Chimurenga.
26th July 2010, 09:15
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=14272&news_iv_ctrl=1261
Over 580,000 people detained and searched in 2009
Young and Black and Latino people are being systematically targeted by the New York Police Department. Basic constitutional rights that guarantee for every individual freedom from search, seizure and detention without an established probable cause of criminal misconduct have been shredded in New York City.
In 2009, the NYPD carried out 581,000 so-called Stop and Frisk detentions. It is a policy targeting Black and Latino people. No probable cause is necessary. The police say that it is intended to keep illegal guns off the street. But only 1.3 percent of those who were detained and searched in 2009 were even allegedly caught with weapons.
Guess what happens to the information that the police collected on those nearly 600,000 people who were illegally seized, searched and detained even though they were not arrested or charged with any criminal offense?
If you guessed that the New York City police kept the information as part of a huge and growing surveillance database, you would be right.
The NYPD says that they never use the database information against innocent people but they need to maintain this illegally collected information for investigative purposes.
On July 16, Gov. David Patterson, after wobbling for weeks under the pressure from the cops and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, signed into law a measure that prevents the police from maintaining the database for people who were detained by Stop and Frisk but never charged with a crime.
Patterson was also feeling heat from the Black and Latino communities that are sick and tired of the criminalization of young people.
Patterson said, There is a principlewhich is compatible with the presumption of innocence, and is deeply ingrained in our sense of justicethat individuals wrongly accused of a crime should suffer neither stigma nor adverse consequences by virtue of an arrest or criminal accusation not resulting in conviction.
Patterson and the other politicians, however, refuse to end the Stop and Frisk program.
The Stop and Frisk program is proof positive that the current policing practice is based on the maintenance of an apartheid, Jim Crow-style criminal justice system.
A recent New York Times editorial cites some of the evidence and analysis developed by its reporters that make it clear the NYPD is nothing other than a holdover of the racist police state that became the symbol of the segregated South.
The Times editorial states that its reporters determined that the heavily minority neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn, reported that police officers logged nearly 52,000 stops within eight odd blocks over the last four years. The editorial continues:
A 26-year-old legal assistant with no criminal record who grew up in the area said that he had been stopped 30 or 40 times.
According to a Times analysis of reports filed by officers, less than 9 percent of the stops in the neighborhood were made because the person fit the description of a suspect. In about half the stops, the officers listed other or cited furtive movement, a catch-all category that can be used to mask harassment. (New York Times, July 13)
Malcolm X stated, You cant have capitalism without racism. The police are the armed guardians of the social and economic order in which a handful of capitalist bankers wield decisive economic power. The police exemplify the worst features of the racism that is built into capitalism.
The entire multinational working class needs to unite in defense of Black and Latino youth.
Hopefully brothers and sisters in New York City are fighting back and fighting this blatant racism.
Over 580,000 people detained and searched in 2009
Young and Black and Latino people are being systematically targeted by the New York Police Department. Basic constitutional rights that guarantee for every individual freedom from search, seizure and detention without an established probable cause of criminal misconduct have been shredded in New York City.
In 2009, the NYPD carried out 581,000 so-called Stop and Frisk detentions. It is a policy targeting Black and Latino people. No probable cause is necessary. The police say that it is intended to keep illegal guns off the street. But only 1.3 percent of those who were detained and searched in 2009 were even allegedly caught with weapons.
Guess what happens to the information that the police collected on those nearly 600,000 people who were illegally seized, searched and detained even though they were not arrested or charged with any criminal offense?
If you guessed that the New York City police kept the information as part of a huge and growing surveillance database, you would be right.
The NYPD says that they never use the database information against innocent people but they need to maintain this illegally collected information for investigative purposes.
On July 16, Gov. David Patterson, after wobbling for weeks under the pressure from the cops and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, signed into law a measure that prevents the police from maintaining the database for people who were detained by Stop and Frisk but never charged with a crime.
Patterson was also feeling heat from the Black and Latino communities that are sick and tired of the criminalization of young people.
Patterson said, There is a principlewhich is compatible with the presumption of innocence, and is deeply ingrained in our sense of justicethat individuals wrongly accused of a crime should suffer neither stigma nor adverse consequences by virtue of an arrest or criminal accusation not resulting in conviction.
Patterson and the other politicians, however, refuse to end the Stop and Frisk program.
The Stop and Frisk program is proof positive that the current policing practice is based on the maintenance of an apartheid, Jim Crow-style criminal justice system.
A recent New York Times editorial cites some of the evidence and analysis developed by its reporters that make it clear the NYPD is nothing other than a holdover of the racist police state that became the symbol of the segregated South.
The Times editorial states that its reporters determined that the heavily minority neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn, reported that police officers logged nearly 52,000 stops within eight odd blocks over the last four years. The editorial continues:
A 26-year-old legal assistant with no criminal record who grew up in the area said that he had been stopped 30 or 40 times.
According to a Times analysis of reports filed by officers, less than 9 percent of the stops in the neighborhood were made because the person fit the description of a suspect. In about half the stops, the officers listed other or cited furtive movement, a catch-all category that can be used to mask harassment. (New York Times, July 13)
Malcolm X stated, You cant have capitalism without racism. The police are the armed guardians of the social and economic order in which a handful of capitalist bankers wield decisive economic power. The police exemplify the worst features of the racism that is built into capitalism.
The entire multinational working class needs to unite in defense of Black and Latino youth.
Hopefully brothers and sisters in New York City are fighting back and fighting this blatant racism.