Drop the Appeal, End Stop and Frisk Now!

Metro reports that:

Energized by the landslide victory of their mayoral candidate in yesterday’s election, stop-and-frisk opponents crowded onto the steps of City Hall to call on the out-going mayor to drop his appeal.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s law department is appealing federal Judge Shira Scheindlin’s ruling in Floyd v. City of New York. Scheindlin said the way the NYPD practices stop, question and frisk is unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Last week, three Court of Appeals judges granted city lawyers their motion to stay Scheindlin’s ordered remedies while they appeal her ruling.

In an extremely unusual move, the judges also removed Scheindlin from the cases, seizing on allegations that she improperly coached attorneys to make sure the cases were brought to her.

But the timeline outlined in the Court of Appeals’ judges order extends well into 2014, when Mayor Elect Bill de Blasio will have taken over. De Blasio has vowed to drop the appeal.

Stop-and-frisk opponents today insisted Bloomberg should just drop the appeal himself.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler called pursuing the appeal a “total” waste of taxpayer money.

“The appeal… is going to be dropped in January,” Nadler said. “So why waste everybody’s time and money and energy in November and December?”

Sadly, some misguided and uninformed people actually support New York City's ineffective and wasteful stop and frisk policy.  The Huffington Post reports that:

CNN host Don Lemon got a big chunk of Twitter very mad at him on Tuesday after he endorsed New York's reviled stop and frisk policies.

Speaking during his regular slot on the Tom Joyner show, Lemon said that police were not always very respectful of the people they stopped, but that tampering with the "formula that has reduced crime in New York City" could be very dangerous.

"The question is, would you rather be politically correct or safe and alive?" he concluded.

Here are a few reasons why Uncle Don is wrong. As reported in The Huffington Post article entitled NYPD Stop And Frisks: 15 Shocking Facts About A Controversial Program,

The NYPD argues this shows the effectiveness of stop and frisk, saying the practice has prevented people from carrying guns on the street. While stops have increased by 524,873 since 2003, officers have found only 176 additional guns...

The NYPD and local politicians have repeatedly defended the racial disparity in stops by saying minorities are disproportionately involved in violent crime. In 2011, however, in only 10.5 percent of stops did cops record "violent criminal activity" as justification for the stop.

Nine out of 10 of those stopped in 2011 were neither arrested nor given summonses.

The NYPD and politicians have repeatedly justified the racial disparity in stop and frisks saying that they cops essentially go where the guns are, i.e. minority neighborhoods. Yet, only 1.9 percent of frisks in 2011 turned up weapons and interestingly, according to the NYCLU, "a weapon was found in only 1.8 percent of blacks and Latinos frisked, as compared to a weapon being found in 3.8 percent of whites frisked."

...In 2002, when Mr. Kelly last took office, officers stopped 97,296 New Yorkers and the city reported 587 homicides. Last year, those numbers were 685,724 and 532...

Last week, the NYPD said stop-and-frisk was used more than 200,000 times in the first quarter of this year – a 10 percent jump from the same period last year. The data covers the period from January to March. So far this year homicides are down by 19 percent over last year.

But of the 13 precincts where homicides were up, stop and frisks increased in six over the same reporting period last year. And in the remaining seven, stop and frisks were down.

“There is no evidence that stop and frisk is lowering or suppressing the murder rate in New York City,” said Chris Dunn, spokesman for the NYCLU, in a statement. “Murders have dropped steadily since 1990.”

Clearly, stop and frisk is not making New Yorkers safe and secure. Stop and frisk is only further eroding public confidence and trust in the NYPD. The NYPD's stop and frisk policy is degrading, humiliating, oppressive and repressive.  New York City police are criminalizing blackness and collectively punishing the entire black community. Police officers should protect and serve the community, not harass and terrorize the community. It is time to drop the appeal and end stop and frisk now.

#MOW50: We Still Have A Long Way to Go

As pointed out in a recent Washington Post article, there has been significant progress 50 years after the March on Washington. In her article, Juliet Eilperin notes that:

In 1964 the portion of all Americans 18 or older who voted was 69.3 percent; this has dropped to 56.5 percent last year. By contrast, the rate of African Americans voting in presidential elections has risen from 58.5 percent to 62 percent during that same period. The 2012 election marked the first time African Americans voted at a higher rate than whites, according to Census data.

The number of African-American elected officials has also risen dramatically since researchers started tracking it in 1970. Forty-three years ago there were 1,469 black elected officials nationwide, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies; in 2011 there were roughly 10,500 such officials.

In education, blacks have also made tremendous strides. In 1964, 25.7 percent of blacks age 25 and over had completed at least four years of high school; that percentage stood at 85 percent last year. During that same period the number of blacks with a high school diploma rose from 2.4 million to 20.3 million. Between 1964 and 2012 the percentage of blacks age 25 and over who completed at least four years of college increased from 3.9 percent to 21.2 percent, with the number of blacks boasting at least a bachelor’s degree rising from 365,000 to 5.1 million.

And the poverty rate among African Americans has also dropped dramatically over the past five decades. Back in 1966 the poverty rate for all races in the United States was 14.7 percent, but it was 41.8 percent for African Americans. Two years ago the poverty rate for African Americans was 27.6 percent, according to the Census, but that was still nearly double the national poverty rate of 15 percent.

That last statistic is a reminder that this country still has a long way to go in order to realize King's dream. The following statistics illustrate the continuing problems that African Americans face. Although the stats focus on Chicago, other black urban communities have similar problems. As noted in the Chicago Reader, here are the numbers:

The unemployment rate in Chicago was 7.6 percent for blacks and 2.3 percent for whites in 1968 (the first year for which I could find unemployment data here by race). The black-white employment gap is nothing new, and it's not just a Chicago problem: nationally, the black rate has been nearly double and occasionally two and a half times the white rate since the 1960s. In 1963, the black unemployment rate was 10.8 percent, the white rate 5 percent; and most recently, in July, the national rates were 12.6 percent for blacks and 6.6 percent for whites.

Unemployment today is especially high for blacks in big cities, and that's certainly true in Chicago. Last year, the rate for blacks here was 19.5 percent, the rate for whites 8.1 percent.

As bad as that current 19.5 percent unemployment rate is for Chicago blacks, it understates their plight. It counts only those in the labor force, excluding the imprisoned. It also excludes "discouraged" workers—those who've given up looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.

And today in Chicago, 30 years after the Urban League exhorted the city to reduce the socioeconomic disparities between black and white residents, 34.1 percent of black Chicagoans are living in poverty, and 10.9 percent of whites. In 2010, median income of white households was twice that of black households ($58,752 versus $29,371). The seven poorest community areas today are all overwhelmingly African-American. Twenty percent of their residents are living in extreme poverty—their incomes are less than half of the poverty line.

And African-Americans in Chicago haven’t been gaining ground economically of late. Their poverty rate climbed from 29.4 percent in 2000, to 31.5 percent in 2007, to the current 34.1 percent.

In the mid-1960s, Chicago's public school enrollment was nearly half white and half black—but the white students went to schools that were nearly all white, and the black students went to schools that were nearly all black.

With that composition, it's not surprising that the vast majority of African-American children in Chicago's public schools are still hypersegregated. In 2013, 86 percent of African-American students attended schools that were at least 90 percent black and Hispanic. More than two-thirds of African-American students—68 percent—were in schools that were at least 90 percent African-American.

Reading scores in the black schools of the 1960s were far below scores in the white schools—and African-American students are still way behind. The Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago reported in 2011 that graduation rates for CPS students rose from 48 percent in 1997 to 66 percent in 2010. But they were the lowest and grew the least for African-Americans. The Consortium also found that between 1990 and 2009, racial gaps in achievement grew, with white, Asian, and Hispanic students making modest gains in reading while black students showed "virtually no improvements."

Those statistics do not include other problems plaguing our communities such as mass incarceration, inner city violence, racial profiling and police brutality. In addition, the Trayvon Martin case is another reminder that black life still has no value in America. He is our generation's Emmett Till. We still have a long way to go to reach the Promised Land that King preached about.

NYC Trampled on Black People's Constitutional Rights

As reported in the New York Times,

A federal judge ruled on Monday that the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of minorities in the city, repudiating a major element in the Bloomberg administration’s crime-fighting legacy.

The use of police stops has been widely cited by city officials as a linchpin of New York’s success story in seeing murders and major crimes fall to historic lows. The police say the practice has saved the lives of thousands of young black and Hispanic men by removing thousands of guns from the streets.

But the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, found that the Police Department resorted to a “policy of indirect racial profiling” as it increased the number of stops in minority communities. That has led to officers’ routinely stopping “blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white.”

The judge called for a federal monitor to oversee broad reforms, including the use of body-worn cameras for some patrol officers, though she was “not ordering an end to the practice of stop-and-frisk.”

In her decision, the judge cited some compelling statistics:

Between January 2004 and June 2012, the NYPD conducted over 4.4 million
Terry stops.

• The number of stops per year rose sharply from 314,000 in 2004 to a high of
686,000 in 2011.

• 52% of all stops were followed by a protective frisk for weapons. A weapon was found after 1.5% of these frisks. In other words, in 98.5% of the 2.3 million frisks, no weapon was found.

• 8% of all stops led to a search into the stopped person’s clothing, ostensibly based on the officer feeling an object during the frisk that he suspected to be a weapon, or immediately perceived to be contraband other than a weapon. In 9% of these searches, the felt object was in fact a weapon. 91% of the time, it was not. In 14% of these searches, the felt object was in fact contraband. 86% of the time it was not.

• 6% of all stops resulted in an arrest, and 6% resulted in a summons. The remaining 88% of the 4.4 million stops resulted in no further law enforcement action.

• In 52% of the 4.4 million stops, the person stopped was black, in 31% the person was Hispanic, and in 10% the person was white.

• In 2010, New York City’s resident population was roughly 23% black, 29% Hispanic, and 33% white.

• In 23% of the stops of blacks, and 24% of the stops of Hispanics, the officer recorded using force. The number for whites was 17%.

• Weapons were seized in 1.0% of the stops of blacks, 1.1% of the stops of Hispanics, and 1.4% of the stops of whites.

• Contraband other than weapons was seized in 1.8% of the stops of blacks, 1.7% of the stops of Hispanics, and 2.3% of the stops of whites.

• Between 2004 and 2009, the percentage of stops where the officer failed to state a specific suspected crime rose from 1% to 36%.

The court found that:

Based on the expert testimony I find the following: (1) The NYPD carries out more stops where there are more black and Hispanic residents, even when other relevant variables are held constant. The racial composition of a precinct or census tract predicts the stop rate above and beyond the crime rate. (2) Blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be stopped within precincts and census tracts, even after controlling for other relevant variables. This is so even in areas with low crime rates, racially heterogenous populations, or predominately white populations. (3) For the period 2004 through 2009, when any law enforcement action was taken following a stop, blacks were 30% more likely to be arrested (as opposed to receiving a summons) than whites, for the same suspected crime. (4) For the period 2004 through 2009, after controlling for suspected crime and precinct characteristics, blacks who were stopped were about 14% more likely — and Hispanics 9% more likely — than whites to be subjected to the use of force. (5) For the period 2004 through 2009, all else being equal, the odds of a stop resulting in any further enforcement action were 8% lower if the person stopped was black than if the person stopped was white. In addition, the greater the black population in a precinct, the less likely that a stop would result in a sanction. Together, these results show that blacks are likely targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of objectively founded suspicion than whites.

Let me break this down. The New York City Police Department targeted, harassed and humiliated thousands of innocent black people solely based on the color of their skin. NYC police trampled on black people's Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Many police officers are just like George Zimmerman. They view all young black people as criminals. We must stand up and fight racial profiling wherever it rears its ugly head.