The New York Daily News today is reporting on something which will probably not come as much of a surprise, given the insideous nature of institutionalized racism. The practice of randomly searching passengers' bags as they approach subway turnstiles turns out to be done, by the NYPD, with a significant racial bias.
"...our very real concerns about terrorism do not justify the NYPD subjecting millions of innocent people to suspicionless searches in a way that does not identify any person seeking to engage in terrorist activity and is unlikely to have any meaningful deterrent effect on terrorist activity."
-Donna Lieberman, Executive Director of the NYCLU
The Daily News reports
Blacks and Hispanics make up 49% of subway riders, yet account for nearly 90% of the citizens stopped and questioned in the subways in the last two years.
Whites make up 35.5% of subway ridership, yet they account for a mere 7.9% of the subway riders stopped in the last two years, records show.
The News article provides a number of points of contrast between the official line of the NYPD officials and what might actually be the case. It quotes from an interview with Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, an ACLU affiliate organization.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said, "Subway crime is down, in part, because of stops. Officers make stops based on reasonable suspicion, and the numbers reflect the times, places and circumstances where those observations take place."
Browne said the stops increased after the NYPD began enforcing new MTA regulations such as moving from car to car. Stops have resulted in the arrest of felons wanted for more serious crimes, including a paroled killer who fired on police.
Dunn said The News' findings on subway stops contradict the department's usual explanation for why a disproportionate number of black and Hispanics are stopped by police in the precincts.
The department says more blacks and Latinos are stopped because 93% of violent crime suspects in the city were described by witnesses as black or Hispanic. The explanation is not reflected in the subway data.
Police must check off what amounts to a justification for stops on documents called Form 250s. One category states that the person stopped "fits the description" of a suspect.
Last year, cops claimed only 16.4% of the 27,077 citizens they stopped in the subways "fit the description." In 2006 it was only slightly more - 19.7%.
And also
The department also says blacks and Hispanics are often stopped and questioned because the NYPD targets high-crime areas - areas that tend to be minority neighborhoods.
This argument does not hold up in the subways, where blacks, Hispanics, whites and Asians regularly mix.
The paper adds to its investigation with some individual stories, such as that of
Victor Streety, 42, a single father and African American man who was roughed up by the cops in the subway while implimenting this policy. It is pretty disturbing but eye opening, all at once. It also discusses the case of another young Black male with a similar story who proclaims "I feel kind of betrayed, you know? Because it was by my own race. I don't look like a terrorist."
Going back a few years, in 1995, when the NYPD began, following the Madrid subway bombings, to randomly search passengers' bags it denied the possibility of racial profiling. It should also be noted that such efforts at the local level in places like NYC were coordinated with similar efforts at the federal level, such as at the nation's airports. We've seen there, in the deep and multiple flaws of the "do not fly" lists, how well this has worked out.