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Vol. 73/No. 43      November 9, 2009

 
N.Y. cops stop and frisk,
thousands end up on list
 
BY BEN JOYCE  
NEW YORK—Under its “stop-and-frisk” procedure the New York City Police Department (NYPD) searched more than half a million people on the streets in 2008. The vast majority of them were never charged with anything but were placed on a police database anyway. Several capitalist politicians who support the procedure have expressed concern about how far to go now in clamping down on workers’ rights.

“I support the ‘stop-and-frisk’ program,” said City Councilman Peter Vallone October 21, “but there doesn’t seem to be a reason to keep names and addresses of people stopped by police officers and let go.”

Cop harassment using this procedure has skyrocketed over recent years. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) the NYPD stopped 531,159 people in 2008, up from 97,296 in 2002. Of the more than half million stopped last year, 88 percent had committed no crime.

This trend exists nationally. In Philadelphia, such stops nearly doubled to more than 200,000 from 2007 to 2008. Stops in Los Angeles have doubled in the past six years to 244,038 in 2008. The figures in Chicago are still unknown because the police department there denied the Associated Press access to them.

The NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” procedure is also notoriously racist. Last year 51 percent of those stopped were Black, although African Americans make up only one quarter of the population. Thirty-two percent were Latino and 11 percent white.

The NYCLU filed a lawsuit in November 2007 demanding that the NYPD be ordered to make public the database of people who were stopped. In May 2008 a judge ordered the NYPD to turn over the database, but the cops have appealed the decision.

In response to criticisms against the “stop-and-frisk” procedure, the NYPD in April began giving pedestrians targeted by the program information cards that outline typical excuses cops use to stop people. The top of the card reads “Common Reasons Police Stop Individuals.” It lists reasons like “sights or sounds suggestive of criminal activity” and “report of suspicious or suspected criminal behavior.”

Both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his leading capitalist opponent in the mayoral race, Democrat William Thompson, support the “stop-and-frisk” procedure, though Thompson says it is “overused.” Bloomberg has called it “an effective tool” to reduce crime.”  
 
 
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