The New York Times editorially decried the New York City police department’s stop-and-frisk practices (“Injustices of Stop and Frisk,” 5/13/12), noting that the criterion of “furtive movements” most often used for stopping disproportionately black and brown people is “so vague as to be meaningless,” that people of color are treated more violently than white people when stopped, and that the excuse that stop-and-frisk keeps guns off the street is not supported.
The paper’s conclusion: “The mounting evidence reveals a pattern of abusive policing that warrants the attention of the Justice Department, which should be using its broad authority to investigate these practices.”
That might sound all right, but as I recently wrote for Extra! (3/12), the Times has been clutching its pearls over stop-and-frisk for 10 years, and it’s become clear that there is no evidence, no research, no investigation that will move the paper beyond calls for more of the same. It seems inescapable that, for the country’s paper of record, the fact that a practice violates the human rights of black and brown people in the city daily is simply not sufficient cause to call for its end.
But we have to realize who is in charge of the Times, and the other major Media Corporations. Old, white guys who have no more idea of whats on the street than any other ivory towered fool. I am sure the Times really believes that ‘everyone must be guilty of something, it’s just that them “darkies” are more guilty.
Whats the old saying “The amount of effort required to get a man to see an opposing point of view, is directly proportional to the amount his income depends on him not seeing the other point of view”.
I don’t agree with Padre, in that I don’t think the Times is racist. It’s that Ms Abramson, the editor, and some underlings have a hard time imagining New York as a racist city, with many racist cops, and at least willing to act racist mayor. The facts show that other cities have lowered the crime rate without stop and frisk. And kept whites safe. What it’s mostly about. The buck stops with Bloomberg, as it did with Giuliani. I suggest The Times, for a few days, read facts without knowing their geographical origin. If stop and frisk were happening in Birmingham Alabama, there’s no doubt what word they’d use. Just as the Republican’s anti minority, anti poor, anti elder voting rights bill to “eliminate fraud”, when first introduced in SC or GA, (somewhere Down There in Evil Land), was “Jim Crow and Racist”, the same bill lost those slurs when it hit Wisconsin, home of America’s second most segregated city, Milwaukee, after Detroit, and before NYC. It’ll take a while for the Times and other news sources to deal with the extreme racial complexity of this nation. At least they’re trying.
Its to the point where everyone has been stopped and frisked. With close to a million people a year, more and more people have stories. I was stop and frisked in my own neighborhood and I was profiled walking up the street. I was actually asked what I was doing in the neighborhood. Its violent and I hope these local papers start waking up to what New Yorkers have to live with.
i wonder how it is that the people who are stopped can allow the police to violate their constitutional rights without resisting. i’m from DC and i know that there would be problems if yhey tried that tactic here. i say resist by any means necessary!
Why would the mayor want to stoke the wedge issues by both abusing the civil rights of his cities citizens and placing the NYPD in an antagonistic role? Perhaps the police will be found inadequate? Maybe private policing is on the horizon? I can only guess what form this is taking . But, from past experience, there is money for the rich to be had out of city coffers.
I think an important distinction needs to be made.
Let me say up front that I think there are legitimate complaints about this policy. With that said however, I do not think the city’s policy is motivated by some sort of racist worldview.
The NYPD wants good crime statistics. There’s a lot of pressure on them to maintain NY’s title as the safest big city in the US, primarily because it means very big bucks coming into the city via tourism. Anyone remember the 70’s?
This is in stark contrast to, say, Bull Connor and the Birmingham PD’s policies which were solely meant to maintain a racist system which benefited them.
I’d say these two objectives are 180 degrees apart.
Question the legality of the policy. Question its effectiveness. But I see no reason to question the moral character of the policy’s makers.
@EFK and other apolgists:
Communist China is full of safe cities. Occupied Tibet has great stop and frisk policies for Tibetans. Stop and frisk is New York’s version of the old pass laws of South Africa. It is not an accident that the vast majority of those accosted by NYPD are not White people. Until and unless you and members of your family are regularly stopped by police, your opinion in this matter is highly suspect. If one cannot move freely from one place to another without having to prove one’s “right” to be there to some so-called authority, one is living in a police state. Maybe you welcome that in your search for “security.” I do not. I also don’t believe in the concepts of accidental or unintentional racism, or magical discrimination. I know that the people who created these laws and policies did so knowing that neither they, nor their people would be targeted by them. If one were to reverse the color scheme of those who are targeted by so-called stop and frisk policies in New York, or if similar state-sanctioned policies were used against Whites in Zimbabwe or in South Africa or against White visitors and residents in places like Jamaica, neither the White media, White blogs, White politicians, nor masses of White inviduals would have any difficulty seeing racism. For too many years, too many (White) people outside of the South have hidden their support for racist policies by claiming that there is no history of intentional, systematic anti-Black behavior anywhere else in the country. It was a big lie then, and it’s a big lie now.
PEASEHEAD,
Did I not say that I think there are legitimate complaints about this policy?
The policy may be flawed, but that doesn’t make it racist.
Are the following crime statistics “racist”?
In 2011, the breakdown of homicide victims by race in NYC:
Black: 61%
Hispanic: 31%
White: 7%
Asian: 1%
The breakdown the perpetrators by race:
Black: 62%
Hispanic: 27%
White: 8%
Asian: 3%
Source: http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map
Is it really so crazy to think that there’s some connection between the above facts and the disproportionate effect of stop/frisk on Blacks and Hispanics?
No connection at all?
Ah, yes, the old the ends justify the means, as long as someone else pays for the consequences. Here’s another statistic for you. The vast majority of drug users, sellers, and distributors in America are White. Please let me know when the NYPD or any other arm of law enforcement brings the so-called War on Drugs to the people in White community with the same hostile, intense, paramilitary, in-your face style that it has used against Blacks and others for over 30 years. America has found ways, means, and reasons to define Blacks and other non-whites as criminal populations forever. First, it was based on the needs of the slave masters, then it was “scientific” racism and eugenics in the service of colonialism and expansion, now it’s carefully culled statistics used to support an increasingly privatized penal system, and lifetime employment for legions of cops, corrections officers, attorneys, DA’s and judges. Not to mention all of the “tough on crime” politicians. At various times in the history of the “Land of Opportunity” it was illegal (criminal) for Blacks to read, to assemble, to possess arms, to live outside of certain areas etc., etc. Last time I checked, there’s a place in downtown Manhattan called the Old Negro Burial Ground which speaks to some of that history. When I was a child, many states used vagrancy laws to criminalize and to incarcerate vast numbers of Black men, and to place them into the peonage labor system, usually for life. Meanwhile, Whites ranted and raved and gnashed their teeth about the poor (White) people languishing in gulags behind the so-called Iron Curtain. Assuming that “your” statistics are accurate, it is equally true that the vast majority of those who are accosted by NYPD are not in violation of any crime. Is this mass, indiscriminate policy of confrontation “crime fighting”, or is it the intentional demonization and (attempted) intimidation of entire communities masquerading as police work? Would this behavior on the part of the police be “acceptable” in a so-called free society if the vast majority of those stopped, questioned, and searched (often illegally) were White? Would it still be “acceptable” if the cops doing it to White people were Black? If statistics alone drive police responses to all criminality, why aren’t the Irish, Italian, Jewish and other communities which have deep ties to organized crime, and to political and police corruption also treated as groups of dangerous outsiders, as Blacks and non-Whites are? Who defines “crime” “criminals” and “criminality” in this society, and who decides who gets rewarded or excused or punished for it? White people do. The same White people who created differential sentences and punishments for cocaine use and distribution, policies which operate exactly as they were intended to, as a vast get-out-of -jail-free system for Whites and as yet another means of stoking he prison industrial complex with Blacks and others. The problem with statistics is that they are only as “good” as are those who collect and use them. When Whites decide to absolve themselves of criminality as they have in the case of the both the national and international drug trades, while holding others accountable, any info which they collect in the process will serve that agenda, not those of either justice or crime fighting.
You’re not taking life on a case by case basis. You have this sprawling idea of how the world works, and you’re sticking to it.
Digging deep on one specific issue trying to understand ALL sides VS. lecturing on “This is how the world works dammit!”.
Which one are you doing?
I’d be interested in seeing the numbers of homicides compared to the number of “stop & frisk” events (beyond wondering what in hell ever HAPPENED to the Constitution). Is there a correlation between the immediate neighborhoods where homicides occurred & the number of “stop & Frisk” events in that locale?Is there a correlation between “S&F” events in predominately upscale neighborhoods and the percentage of “people of color” who are stopped there? Where are most of the “S&F” events that include the greatest numbers of whites?
What I am interested in is “social ecology”, I suppose… and seeing the macro culture writ small in the micro one (that examination of this particular policy provides). The NYPD isn’t operating in a vacuum… ^..^
John, all very good questions that are relevant to this specific issue and that seek to get a more precise understanding of what exactly is happening and why. . .as opposed to jumping to sprawling conclusions that demonize a whole group of people in one swift stroke – quick and easy! no further thought required!
Saw a new development in Policing that will be coming down the Pike.A wand that will be used to “sound” on a fire -arm.Policeman walks up to a group of youths and waves that magic wand and voila………..It go bing a bing a bing.Well somebody better have a legal gun permit, or somebody’s gonna be eating the pavement,and spending ten years in the slammer.Ah the future can’t come quick enough
Actually I have a very realistic view of how the world, especially the United states “works.” It does not take a genius to see linkages between negative historical practices of social control and domination, and current practices which while similar in nature and in intent, have been dressed up and sanitized with politically correct language or catchy, feel-good slogans. The NYPD and any other organizations which engage in large scale racial profiling deserve to be “demonized.” Policies such as “stop and frisk” and disparate sentences for drug offenses already demonize entire groups of people on a daily basis. Placing a Muslim girls’ school under surveillance is detestable. When the IRA was running wild, how many Catholic girls’ or boys’ schools did the NYPD or any other so-called law enforcement agency see fit to monitor, infiltrate, or to place under surveillance? I notice that the defenders of these racially skewed policies have yet to respond to my queries about why Whites, who by far the major players in all aspects of the drug trade, including in the role of money laundering, have not been specifically targeted for intensified policing by this society. This makes no absolutely no sense, even if one is stupid enough to believe that the people who crafted and imposed theses these unjust and ineffective policies only agendas are crime fighting and suppressing the drug trade.