Agents the mayor says looked like 'mass shooters' prompt sweeping review of the NYPD's use of force

…(cont) Next beat comes from the police. The Hill reported on the ninth that the NYPD had first reported a shooting "involving federal law enforcement agents" at approximately four p.m. in Marble Hill, and that city police were not involved. So for about a day, the question of whose use of force this city was discussing had an answer sitting inside it.

Then the street answered too. The wire headlined the protests "Abolish ICE" — hundreds at the hospital, a Democratic congressional candidate among them. Then Sunday, his first interview since the shooting, MS NOW, Jacob Soboroff: the agents looked like "mass shooters," he said, and he called for an end to the agency's operations in his city. A rogue agency, he called it elsewhere that week, whose agents treat the law as merely a suggestion.

Then the order came down, and this is the page I can't file. What he ordered reviewed was the New York Police Department's use-of-force policy. The coverage called the review sweeping. Fox also reported that it stopped short of key promises he campaigned on in the spring. The Washington Post carried it, the Examiner carried it. And the New York Post reported his own allies pressing him to fire the police commissioner.

Now, the garage. My car has been up on ramps since August waiting on a fan belt, which has made the garage floor a museum since August. Saturday I swept it. Forty minutes, the big push broom, corner to corner, and when I was done you could eat off that concrete. Anyone can walk in and check the floor, and the floor will back me up. What they would also find, down on one knee, is the two feet of concrete behind the workbench, where the broom head doesn't fit and a drop cloth has been sitting since spring. I swept the garage. The broom went where the broom goes.

So here is what the notebook has. Two use-of-force questions came out of Marble Hill, and one review came out of City Hall. The agency whose agent fired is outside the review, and what it got instead was a request to end its operations in the city. The department that reported it was not involved is inside the review, and its commissioner is who the mayor's allies want fired, per the New York Post. One of those two is getting its policy read line by line this month. I keep writing the wrong one down and crossing it out.

Oh — excuse me, before you get in the elevator. It's one word, and then I'm out of your hair. Thursday night's statement used it about the shooting in Marble Hill. Monday's order covers the other department. So: which department's use-of-force policy is under review, and which department's use of force was that word for? I wrote it down because I didn't trust myself with it. Here it is. Unconscionable.