Editorial: NYPD should explain dismissal
Fishel Litzman, an Orthodox Jew who was weeks away from becoming a New York City police officer, said he has been kicked out of the police academy for refusing to trim his beard. Credit: Handout
The New York Police Department needs to do a better job explaining why a recruit, a Hasidic Jew who by accounts was a good candidate and among the top members of his class in the academy, wasn't granted a religious waiver that would have allowed him to keep his long beard.
Are the rules about safety? Are they about following orders? Or just an exercise in putting a probationary officer in his place?
It's hard to know from a department's canned response, which says it makes "reasonable accommodations" by permitting beards for religious purposes to be kept up to 1 millimeter long. The department also says Orthodox and other Hasidic Jews on the force follow its rules.
That may be true, but to hear Washington-based civil rights lawyer Nathan Lewin explain it, the NYPD strung his client -- Fishel Litzman, 38, of Rockland County -- along for several months while he was in the academy. And Litzman, who resigned his job as a paramedic upon entering the academy, is not the only member of a conservative Jewish sect on the police force who was told to shave the beard at the start of his training or apply for a waiver and take his chances later, according to Lewin.
Lewin, who has successfully argued similar cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and settled a similar matter with the U.S. Army, says that the NYPD is arbitrarily enforcing its rules. He says its actions are religious discrimination.
Unfortunately, this matter is destined for the courts, too, as Litzman filed suit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
While the NYPD needs a dress code and strict rules on behavior, the department must have good reasons to support them.
Unfortunately, a week has gone by and the department hasn't stepped forward to fully explain its reasons for denying the waiver and, as a result, expelling the officer.
We'd like to hear more from the NYPD on this matter; we'd like officials to answer the charge that the recruit's dismissal is arbitrary enforcement. Otherwise, it's hard not to conclude that Litzman is correct.
