Where is the outrage? Wouldn’t it be great if Michael Bloomberg was president? He could institute this policy across the land. The police need no legitimate cause to frisk you. The TSA sexually assaults old ladies and little children on a daily basis to keep us “safe”. The government is flying Apache helicopters over our cities, conducting “exercises” to keep us “safe”. The military is being used in our cities to intimidate and “protect” us from phantom terrorists. The FBI and CIA create fake terrorist plots and then save us by foiling them just in time. Americans are beaten, maced, bludgeoned, and jailed for protesting criminality by Wall Street. The government monitors our telephone conversations. The government monitors our emails. The government has ordered thousands of predator drones to fly over our cities. Laws are passed every day to give the government more power to imprison us without charges and to shut down free speech. We are all treated like suspects. The government makes it more difficult to leave this country every day. This is all happening right before our very eyes.
What do we do about it? Nothing. We have our iGadgets, our America’s Got Talent, the Kardashians, 99 weeks of unemployment, food stamps, credit cards, low interest auto loans, Cracker Barrel, and Wal-Mart. What’s the big deal with sacrificing a few freedoms for safety and security. The government has our best interests at heart. Trust them. They know best.
The NYPD’s criminal stop-and-frisk record
The police department’s policy amounts to racial profiling and the illegal harassment of thousands of New Yorkers a day
Last week, the New York Police Department released quarterly data on its stop-and-frisk program. The numbers are worse than ever, and they confirm everything that is wrong with this practice.
From January through March 2012, 203,500 New Yorkers were stopped and frisked. That’s an average of 2,200 people per day. Twenty-two hundred people a day, many of whom are stopped for no reason – or the wrong reason, like the color of their skin, or their age, or their gender expression – patted down, sometimes roughed-up, intimidated, asked for ID in their own neighborhood, sometimes in their own buildings, asked to empty their pockets. Twenty-two hundred people a day stopped by police as they walk down the street on their way home, to school, the corner deli, or to see friends. Twenty-two hundred people a day asked to justify their presence in the city in which they live.
This is already an outrage; but if you look further at the numbers, it’s even more outrageous. Despite years of public outcry and lawsuits, the NYPD is stopping even more people than in previous years. In 2011, the department stopped a record 685,724 New Yorkers, a 600% increase since Raymond Kelly took over as police commissioner in 2002. But the 2012 numbers are on track to be still worse. At the rate it’s going, the NYPD will stop nearly three-quarters of a million New Yorkers in 2012.
Eight-seven per cent of the people stopped by the NYPD in the first quarter of 2012 were black or Latino, while only 54% of the city’s population is black or Latino. Despite claims to the contrary, the data show that even when you take other factors into consideration – including crime rates –stops are disproportionately concentrated in black and Latino neighborhoods. And in all neighborhoods, blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely to be stopped than whites. The data also show that NYPD officers use physical force more often when stopping blacks and Latinos.
Stop-and-frisk, as practiced by the NYPD, amounts to racial profiling, which is illegal. It violates the 14th amendment of the US constitution, which prohibits racial discrimination, and the fourth amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Stop-and-frisk also fails to make New Yorkers safer. There is an implied trade-off that New Yorkers are told to accept: OK, so the practice is intrusive and humiliating and it violates your rights, but it’s necessary to fight crime. That is a lie. The vast majority of stop-and-frisks – 90%, in the first quarter of 2012 – do not uncover evidence of a crime. Less than 1% lead to recovery of guns, the supposed goal of the stop-and-frisk program.
The NYPD is not catching criminals; they are stopping and humiliating thousands of New Yorkers a day who have done nothing wrong.
There is no evidence that stop-and-frisk is responsible for the city’s drop in crime rate in recent years. On the contrary, New Yorkers feel less safe and often have their lives upended by unlawful stops. Many communities, especially communities of color, feel that they are under siege. To them, the presence of police on the streets signals not protection against crime, but a danger of becoming the victims of a crime: being illegally stopped, harassed, possibly beat up.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is suing New York City to end these gross violations of hundreds, or thousands, of people’s rights. Occupying entire neighborhoods and treating vast portions of the city’s citizenry as suspects violates the US constitution and fundamental human rights.
Muck About says:
On the subject of “racial profiling”, I’m all for it. If a black man robs a store and the cops start looking for the perp, do they hunt whites or latinos? If a white guy knocks over a bank to they start searching blacks or asians?
Considering that 75% or so of incarcerated people are black or latino, that means blacks and latinos commit more crimes than whites.
Therefore, when looking for bad guys who are identified as black, white, latino or asian or red, the cops must use racial profiling in order to catch the bastard.
As far as random stop-and-search is concerned, nix it – period. Probable cause is still in the Constitution and if ignored by authorities, should be stopped. Of course, I suppose in another twenty years all you people will be living in a country that has no laws – just PTB that call the shots.
MA
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20th May 2012 at 1:05 pm
hammerhead says:
The problem is that if they can do it to anyone, they can do it to everyone. Your papers, please?
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20th May 2012 at 1:41 pm
flash says:
We’ll at least the governments provide a good education for da chirren.
Why learn to read when you can just join up with FSA and get your free SNAP card along with a complimentary Travon Martin hoodie.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/half-florida-high-school-students-fail-reading-test-232516894.html
Half of Florida high school students fail reading test
Reading is overrated anyway …it’s how many ho’s you can knock up that really counts.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/man-with-30-kids-%E2%80%94-by-11-different-mothers-%E2%80%94-seeks-child-support-help/
Man With 30 Kids — By 11 Different Mothers — Seeks Child Support Help
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20th May 2012 at 2:01 pm
flash says:
Cracker Barrel -WTFK?
Damn , I dumped this dog ,way too early.
http://investor.crackerbarrel.com/stocklookup.cfm?historic_Month=5&historic_Day=18&historic_Year=2012
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20th May 2012 at 2:18 pm
THE PASSIVE SHEEP SLOWLY LED TO SLAUGHTER « The … | The Best Cities In The USA says:
[...] original here: THE PASSIVE SHEEP SLOWLY LED TO SLAUGHTER « The … ← 100 Best Communities for Young People Application Drive Seeks [...]
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20th May 2012 at 2:26 pm
Kill Bill says:
First frog: Did you pee in the water?
Second frog: No. Why?
First frog: Water feels warmer.
Second frog: Its your imagination.
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20th May 2012 at 2:56 pm
Thunderbird says:
The government is keeping us safe from the rabid sheep in the herd; now that the terror threat is over. The ones now being terrorized is the rabid sheep. The rest of the sheep are living high off the hog in a multicultural heaven. Red and yellow, black, and white sheep. And the rabid sheep? You know what sheep I am talking about but can’t say; it is politically incorrect.
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20th May 2012 at 3:12 pm
DaveL says:
This is why I don’t think 9mm or .45 caliber or stuff like that will protect you. You bring a gun to a fight, they’ll bring a tank, a Hellfire, an F-35, a Predator.
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20th May 2012 at 7:33 pm
a cruel accountant says:
MA
“I suppose in another twenty years all you people will be living in a country that has no laws – just PTB that call the shots.”
Better watch out MA. You might still be here too.
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20th May 2012 at 7:34 pm
rhenzen says:
@DaveL
“This is why I don’t think 9mm or .45 caliber or stuff like that will protect you. You bring a gun to a fight, they’ll bring a tank, a Hellfire, an F-35, a Predator.”
Of course the authorities have the big guns, the point of me having small arms is to protect myself from individuals looking to steal or harm my family! If you have to go up against an organized military force it will most certainly go bad, however, at least you have the means to some resistance.
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20th May 2012 at 6:22 pm