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Happy 5 Millionth Stop And Frisk, NYPD!
By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 14, 2013
Modified Mar 14, 2013
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By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 14, 2013
Modified Mar 14, 2013
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Today the NYPD will make history when, somewhere in New York City (most likely East New York), an officer will blow off the Constitution and stop somebody for a pat-down and I.D. check for the five millionth time since Mayor Bloomberg took office. Hundreds of balloons and streamers will fall from the sky, air horns will blast, and cops may or may not call the unlucky friskee "a fucking mutt." You never know how these stops are going to go down, but it's a pretty safe bet the five millionth customer will be black or Latino.
More than 86 percent of people stopped during the Bloomberg administration were black or Latino, according to an analysis by the NYCLU based on an extrapolation of Police Department data. And 4.4 million of these stop-and-frisk encounters, or 88 percent, were of innocent people who were not arrested or issued a summons. During Bloomberg's first year in office, the NYPD conducted 97,296 street stops; last year they racked up 533,042—down from 685,724 in 2011.
"This disturbing milestone is a slap in the face to New Yorkers who cherish the right to walk down the street without being interrogated or even thrown up against the wall by the police,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “The NYPD’s routine abuse of stop-and-frisks is a tremendous waste of police resources, it sows mistrust between officers and the communities they serve, and it routinely violates fundamental rights. A walk to the subway, corner deli or school should not carry the assumption that you will be confronted by police, but that’s the disturbing reality for young men of color in New York City.”
Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD argue that stop-and-frisk keeps New Yorkers safe. In January, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly warned that if the department's stop-and-frisk policy changes, "People will die as a result." (Of course, it's worth considering that both stop-and-frisks and homicides declined in 2012.)
The NYPD's milestone comes on the eve of a landmark trial in Floyd v. City of New York, a federal class-action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the constitutionality of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices. And yesterday we reported that the NYPD arrested a woman for merely saying something negative about stop-and-frisk in public.
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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