A report released by the NYPD reveals that the controversial stop-and-frisk practice saw a 22 percent reduction between 2011 to 2012. While the department states that there were fewer incidents of the practice, Black and Latino men remain top targets.
During last week’s State of the State address in Albany, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo touched on almost every hot-button topic that’s dominated public conversation, like women’s rights and gun control. Cuomo also discussed education, increasing the minimum wage and stop-and-frisk. It’s no surprise that several union members and activists had something to say about Cuomo’s take on those subjects.
Could this be the first step to eliminating “stop and frisk?”
Former New York City police sergeant Anthony Miranda has a simple piece of advice.
“Every time you see a police encounter, pull out your cell phone,” Miranda said during a panel discussion at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem on Monday. “Videotape it, whether you think it’s right or wrong, and upload it onto the Internet.”
According to the latest Quinnipiac University poll, the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) stop-and-frisk policy has become increasingly unpopular among New Yorkers.
It is a simple concept: We are all New Yorkers and, as such, we all deserve to be equally respected by authorities.
It is a simple concept, yet those who are supposed to “protect and serve” every city resident have had a very tough time grasping it.
The increasing number of New Yorkers who oppose stop-and-frisk — and its obstinate defense by Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly — is the most blatant example of this disconnect.
New York City Council member Deborah Rose adjourned a three-and-a-half-hour evening hearing on stop-and-frisk with a word of advice:
“Be safe traveling home,” she said. “Avoid the police.”
There seemed little else to say, now that Rose and the packed room of hearing attendees had heard nearly thirty testimonies of abuse and harassment at the hands of the New York City Police Department.
Crime rates are low enough that New York can lay claim to being America's safest big city. The police commissioner is so popular that some have urged him to run for mayor.
And yet city lawmakers are discussing proposals to rein in the New York Police Department, including the appointment of an independent inspector general to monitor it.
“My body, my life, as a young brown gay person is policed by the NYPD,” Mitchell Mora, 23, told hundreds of New Yorkers at the rally for Communities United for Police Reform, held in City Hall Park on Thursday, Sept. 27.
Fed up with what they believe are discriminatory practices by the NYPD, more than 800 New Yorkers rallied last Thursday at City Hall.
Among other things they called for is an end to stop-and-frisk, which overwhelmingly affects black and Latino youth and has become the most visible example of police discrimination and abuse of power.
“Stop-and-frisk makes youth of color feel like we are criminals and not welcome in our own city,” said Alfredo Carrasquillo of the Brooklyn-based VOCAL-NY, one of the groups that participated in the rally,