reporter that he was going to file a suit against the city council for “improperly firing analyst Artyon Matusov, who questioned data in a report presented to the legislative body by Police Commissioner Bill Bratton…Siegel said he will argue that the city violated Mausov’s free speech rights.”   He continued, “My hope is that this lawsuit will further push Police Commissioner Bratton, Mayor De Blasio, and Council Speaker Mark-Viverito to be more accountable for their policies and actions, and help further a real debate and dialogue about how to best police and govern New York City.”  He also said that he hoped the suit would encourage other whistle blowers to speak up when they see city leaders doing wrong: “You hope that people will have the strength and courage to speak out…So many people in government are afraid to speak.” [8]

On October 14, a month after his termination, Matusov filed a claim with the comptroller of the New York City alleging that his free speech rights had been violated by the N.Y. city council when he was wrongfully terminated “because of his speech, made as a private citizen on an issue of public concern that was unrelated to his official duties at the Council.”  The claim noted that Matusov did not work on the committee before which Bratton had testified, had no involvement in the hearing, and did not regularly speak with member of the media as part of his job.

The complaint maintained that as a concerned citizen, Matusov thought that “what he believed were misleading statements” made by Bratton about use of force should be “publicly exposed.” It said that he had on September 9^th, the day he talked to reporters, told employees in the Mayor’s office and at the Council that he had contacted members of the media regarding Commissioner Bratton’s statements.”

The claim stated that the damages from the “wrongful and unconstitutional termination” were injuries to his career and economic injuries, including loss of wages, loss of potential for career advancement, mental and emotional injury and anguish, diminution of the quality of life, loss of standing in the community and humiliation.” The amount of compensation for these injuries is to be determined at a trial. [9]

Did Bratton Lie in His Testimony?

Matusov’s initial complaint against his dismissal said that he deserved protection as a whistle blower. However, the later legal actions, including the October 14^th claim, maintain that he was unconstitutionally fired for exercising freedom of speech. Likely the whistle blowing claim was largely phased out because it would require proving that Bratton had lied in his testimony. An examination of the statements by the police department and by Matusov provide little support for that conclusion; however, Bratton’s statistics were flawed by likely measurement errors and did not tell the complete story of police use of force. 

In response to Matusov’s allegations, the police department strongly denied that Bratton had lied to the council. On the day Matusov was fired, a police spokesperson, Deputy Chief Kim Royster issued this statement:

Mr. Matusov has grossly misinterpreted the statistics he used to determine that Police Commissioner Bratton has been caught in a lie before the City Council concerning the use of force in arrest situations He is comparing apples to oranges by drawing his data from Stop, Question, and Frisk worksheets which include a much broader category of actions, including placing hands on and placing handcuffs on a suspect. Using this standard our force rate would be 100% this year not 1.9%. The arrest report refers to use of a firearm, to the use of the baton, the use of O.C. Spray, and the use of hands-on physical force beyond what is necessary to effect an arrest. According to our arrest reports they were indeed used in only two of every 100 arrests so far in 2014.  [10]

As Bratton had stated in his testimony, use-of-force statistics were drawn from self-reported actions in which a firearm, a baton, a Taser, pepper spray, or extraordinary physical force was used; in contrast “use of force” in the “Stop and Frisk” and “Broken Windows” programs was defined, at a minimum, as the use of handcuffs or any physical contact.  In his testimony, Bratton had used statistics that have been compiled by the police department over many years.

Nevertheless, the use-of-force figures cited by Bratton are poor measures of the actual use of force because they are self-reported, according to a story by J. David Goodman in the New York Times. They likely understate the actual use of force. According to Goodman, some “rough arrests” may be seen by onlookers as involving the use of force, but would be considered routine by policemen and not reported. [11]

Goodman wrote, “Part of the challenge in accurately capturing the use of force by officers is that it exists as a continuum that goes from verbal command to “soft hands” to arm restraints and takedowns. In many instances, officers come to view those actions -– even pointing a gun –- as an ordinary part of an arrest, not as force.”

He pointed to another, less subjective, measure that is viewed by many experts as “the best broad measure of the use of force in arrests.” That measure is the charge of resisting arrest, and in 2013, 12,452 arrests in NYC included charges of resisting arrests. That number was about 3.1 percent of all arrests, substantially more than the 2 percent use of force that was self-reported.

According to Goodman, “the numbers [of resisting arrest charges] present a more complex picture of the interactions on city streets than a simple decline in the use of force, and they raise questions about how force is recorded by officers.”   

The Costs of Speaking Out

When Matusov made his decision to go to the press with his accusation against Commissioner Bratton he made a courageous decision that showed his primary loyalty to “the public,” “profession,” and/or “personal values.”  No doubt that he did what he thought was ethically correct and what he thought would be best for the city.

His action was also in many ways foolhardy and the outcome was predictable. Could there be any doubt that his bosses, from his primary supervisor to the speaker of the City Council, would view his action as, at best, a breach of organizational protocol, and at worst, organizational disloyalty?

The wisdom of Matusov’s action is a fertile topic for discussion by practicing and would-be public policy analysts, plus others interested in public policy making. His decision raises not only difficult questions of loyalty and ethics, but also practical questions of what was gained and what was lost by his action.

Also, his firing by the NY City Council merits discussion. Was Matusov unfairly and unconstitutionally fired because of his exercise of free speech?  What, in fact, are the free-speech rights of policy analysts (and others) working as staff members for legislators, executives and other elected officials? Does a policy analyst working for a legislative or executive office have the unrestricted right to state his or her opinion as a private citizen about matters before the office? 

All of these questions deserve attention. The one about the legality of Matusov’s termination by the city council will be answered during the coming months in New York City by the city controller and the courts. The others will will plague policy analysts far into the future as they wrestle with questions about what constitutes ethical behavior. 

Sources:

[1] J. David Goodman. Bratton’s numbers of use of force by New York police raise questions. New York Times. September 18, 2012. Accessed at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/nyregion/brattons-numbers-on-use-of-force-by-new-york-police-raise-questions.html?_r=0

[2] Celeste Katz. Fired city council analyst files DOI whistleblower complaint against Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. New York Daily News. September 19, 2014. Accessed at http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/fired-city-council-analyst-files-doi-whistleblower-complaint-speaker-melissa-mark-viverito-blog-entry-1.1945889

[3] Albert Hirschman. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. 1970.

[4] Katz. September 19 (see note 2).

[5] Celeste Katz, City council analyst: I got fired for saying NYDP’s Bill Bratton Lies about use of force. New York Daily News, September 12, 2014. Accessed: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/city-council-analyst-fired-nypd-bill-bratton-lied-force-blog-entry-1.1937978

[6] Katz, September 12 (see note 5).

[7] Katz, September 19 (see note 2).

[8] Tara Palmeri. City council to be sued after firing analyst who questions NYPD report. New York Post. September 25, 2014. Accessed at:  http://nypost.com/2014/09/25/city-council-sued-after-firing-analyst-who-questioned-nypd-report/

[9] Celeste Katz. City council analyst files whistleblower claim with controller’s office over firing. New York daily News, October 15, 2014. Accessed at: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/city-council-analyst-files-whistleblower-claim-controller-office-firing-blog-entry-1.1975469

[10] Katz, September 12 (see note 5).

[11] Goodman, September 18 (see note 1)

Mathematicians at the National Security Agency: Men and Women without Qualities?

Taking a break from Robert Musil’s book, The Man without Qualities, I read a chilling story in the New York Times (Nov. 2, 2013) headlined, “No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A.”  This story by Scott Shane is about the secretive government agency that spends billions of dollars annually to collect personal data from and about millions of people, including U.S. citizens and the elected leaders of our allies.  One sentence in the story grabbed my attention because of its link to Musil’s book: the National Security Agency (NSA) is and has long been the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States.

The NSA is located in this building in Ft Meade, MD
about 20 miles from Baltimore. Its web site is:
http://www.nsa.gov/

My mental image of mathematicians dates back to when I was in high school where the smartest students excelled at math. Some conformed to stereotype, wearing glasses and pocket protectors; I did not often see them because I was not a member of the Mathematics or Chess clubs.  Other math whizzes were well-adjusted, high achieving students active in different high school activities.  Some were good friends.  

        I don’t recall being friends with any mathematics majors in college. After finishing required courses in the first couple of years of study, I did not take courses they did, and vise versa. Occasionally I did bump into a few at the student union, but we did not have much in common. The same was true during two stints as a graduate student and in my professional work. I and mathematicians were in disciplines that rarely intersected.  

        Until I read the New York Times article, I had not given much thought to where mathematicians work after they get advanced degrees. I would have guessed that most went into teaching or did analysis for different types of industries. So, it was a shock to learn that so many of these bright people work for a Big Brother federal agency intent to stealing personal information from as many people as possible.

        Likely, Musil would not have been surprised that mathematicians had sold their talents to such a shady enterprise.  He took a dim view of them  and their work. The main character of his book, Ulrich, was a mathematician, choosing that profession to become a “man of importance.” He had previously tried to gain this distinction as a Cavalry officer and then as a civil engineer, but was disappointed with those professions. So, he became a mathematician – and apparently, a pretty good one.

In recounting Ulrich’s move to this profession, Musil commented on mathematicians and their role in the decline of European civilization in the years just before World War I. First, he suggested that mathematicians may have sold their souls to the devil, and if they had not, they had, at the very least, ruined them. He wrote:      

It is in any case quite obvious to most people nowadays that mathematics has entered like a daemon into all aspects of our life. Perhaps not all of the people believe in that stuff about the Devil to whom one can sell one’s soul; but all those who have to know something about the soul, because they draw a good income out of it as clergy, historians or artists, bear witness to the fact that it has been ruined by mathematics and that in mathematics is the source of a wicked intellect that, while making man the lord of the earth, also makes him the slave of the machine.  (p. 40)

Musil noted that many people at that time, especially those who had been bad in school at mathematics, were predicting the collapse of European civilization because “there was no longer any faith, any love, any simplicity or any goodness left in mankind.”  After WWI, these folks were convinced that mathematics “the mother of the exact natural sciences, the grandmother of engineering, was also the arch-mother of that spirit from which, in the end, poison-gases and fighter aircraft have been born.”

He pointed out that the only people who were oblivious to the dangers resulting from the work of mathematicians were “the mathematicians themselves and their disciples, the natural scientists, who felt no more of all this in their souls than racing cyclists who are pedaling away hard with no eyes for anything in the world but the back wheel of the man in front.” (page 41)

Now, about a hundred years after Musil’s Ulrich joined this profession, it appears not much has changed in the roles that many mathematicians play in society. They continue to use their education and intellectual gifts to help create soul-deadening innovations such as the precision bombing of anonymous drones. And at the NSA, they use their skills to crack codes to enable the pilfering of millions of private conversations; to increase the efficiency of algorithms that analyze stolen conversations, emails, and observations of daily lives; and to perfect the path analysis used to ferret out the links any person has with all other persons in the world.  Now, instead of using their mathematical skills to ruin souls, NSA mathematicians use them to enable government snoops to own souls.

Why do these bright, talented people, who seemed so harmless in high school, do such things? Perhaps they are so absorbed in the intellectual challenges of their work that they don’t notice what they are doing to other people and society: they are, as Musil described, watching only the back wheel of the bicyclist in front of them. Or perhaps they view themselves heroes who are part of the thin line protecting the nation from evil; the ends justify the means, right?  Or perhaps they need a fat paycheck to pay the mortgage on a large house and the bills for a pleasant life.

Likely their motives are a convenient blend of these three things. As Musil observed:

 

…the most coldly calculating people do not have half the success in life that comes to those rightly blended personalities who are capable of feeling a really deep attachment to such persons and conditions as will advance their own interests. (p. 11)

We might consider whether these men and woman are, like Ulrich, without qualities. Such people, instead of having a sense of reality about the effects of the things they do, have a “sense of possibility.”  Such “possibilitarians” are described by Musil as follows:

Anyone possessing [a sense of possibility] does not say, for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen. He uses his imagination and says: Here such and such might, should, or ought to happen. And if he is told that something is the way it is, then he thinks: Well, it could probably just as easily be some other way. So the sense of possibility might be defined outright as the capacity to think how everything could “just as easily” be, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not.

It will be seen that the consequences of such a creative disposition may be remarkable, and unfortunately they not infrequently make the things that other people admire appear wrong and the things that other people prohibit permissible or even make both appear a matter of indifference. Such possibilitarians live, it is said, within a finer web, a web or haze, imaginings, fantasy, and the subjunctive move. (p. 12)

If they are people with a “sense of possibility,” some NSA mathematicians do not worry much about reality as it exists, including the impacts of pervasive spying on a nation’s citizens, its democracy, its values, its future.  The effects might be pernicious, they would say, but it is also possible that they will enhance these things, while saving everyone from disaster. Why worry about the effects of massive spying on citizens, the leaders of other countries, and who knows who else when it is possible the results may be good.

According to Musil, a man or woman without characteristics can be described this way: 

Every bad action will seem good to him in some connection or other. And it will always be only a possible context that will decide what he thinks of a thing. Nothing is stable for him. Everything is fluctuating, a part of a whole, among innumerable wholes that presumably are part of a super-whole, which, however, he doesn't know the slightest thing about. So every one of his answers is a part-answer, every one of his feelings only a point of view, and whatever thing it is doesn't matter to him what it is, it’s only some accompanying “way in which it is,” some addition or other, that matters to him…. (p.71)

In short, people without qualities do not make definitive judgments about, or have a commitment to, doing things that are widely viewed as right or good rather than doing things others judge as wrong or bad.  Every action for them is a possibility not to be judged absolutely; everything in the proper context is justifiable. 

Maybe it is unfair to NSA mathematicians to suggest that some of them are without qualities. Perhaps they have qualities, albeit unfathomable, similar to those of a man I met soon after I traveled for the first time to Ukraine in 1993, just a few years after that country had left the Soviet Union to become an independent nation. The man was affable, intelligent, and well-spoken, with a Kandidat Nauk degree (a Soviet degree roughly equivalent to a Ph.D.); he worked for a regional government in Western Ukraine and later was a partner for a joint project we had. Thus, I was dismayed some time after I met him to learn that this man’s job in the Soviet Union had been to read intercepted mail sent to and from citizens living in the region, and that he still carried out similar duties for the regional government of independent Ukraine.  

His explanation of why he was carrying out this odious job must have been the same as the explanation of many NSA mathematicians. He likely put it into some larger context of protecting his nation from the impending actions of evil people. What kind of qualities did this affable man have that made him capable of reading other people’s mail for a living? I don’t know, and I find myself wondering the same thing about the mathematicians at the NSA: if they have qualities, what are they that lead them to do the work they do?