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But the NYPD's ads do not look like traditional recruitment ads. The initial six spots, the first of dozens promised from Arnell Group Brand Consulting (better known as Tommy Hilfiger's ad agency), function more like corporate image "feel good" ads for the department. Simple and direct, they are shot in warm tones, with fleshy close-ups of their subjects. Various crime victims tell their often horrific stories and police officers quietly recount their roles as saviors. In one spot, a woman who lived in constant fear of her abusive husband says she would not be alive if it wasn't for Detective Mark Claxton. In another, Sgt. Lino Minetto tells of how he took a small girl whose legs had been crushed by a truck to the hospital. The spots are backed by light jazz from a synthesizer, and conclude with a close-up of the NYPD badge and the tag line "Join us." The ads have that minimal level of production and flash more often associated with public service announcements.

The amount of money dedicated to the recruitment campaign is staggering. By comparison, Compaq Computer Corp. -- which is competing for new staff in an industry where there are 250,000 jobs available across the country and only 85,000 computer science graduates to fill them -- allocated the same amount of money to its national recruitment efforts as the NYPD has to a single city. Either the department is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut or there is another motive for advertising.

In fact, the timing of the campaign and the heartwarming feel of the ads themselves have raised suspicions that the city's taxpayers are simply bankrolling a public relations effort to convince the city's residents that New York's finest are not the out-of-control thugs they are portrayed as in the media.

After being hailed as a key factor in the city's falling crime rate since Mayor Rudy Giuliani took office, the police department has taken a beating in recent months. A February opinion poll -- taken more than a year after the Louima incident and shortly after street vendor Amadou Diallo died in a hail of 41 police bullets from four white officers as he stood unarmed in his own apartment building -- put police brutality as the No. 1 concern of New Yorkers. The image problem only worsened after Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir appeared unapologetic for the Diallo killing and unresponsive to New Yorkers' growing concerns about police tactics.

The new campaign marks the first time the city has dedicated significant resources to recruitiment, according to Deputy Commissioner Yolanda Jimenez, who is in charge of the campaign. Until now, the force has been able to keep the police academies filled simply by sending officers into colleges and community centers to talk to potential recruits.

The campaign immediately hit a snag in the form of persistent police critic Al Sharpton, who made tabloid headlines with complaints that none of the black- or Latino-targeted radio stations had been contacted to run radio spots. Predictably, he found the TV ads unconvincing. "They didn't look much like recruitment ads to me," he said. "It seems to me to be a campaign to persuade us to take the police department as it is and asking us who want reform to appreciate their good work."

In response, Peter Arnell, who created the spots for the police department, noted that the radio and print portions of the campaign had not been approved by the client until a few days ago and weren't ready to roll. There are, however, Spanish versions of some of the TV ads, and minority-targeted media was always part of the plan, just not the initial mainstream splash, he said.

Still, the city might find it tough to get on the radio waves anytime soon. May is sweeps month, and inventory at the city's leading stations, which are also the ones with the largest black and Latino audiences, is tight.

Both Arnell and Deputy Commissioner Jimenez take pains to distance their campaign from Diallo and Louima. In two lengthy interviews, neither Jimenez nor Arnell mentioned the two victims' names, despite being asked to address the matter directly. Both insisted that the campaign is strictly about recruitment, though they did both acknowledge that in order for the campaign to succeed, it must dispel negative ideas about the police that the recent brutality cases have created.

One commercial comes close to addressing the issue of police brutality head-on, but from the police's point of view. In the ad, Detective Wally Salem recounts the statistic that "98 percent of police officers never shoot their guns." He goes on to describe being shot three times by a suspect on a busy street and how in the seconds during which he realized he might die, he decided not to draw his weapon. "If I'd have taken out my gun, with my shooting, there would've been more shooting ... I figure we have to have no shooting, not more shooting." The subtext, writ large in this case, is, "We need officers who know when not to shoot people."
salon.com | May 20, 1999

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