As the trial of “stop and frisk” played out in Judge Shira Sheindlin’s courtroom, a tape made by Police Officer Pedro Serrano last month of his commanding officer made the sounds that everyone knew would be heard, but no one ever really wanted to hear.  From the New York Times :

The commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack, urged the officer to be more active, emphasizing the need to conduct more street stops. “We go out there and we summons people,” Inspector McCormack said. The way to suppress violent crime, he said, was for officers to stop, question and, if necessary, frisk “the right people at the right time, the right location.”

The officer who surreptitiously recorded the conversation last month, Pedro Serrano, began pressing Inspector McCormack about who he meant by the “right people.” The conversation grew heated.

You know what’s coming. You have to. Black, white or Hispanic, young or old, you already know. You always knew. But now it’s right there on tape.

“The problem was, what, male blacks,” Inspector McCormack said. “And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21.”

Meet the “right people” when you live in the wrong neighborhood.  This is, of course, no surprise whatsoever. After the first few million stop and frisks, there could be no doubt, but it’s different to have the words played out loud in a courtroom. 

Officer Serrano is the second Bronx police officer to take the witness stand in the trial and assert that police supervisors institute quotas that encourage officers to stop people unlawfully. He said he began taping interactions with supervisors in the station house because “they’re asking me to do something that’s illegal, I believe, and I was worried.”

Officer Serrano, who continues to work in the 40th Precinct, said that as a Hispanic man in the Bronx, he himself had been stopped many times. “It’s not a good feeling,” he testified.

Pedro Serrano got into this “discussion” with his C.O. because he wasn’t doing to others what he didn’t want done to himself.  Now he needs to worry about when his Serpico moment may come, having done the “right” thing in the wrong job. 

Bizarrely, Inspector McCormack’s explanation to Serrano wasn’t maliciously intended, a matter of hatred of blacks or Hispanics. It was exactly what most people who rely on what they like to call “common sense” would think, that phrase that takes beliefs we hold but can’t quite justify and gives us a facile excuse to maintain them without feeling badly about our self-deceit.

At first, Inspector McCormack can be heard lecturing Officer Serrano about how “99 percent of these people in this community are great, hardworking people” who deserve to go about their days in peace. But the citizens, he said, were troubled by crime, and he went on to describe how a woman in her 60s was shot coming out of an elevator at 10 a.m.

People are troubled by crime. Who wouldn’t be? Nobody wants to be the victim of crime, and they expect the police to prevent it and protect them. Doing so, however, is much harder than people think, as they want cops to be invisible except when they need them, and then they want them to be magically appear the instant they’re needed and to make correct judgment calls in the face of chaos and confusion.  No, it’s not an easy thing to do for the police.

Somebody got it into their heads that if they just target the “right people” in advance of crime, they could seize control of the streets and make their job better. And most of the other people in the police department nodded their head in agreement, that this was a good idea.  But who should they target?  The “right people.”

That the tactic failed to produce results should have been a clue that there really weren’t any “right people” the race, age, demographic, and in the process of stopping and frisking the “right people,” they were doomed to deprive millions of people of their right to walk down the streets of New York City without being stopped for no reason.  But this was the price they would pay for a targeting the “right people.”  The “right people” would forfeit their right to be left alone so that the rest of the people could feel safer.

My old train-buddy Mike used to argue the point with me, that somebody had to take one for the team. Of course, Mike would never be mistaken for the “right people,” so he was pretty clear that the person who had to take one wouldn’t be him.  That’s what makes stop and frisk to acceptable to so many, that they aren’t the “right people” and, truth be told, can’t get too bent out of shape by the wholesale violation of constitutional rights to a group of people that doesn’t include them.

It’s not that they liked the idea of he New York City Police Department targeting a group of young black and Hispanic males for the purpose of hassling them, stopping them, searching them, without any actual articulable suspicion of wrongdoing. They didn’t feel good about it. It was just the price that had to be paid for safety. and the fact that they didn’t have to pay the price made it all acceptable.

Now that the words have been played in a courtroom at 500 Pearl Street, does it make you feel better about it? Your worst fears are confirmed, but you really never had any doubt before. Forget the argument that the common sensical claim that the cops targeted the right people is wrong, as demonstrated by the abysmal rate of finding evidence of criminality. Forget that millions of stop and frisks have happened with negligible results, where only the most blind fool could hide behind the simplistic “it’s worth it if it takes one gun off the streets.” 

This isn’t just a condemnation of the NYPD, but of the “wrong people” who have tacitly tolerated what they knew to be terribly wrong all these years because they believed it made their lives safer and, well, they weren’t the “right people.”  The police did it for you, and you secretly liked it.  How do Inspector McCormack’s words sound to you?  How does it sound when you’re confronted with your own truth?  Are you proud not to be the “right people” of New York?