From reading New York dailies these past few weeks, one can only surmise that Commissioner Ray Kelly, his liberal columnist friend Mike Lupica, the Daily News editorial board and a usual suspect, the New York Post, have begun a counterattack against those of us who have dared to criticize the stop-and-frisk policies of the New York City Police Department.
Every shooting, knifing and other violent crime is now being blamed on the critics of stop-and-frisk. How dare these 50,000 marchers who silently protested against abuse of stop-and-frisk believe they know more than a decorated and much-lauded police commissioner? How dare civil libertarians, community groups, political groups such as the Freedom Party, unions and churches accuse the NYPD of racial stereotyping?
The numbers speak for themselves, or as we say in law, res ipsa loquitor. The Police Department stopped 700,000 individuals last year, 87 percent of whom were Black and Latino. It took 1,500 stops for the police to find one gun. Six percent of the people stopped were arrested.
Our lives are being saved, says sports writer Lupica, as of late a defender of Kelly in various columns. I wonder how he would enjoy having his son stopped, forced to spread eagle against a car, then searched. Would he be as understanding? What if 700,000 white youths were stopped? The statistics show that they would have more guns.
Are we just confirming the racial stereotypes plaguing the mentality of the NYPD? Yes, there is violence in our communities, but the answer is not to violate the rights of the majority of citizens and young people who are not involved in crime based on patently racist theories.
We all condemn the violence in our communities, but we also understand the need to protect our basic civil liberties.
Kelly’s accusation that we care more about stop-and-frisk than violence in our community ignores the dozens of marches and demonstrations protesting violence this past year. I myself have marched at least six times in my community in the South Bronx within the past eight months. Where is the Daily News front page photo of those marches? Why aren’t they getting wall-to-wall media coverage?
Everything out of Kelly’s mouth is distortions and allegations that have been emphatically disproven by national studies, readily available statistics and expert testimony. Don’t they know how to Google or what a modem is? Stop-and-frisk is the subject of dozens and dozens of statewide and federal lawsuits that will end up costing the city millions and millions of dollars. It has been blasted by federal judges. Kelly’s response is to dupe blind sycophants to parrot without objection the NYPD position in the media. I’m sure Lupica knows how to use Google.
Prior to important Supreme Court decisions in the ’60s and ’70s, Blacks and Latinos were often subject to arbitrary, baseless stops and frisking. Are we to return to that time?
Stopping and frisking people based on racial stereotypes is not the answer. Other jurisdictions have reduced crime without misusing these tactics. Why don’t we learn from those jurisdictions? During David Dinkins’ administration, Kelly himself used the strategy of community policing. It was this policy that began the reduction in the crime rate in New York.
While Bloomberg justifies the use of stop-and-frisk, he has on numerous occasions reduced summer jobs for youth, cut after-school programs and eliminated money for community and youth programs. Many of us clearly understand that youth living in poverty without jobs, programs and recreation will do anything to survive. Violence is inevitable under these conditions.
Instead of addressing these realities, we who live in poor communities who are not involved in crime must allow our privacy rights to be violated while simultaneously being grateful for the actions of the violators: the NYPD.
We need a Marshall Plan for our youth that involves a serious investment of time and money. How can we have money for three new stadiums while investing nothing in our youth? Some of this violence will continue–with or without stop-and-frisk–unless the city begins a real, meaningful social policy for our youths, which the mayor repeatedly ignores. Indeed, we need a police commissioner who will stop treating our neighborhoods like occupied territories.
Don’t be fooled by Kelly, the Daily News and the New York Post. They are part of the problem and offer us no real solution.
