is the title of this lead editorial in today's New York Times. Perhaps some statistics are relevant:
according the the ACLU the number of stree stops have risen from about 97,000 in 2002, the year Mayor Bloomberg took office, to 685,724 in 2011, and with pace this year of even more.
We already know that there more stops made of black men than there are black men in the city.
The city has repeatedly argued that the program helps to keep guns off the street. But the N.Y.C.L.U.’s analysis found that the proportion of gun seizures to stops has fallen sharply — only 780 guns were confiscated last year, not much more than the 604 guns seized in 2003, when officers made 160,851 stops. Young black and Hispanic men continued to be stopped in disproportionate numbers. They are only 4.7 percent of the city’s population, yet these males, between the ages of 14 and 24, accounted for 41.6 percent of stops last year. More than half of all stops were conducted because the individual displayed “furtive movements” — which is so vague as to be meaningless.
IF you are Black or Hispanic, force is far more likely to be used, meaning you
are more likely to be slammed against walls or spread-eagled while officers go through their belongings. Even when victims are unhurt, they are likely to develop a deep and abiding distrust of law enforcement.
The editorial goes on how to describe what starts as a minor "quality of life" stop can become something far more major, especially for poor people who cannot afford the fines, when they become subject to bench warrants for failure to show up for hearings.
I think there are several issues that need to be addressed.
First, the proportion of stops made of minority youth are disproportionate to the percentage of crime committed by minority youth. That on its face is racial profiling. Of course, given the recent decision by the US Supreme Court on the ability of authorities to strip search those in custody, one wonders whether five justices could be found out of the current 9 to recognize that it is racial profiling, or even if they do, whether they would find that wrong.
Second, this should not be considered an issue just for minorities. Now they are the target. But as we already have seen, the NYPD is just as willing to go beyond what many of us would consider reasonable in their dealings with the likes of Occupy folks. We are allowing the development of a mindset that police on their own judgment can decide someone is a threat to public order or "quality of life" and therefore ignore the basic rights which should accrue to those targeted. Once that starts - as it already has - no one is safe from what should be seen as abuse of authority.
I am of an age when police forces still had Red Squads to go after 'subversives" - anyone who questioned the current order in any fashion. I remember COINTELPRO in the Nixon administration. More recently I remember the Bush administration tracking as possible terrorists my co-religionists - Quakers - because we were opposed to the war in Iraq.
What is interesting is that some in law enforcement are expressing concern. The penultimate paragraph of the editorial reads
Some former police officers, seeing this pattern, are increasingly vocal in their complaints about commanders forcing officers to make as many stops and to write as many summonses as possible. Some, like John Eterno, a retired police captain and chairman of the criminal justice department at Molloy College on Long Island, have talked openly about a “quota system” for stops, which department leaders deny.
One might also question whether the police resources being devoted to the Stop and Frisk program mean either that insufficient resources are being devoted to real crime issues, or if the Stop and Frisk program indicates that the city has too many police and is simply looking for a reason to justify their existence. Note that I said "might question" and am not making such an assertion at this time.
The Times calls on the Justice Department "its broad authority to investigate these practices" because "mounting evidence reveals a pattern of abusive policing" - except I would not hold my breath waiting for such an investigation. The evidence has been public for some time, complaints by the ACLU and others have been ongoing, this national administration is now in its fourth year. The Justice Department should have already embarked on such an investigation.
Yesterday Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been a big proponent of the policy of Stop and Frisk, gave a commencement speech at UNC Chapel Hill. He spoke out against the vote on Tuesday against marriage equality. Allow me to quote one paragraph of that speech:
But over time, we understood that freedoms that are not fully shared are not fully safe. If government can deny freedom to one, it can deny freedom to all. Exclusion and equality are mortal enemies – and in America, every time they have met in battle, equality has ultimately triumphed.
If the Mayor can, to his credit, see that in terms of the rights of same sex couple to marriage equality, why cannot he see that in terms of young Black and Hispanic men in terms of police authority? Does he not see that the freedom of the Fourth Amendment is not being fully shared by them?
Cannot Mayor Bloomberg apply these words - If government can deny freedom to one, it can deny freedom to all. to what his police are doing?
Democracy is sometimes a bit messy. If our insistence is upon order at all costs, we will become a police state and/or a military dictatorship.
If we allow the police to cause fear and mistrust to develop, then those who rightfully fear become even more likely to be accused of "furtive movements" and subject to ever more harsher methods.
My memory is that similar reasoning was used by authorities in the South against those in the Civil Rights Movement. We saw real police brutality, whether it was the fire hoses and dogs of Bull Connor in Birmingham or the men on horseback at the Edmund Pettis Bridge. Force was being used to preserve what segregationists considered their quality of life, or should we better say their position of privilege and their right to pick on those who dared to threaten it. Mayor Bloomberg is of an age where surely he should remember that.
Go back to the statistics - 685,724 stops in 2011 resulted in the seizure of only 780 guns, a ratio of one gun seize for every 879.333 stops. Or to put it another way, .00114 - less than 12/100ths of a percent of the time a gun is actually found. To achieve this rights are violated, people are targeted.
The figures for 2003 of 604 guns found in 160,851 stops was already an abysmally low 38/100ths of a percent of stops finding a gun, or a gun found once every 266 stops.
Or perhaps we can look at the change. By making an addition 524,873 stops last year, the police collected 176 additional guns - an additional gun less than once out of each additional 2,982 stops, a rate of less than 34/1000 of a percent of stops resulting in a gun being found.
Somehow I fail to see how any of this can meet the standard of reasonable search and seizure. To attempt to justify it is to pervert the meaning of the Bill of Rights.
I can admire Mayor Bloomberg for his speech yesterday.
I must condemn his administration for this policy.
Remember, allowing the rights of "others" to be violated in the long term means that we are all less safe in our own rights.