Citing Discrimination in Stop-and-Frisk Practice, Coalition Calls for Reforms

June 27, 2012
Kate Taylor
The New York Times City Room Blog

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has recently adopted a somewhat conciliatory tone with critics of the police department’s stop-and-frisk practice, pledging that police officers will be trained to behave more courteously and promising that the number of stops will decline.

But those changes do not go far enough, a coalition of labor unions and other groups critical of the practice said on Wednesday, as they called on the mayor and the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, to support legislation pending before the City Council that would, among other things, explicitly ban racial profiling and establish an inspector general in the Police Department.

Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Kelly “continue to fail to address the central fact that each year hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers are illegally and unjustly stopped-and-frisked simply because they are people of color,” the groups said in a statement. “We need a major overhaul of the out-of-control, unlawful and discriminatory practices of the N.Y.P.D.”

“If the Mayor and the Police Commissioner are serious about reform,” the statement continued, “they must support the Community Safety Act bills that are pending in the City Council, which are an essential first step towards ending discriminatory policing and improving police accountability in New York City.”

The statement was issued by Communities United for Police Reform, an umbrella group of organizations opposed to stop-and-frisk; 1199 S.E.I.U., the health care workers union; Local 32BJ, a building workers union; the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union; LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a Latino advocacy organization, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

The police carried out 684,330 stops last year. Although Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Kelly vociferously deny that police officers engage in racial profiling — claiming that they stop people who look like suspects, or who look like they might be about to commit a crime — 87 percent of those stopped in 2011 were black or Latino. And some who have been stopped describe the police officers as having used racial slurs.

Mr. Bloomberg has made it clear that he opposes the proposal to create an inspector general for the police department, saying that it is unnecessary, and questioning whether the City Council even has the legal authority to create such a position. The city council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, has not taken a position on the measure.