Remember Amadou Diallo? Race and policing in New York City!

Recently, the New York City Police Department released statistics for a single year pertaining to its controversial stop and frisk policies.

According to an article on officer.com, more than 31,000 people were stopped in 2011 and 97% of them were black or Hispanic!

People of color had long complained about this practice, and a judge found the policy to be unconstitutional.

New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly said he was disturbed that the judge found Big Apple police engaged in racial profiling, saying that is "recklessly untrue."

"We do not engage in racial profiling," Kelly said. "It is prohibited by law, it is prohibited by our own regulations."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city will appeal the ruling by a federal judge. Incredibly, in spite of the evidence--which shows that police rarely find weapons or drugs or make an arrest in cases where they stop and frisk someone--Bloomberg said the policy is "an important part of [the NYPD's] record of success." See the reality here.

I've been following this story since way way back in the day.

In New York City, police have always used race as a warning sign of potential danger to profile people. Not all cops of course, but enough to create major disparities in stops and even use of force.

Remember the case of Amadou Diallo, followed then shot and killed because he (an innocent man with nothing but a wallet in his back pocket) fit the description of a suspect (why? because he was black?)? There have been far too many of these cases in the city.

Many people have forgotten. Some have not.

Like my man, Ziggy Marley. Check out his song, "I know you don't care about me." Nice use of music to make a point.

"I know you don't care about me. I'm just a nigga' walking down the street."

...

"And they say their Constitution's for the benefit of all. It's all a lie. It's all a lie."

And read Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow. Her argument? Criminal justice--especially mass incarceration--is the new Jim Crow. Woah!

When can police stop and frisk you?

For years they've been doing it, even with increasing frequency.

But only in some places. And against some people.

Which is why many have alleged it is being used to engage in racial profiling.

For example, the New York City Civil Liberties Union claims that, from 2002 to 2011, black and Latino residents made up close to 90 percent of people stopped, and about 88 percent of stops – more than 3.8 million – were of innocent New Yorkers. Even in neighborhoods that are predominantly white, black and Latino New Yorkers face the disproportionate brunt. For example, in 2011, Black and Latino New Yorkers made up 24 percent of the population in Park Slope, but 79 percent of stops. This, on its face, is discriminatory.

So I don't find it surprising that a key part of the NYPD’s controversial “stop and frisk” tactic has been ruled unconstitutional. From NY Daily News:

Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ordered police to refrain from making trespass stops outside private residential buildings — even though the landlord has given officers permission to do so as part of the NYPD’s “Clean Halls” program.

"While it may be difficult to say when precisely to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional police encounters such a line exists, and the NYPD has systematically crossed it when making trespass stops outside buildings," Scheindlin wrote in a 157-page ruling.

The New York Civil Liberties Union argued in an eight-day hearing in October that “Clean Halls,” which exists only in the Bronx, leads to people being hassled by cops and sometimes cuffed near their own abode for no legitimate reason.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-controversial-stop-frisk-policy-ruled-unconstitutional-article-1.1235578#ixzz2HPV2AwdC

Good thing racial profiling is a myth, right?

Police officers stopped people on New York City’s streets more than 200,000 times during the first three months of 2012, putting the Bloomberg administration on course to shatter a record set last year for the highest annual tally of street stops.

Data on the 203,500 street stops from January through March — up from 183,326 during the same quarter a year earlier — was sent to the City Council from 1 Police Plaza late on Friday under a legal requirement spawned by public outrage over the 1999 fatal police shooting in the Bronx of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black street peddler.

On Saturday, the department disclosed the information to reporters and credited the controversial topic known as “Stop, Question, Frisk” as one of several policies of engagement whose effectiveness was vindicated by a decline in homicides in New York.

So far this year, 129 people have been murdered in New York through Friday, the 132nd day of the year, a number that put the city on track for a new low in annual homicides. The 471 murders logged by the Police Department in 2009 was the lowest annual tally for any previous 12-month period since reliable numbers were kept in the early 1960s.

Still, the new street-stop numbers got a fresh round of criticism after a week that saw civil libertarians and prospective mayoral candidates debating the crime-suppression value of such stops and blaming the tactics for tearing at the fabric of city life, particularly in minority neighborhoods, during a period of historically low violence.

On Wednesday, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a study of last year’s stop data, arguing that far too many innocent people were suffering under the policy. The study said that while young black and Hispanic men made up 4.7 percent of the city’s population, those between the ages of 14 and 24 accounted for 41.6 percent of stops in 2011. 

Driving while black. Walking while black. Whatever you want to call it. It is real. 

Interestingly, police department officials claim it is saving lives. Check the data and see for yourself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/nyregion/new-york-police-data-shows-increase-in-stop-and-frisks.html?_r=1#h[DotDot]