Wall Street Journal

NYPD Stop-and-Frisk Activity on the Rise

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2011/05/31/nypd-stop-and-frisk-activity-on-the-rise/tab/print/ 

MAY 31, 2011, 5:12 PM ET

So-called ‘stop-and-frisk’ activity is on the rise, according to numbers released by city police, who this year recorded the highest-ever number of quarterly stops in which people were questioned and sometimes frisked.

From January 1 until March 31, New York Police Department officers filed 183,326 “stop, question and frisk” reports, a number that is up sharply over the same period a year earlier and the highest number recorded since the city began publicly releasing information on stop-and-frisk activity in 2004. The previous quarterly high was in the first quarter of 2009, when officers recorded 171,094 stops.

The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy has come under fire from civil rights advocates because a small percentage of stops have led to charges. Data on stops show that blacks are disproportionately stopped by police.

For the first quarter of this year, 11,925 of those stopped were arrested and another 10,292 were issued criminal summonses, meaning that 12.1% of stops led to charges or arrests, a slight decline from the same period a year earlier.

** Please support this youth film festival, which includes several pieces regarding police violence.  PJ conducted a Know Your Rights training for some of the film-makers during their production process. 

NYC Film Festival Features Student-Made Documentaries Exploring Problems in Teen Lives

Gritty Dramas Aim to Provide Help for Young People dealing with Issues of Police Brutality, Drug Use and Peer Trust 

When:  Mon. June 6, 11am-2pm

Where:  Loew's Theater 34th St. Street 14, 312 W. 34th St. New York, NY 10001 (between 8th and 9th Aves.)

Youth producers from Satellite Academy, a New York City transfer highschool for overage and under-credited students, present thirteen new documentaries that inform other young people and the public about problems they face and possible solutions for addressing them.

Peoples’ Justice and Black Women’s Blueprint whole-heartedly endorse Andrea Ritchie’s thorough and thoughtful critique of police misconduct towards women and the LGBT community (see post below.)  As an alliance of community-based organizations working with a wide range of marginalized constituencies, we would also add:

This case not only brings to light the need to incorporate women’s experiences into discussions of police violence and develop systemic approaches to sexual abuse by the police.  It also serves to underscore that the lack of police accountability is a systemic problem that has particular and dire consequences for communities and individuals that are more vulnerable to abuse due to theirrace, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status and/or ability.

Peoples' Justice and Black Women's Blueprint endorse the following article by civil rights attorney, Andrea Ritchie, regarding the May 26th acquittal of 2 NYPD officers on charges of rape:

SHOCKING, BUT NOT UNUSUAL…It’s long past time we took steps to stop sexual assault by police.

The recent conclusion of criminal proceedings against former NYPD officers Kenneth Mata and Franklin Moreno on charges of raping a woman they were called to assist serves as an important wake-up call to the need for systemic approaches to sexual abuse by police. While, to both their tremendous credit, District Attorney Cy Vance’s office aggressively prosecuted Mata and Moreno, and Commissioner Ray Kelly immediately fired both officers following their convictions of official misconduct, the case exposed an ugly underbelly of policing in New York City which demands our immediate attention.

The case involving Mata and Moreno, much like those involving two NYPD officers charged with sexual assault of a Bushwick woman stopped for a traffic infraction in 2005 (Two Officers Are Charged in Sex Attack, NYT 11/22/05;Woman Says Officers Sexually Abused Her, NYT 11/21/05), and a former NYPD officer convicted of offering to destroy a summons in exchange for oral sex in 2010 (Officer Is Convicted of Abusing Power in Seeking Sex, NYT 01/15/10), came as a shock to many New Yorkers, as do ongoing reports that police charged with enforcing prostitution laws all too often extort sex in exchange for leniency (Nicholas Kristof, Girls on Our Streets, 05/06/2009).