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Judge, NY Times Slam NYPD Over Trespassing BS
By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 23, 2010
Modified Dec 24, 2010
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 23, 2010
Modified Dec 24, 2010
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Yesterday, the NYPD was sued by the NY Times for repeatedly delaying or denying their requests for information. But the analysis of the data which they do have can give you some idea why the NYPD might not want to let all that information fly free, especially in regards to stop and frisks: today, a Judge, and implicitly the paper, criticize the NYPD of unfairly manipulating Housing Authority rules in order to perform hundreds of thousands of unnecessary stop and frisks not in the spirit of the laws.
Supreme Court Justice Analisa J. Torres barred the admission of 29 bags of cocaine that the police seized last February from Jose Ventura in the lobby of the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side because of the tactics they used to get them; she believed police exploited the Housing Authority rule which forbids people from being in city housing projects unless they live there or are visiting someone. She wrote, “No matter the location, luxurious or modest, the police must have ‘some objective credible reason,’ to request information about a person’s residency. Officers conducting vertical patrols are not permitted to select individuals for questioning based on presence alone.”
According to the Times analysis, officers cited a suspicion of trespassing 369,000 times from 2003 through March 2010, twelve percent of all street stops. But the results were less than exemplary—they wrote: "Indeed, the analysis by The Times showed that trespassing stops were far more likely than most stops to result in nothing more than an inconvenient delay. Few moved beyond the questioning stage. Two percent of stops where trespassing was suspected — about 7,000 — yielded drugs or other contraband. A total of 81 trespassing stops yielded a gun." In one such example of this over-enthusiasm, a Brooklyn man was given a ticket by police for trespassing outside of his own apartment earlier this year. He joined a massive class action lawsuit against the NYPD with 20 other plaintiffs who allege that false summonses are being issued across the city.
Moreover, the Times notes that when officers stop citizens to question them, they have to write down the reason for the stop, as well as the crime they are suspected of. Out of those 369,000 stops between 2003 through March 2010, more than 257,000, or two-thirds, listed only the vague category of “other” or “furtive movements” as the reason for the stop. It seems like the main purpose for all those inconvenient delays was to help beleaguered officers reach their monthly quotas...even though they still don't exist, right?
Tagged
cops
housing authority
nypd
police
quotas
stop and frisk
trespassing
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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