September/October 2011 Issue

On the Beat With NYPD’s Rookie Class

Photos from Operation Impact, a program that sends untested officers into New York’s most dangerous neighborhoods.

    Antonio Bolfo/Getty Reportage


Update: In January, 2014, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said that he plans to no longer send rookie officers immediately into impact zones. “I think they would benefit from it, working with officers in traditional precinct assignments,” he said.

For more than seven years, the first assignment for nearly all rookie New York City police officers has been to patrol “impact zones” with the highest crime rates, often on foot and without backup. The program is credited with decreasing crime but has also been blamed for officer burnout and overly aggressive tactics. Photographer Antonio Bolfo followed a unit of new officers as they learned the ropes in high-rise public housing in the South Bronx. Bolfo, 30, says his project provided some much-needed closure: He’s a former NYPD cop who’d walked the same beat a year earlier.

Officers walk through a snowstorm in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx.

Officers walk through a snowstorm in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx.
 
A rookie officer makes her way along a narrow ledge between two office buildings. Bolfo explains that officers looking for drug dealers "sneak around the exterior of buildings because they don't want to go in the front door."

A rookie officer makes her way along a narrow ledge between two office buildings. Bolfo explains that officers looking for drug dealers “sneak around the exterior of buildings because they don’t want to go in the front door.”
 
Cop walking down a graffit-covered stairwell

Housing-project stairwells are notoriously dangerous.
 
An officer detains a suspect inside a stairwell.

An officer detains a suspect inside a stairwell.
 
Three officers listen to a colleague ask for urgent assistance over the radio—without a patrol car, they have no way to respond.

Three officers listen to a colleague ask for urgent assistance over the radio—without a patrol car, they have no way to respond.
 
An officer sheds his civilian clothes and gets into uniform.

An officer sheds his civilian clothes and gets into uniform.
 
Officers spend their dinner break on a housing project roof.

Officers spend their dinner break on a housing project roof.
 
A rookie NYPD officer looks out over the Bronx from a rooftop.

A rookie NYPD officer looks out over the Bronx.

 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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