Astounding numbers from an analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union of NYPD data from 2011 on an already infamous stop-and-frisk program that has been billed "the most massive local racial profiling program in the country." For starters: Police stopped and interrogated 685,724 people, a more than 600% increase since Mayor Bloomberg’s first year in office; nine out of 10 were neither arrested nor ticketed; almost 90% were black or Latino, with the number of young black men stopped exceeding the city's total population of young black men. And while more blacks and Latinos were frisked, they yielded fewer weapons than whites. The Center for Constitutional Rights is suing the city, and a silent march is planned June 17, Father's Day, to halt the program.
Update: A federal judge has granted class-action status to a lawsuit challenging the stop-and-frisk tactics, saying she was disturbed by the city’s “deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional rights.”
“The NYPD’s own data undermine many of the Bloomberg administration’s justifications for the stop-and-frisk program,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “Contrary to the mayor and police commissioner’s assertions, the massive spike in the number of stops has done little to remove firearms from the streets. Instead, it has violated the constitutional rights of millions of people and corroded the ability of communities of color to trust and respect the police."
- by Abby Zimet
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