According to Newsday, it didn’t take long for New York City cops to forget that they aren’t supposed to engage in racial profiling.
The NYPD is on course to stop and frisk a record number of people this year — more than 580,000 — after a year in which the accusations of racial profiling led to a noticeable drop in the practice.
The City Council released the latest numbers yesterday for the first quarter of 2008. According to the statistics, 145,098 people were stopped in the first three months of this year, compared with 109,855 for the last quarter of 2007.
This is a 32% increase in stop and frisks. In 2001, police were required to fill out “stop and frisk” reports so that the numbers could be tracked. Whether or not most street cops actually do is another matter, since no one would have a clue whether they complied with the record-keeping requirements or not. But at least some do, and the result is quite astounding.
The controversy hit a peak last February when the council revealed that NYPD officers in 2006 stopped more than 508,000 people on the street and questioned them.
Not just questioned. Stopped people, questioned them and then placed their hands on people’s bodies and frisked them. It’s bad enough that people walking along a street in Manhattan are subject to the order of a cop to stop, but to then that’s only where the indignity begins. And who are the subject of this police attention?
In statistics released yesterday, blacks comprised 54 percent of those stopped in 2007 and 51 percent for the first quarter of this year. For Hispanics, the numbers were 31 percent last year and 32 percent so far this year.
I know, you’re shocked to learn that 84% of all people stopped and frisked are black or Hispanic.
Before the naive leap to defend the practice, there are a few things to know about it. Of this huge number of people stopped, the vast majority have done absolutely nothing to warrant police attention, aside from wearing clothing that suggests to cops that they may be up to something, hanging out on the street with friends, and of course have skin of a different color.
This happens in “high crime areas,” but of course they happen to live in high crime areas, defined by the police as an area that is primarily inhabited by people of color.
They “mouth off” to police, meaning that when cops order them to “come here,” they have the audacity to ask “why?”
According to the New York Times :
To police officials, the practice of stopping civilians on the streets, to question and search them — sometimes looking for illegal guns — is just one of many crime-suppression tactics. The increased number shows that the department is standing by its strategy as a worthy practice, people in and outside of city government said.
“Stop-and-questioning or stop-and-frisks of individuals in connection with suspected criminal activity is an essential law enforcement tool,” said Assistant Chief Michael Collins, a police spokesman. “The number of stops conducted by police officers is driven by the situations they encounter on patrol.”
The Times puts the number of arrests stemming from 145,098 stop and frisks at 8,711.That means that 137387 people, each of whom has a constitutional right to be left alone, were wrongly subjected to a stop and frisk. This doesn’t strike me as a particularly effective tool, given that it nets such a small percentage of criminal defendants while interfering with rights of so many.
This is another example of “small damage,” for which our boys in blue suffer no consequences. The 94% of people stopped who are not arrested have little recourse. Should they sue the police? For many, getting stopped and frisked is a daily occurrence. They become so inured to being subject to police fiat that it’s almost a ritual. It’s not supposed to be this way in America. But that’s life in some neighborhoods.
People wrongfully stopped could complain to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, but everyone in New York knows that to be a waste of time. It is perhaps the most worst waste of promise to ever come out of an effort for reform. The likelihood of discipline is minute, because police need only articulate some palpable rationale for the stop to get away with it. The old “furtive movement” or shifting wasteband excuses always win the day for cops.
Consider the impact of these numbers on yesterday’s post, Paul Cassell: Blacks Deserve To Be In Prison. Aside form the other reasons, obvious to anyone capable of thought, such as poverty, lack of educational opportunity, peer and cultural influence, historic and current racism, the fact that police give grossly disproportionate focus on black and Hispanics, and act upon it without fear that they will be accountable for baseless unconstitutional stops, has a huge impact on the disproportionate arrest and prosecution rates of minorities.
This report shows two things very clearly. We still lack the ability to prevent NYC cops from stopping people at will and violating their right to be free from police interference. And there are a lot of black and Hispanic New Yorkers who suffer because of it. Not a good thing.
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That’s overwhelming. The bill of rights is a failed experiment for some, isn’t it? But not for others. If that happened where you live, or where I live, we and our neighbors would start, en masse, with the police chief and rachet up the political totem pole to stop the stop and frisks. And it would stop.
You can bank on that.
Well, the reason they were stopped was because they were predisposed to crime. So it’s their fault really. Makes perfect sense.
“police give grossly disproportionate focus on black and Hispanics, and act upon it without fear that they will be accountable for baseless unconstitutional stops“
I’d be willing to believe that the lack of accountability—more than a racist desire to oppress minorities—accounts for a lot of the disproportionate enforcement against minorities.
To some extent, I think that’s right. But don’t discount latent discrimination either. It’s part of the culture.
So, is it still legal to say “no thanks” when officers ask to search you or do they just detain you on ‘obstruction’ charges and then frisk you when you have the audacity to assert your rights like that?
You of all people ought to know the answer to that question. Let some kid on the street say “no thanks” to the cop on the beat and see what happens.
Why do the intentions of the police officers have to be assumed as racist? If you have ever watched the TV program Happy Days and saw how Fonzi dressed in the summer, then you know how I dressed on the real streets of Milwaukee in the real 1950’s.
I wore engineer boots, blue jeans, a white tee shirt, and had a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in the short sleeve of my white tee shirt. I had long hair with a DA in the back.
The point of this is that I used to walk everywhere (no money for the bus) and I used to be stopped by the police at least once a day. They were white and so was I.
Obviously I was being stopped because my “uniform” was similar to kids that were the biggest law breakers, even though I wasn’t one of them. I dressed that way because of peer pressure as I suppose is the reason that many black and Hispanic young people dress the way they do.
One of the differences was that I was being told something different by my parents. They told me that the police were just doing their job and that I shouldn’t “mouth off” to them but treat them with respect and courtesy.
The other thing they told me was about urban survival skills regarding the police. That I should never put my hand/s in my pocket after being stopped by the police unless directed to do that by the officer.
Also, that if I had hand/s in my pocket to keep them in my pockets unless told to take them out by the officer. I was told to make no quick movements and to answer any questions the police asked.
If young people were taught these urban survival skills by their parents I suspect that fewer young people would be shot by mistake by police officers who don’t have time to wait until someone who dresses like a street thug has his hand all of the way out of his pocket before he decides to shoot in self defense.
Young people of any color are being done a great disservice by being told by the adults in their community that the police are against them and that they have a right to call them any foul name they can think off.
It should not be a question of the police against the rest of us. It should be a question of the police and us against the crooks and gang bangers who plague and terrorize the honest folks of all racial and ethnic communities.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like it when I am given a ticket for rolling through a stop sign instead of coming to a complete stop and I hate it when the police officer takes it upon himself to lecture me about people who roll through stop signs are the scum of the earth and the cause of all the world’s problems. But I stuff it!
The police officer has a difficult job to do and must deal with rapists and murderers. He doesn’t know that I am an honest citizen and if he doesn’t treat all people in a firm, cautious manner, when he comes upon the serial killer, he just might be the next victim.
I know that there are cops that abuse their power and they must be stopped. I also know that if we don’t use our freedom that we will lose it.