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Stop Stop-and-Frisk
An explosive new profanity-laced audio recording obtained by The Nation showing the NYPD performing a particularly aggressive and racially charged stop-and-frisk of a 16-year-old Harlem student is generating an uproar and fueling renewed efforts to end the controversial practice.Today, in New York’s City Council, members are debating proposals aimed at halting the NYPD’s hundreds of thousands of “stop-and-frisk” stops each year. After years of complaints that the stops are racially discriminatory, the hearings signal that the public debate has gotten loud enough that lawmakers feel they have to be a part of it, whether they want to join the chorus of critics or defend the program.
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October 8, 2012
Exclusive audio obtained by The Nation of a stop-and-frisk carried out by the New York Police Department freshly reveals the discriminatory and unprofessional way in which this controversial policy is being implemented on the city’s streets.
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In the course of the two-minute recording, the officers give no legally valid reason for the stop, use racially charged language and threaten Alvin with violence. Early in the stop, one of the officers asks, “You want me to smack you?” When Alvin asks why he is being threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, “For being a fucking mutt.” Later in the stop, while holding Alvin’s arm behind his back, the first officer says, “Dude, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ arm, then I’m gonna punch you in the fuckin’ face.”
Listen to the full audio of the stop:
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“He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down. So I’m going backwards like down the hill and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, it looked like he we was going to hit me,” Alvin recounts. “I felt like they was trying to make me resist or fight back.”
Alvin’s treatment at the hands of the officers may be disturbing but it is not uncommon. According to their own stop-and-frisk data, the NYPD stops more than 1,800 New Yorkers a day. A New York Times analysis recently determined that more than 20 percent of those stops involve the use of force. And these are only the numbers that the Department records. Anecdotal evidence suggests both figures are much higher.
In this video, exclusive to TheNation.com, Alvin describes his experience of the stop, and working NYPD officers come forward to explain the damage stop-and-frisk has done to their profession and their relationship to the communities they serve. The emphasis on racking up stops has also hindered what many officers consider to be the real work they should be doing on the streets. The video sheds unprecedented light on a practice, cheered on by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, that has put the city’s young people of color in the department’s crosshairs.
Those who haven’t experienced the policy first-hand “have likened Stops to being stuck in an elevator, or in traffic,” says Darius Charney, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “This is not merely an inconvenience, as the Department likes to describe it. This is men with guns surrounding you in the street late at night when you’re by yourself. You ask why and they curse you out and rough you up.”
“The tape brings to light what so many New Yorkers have experienced in the shadows at the hands of the NYPD,” says Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP. “It is time for Mayor Bloomberg to come to grips with the scale of the damage his policies have inflicted on our children and their families. No child should have to grow up fearing both the cops and the robbers.”
“This audio confirms what we’ve been hearing from communities of color, again and again,” says Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. “They are repeatedly subjected to abusive and disrespectful treatment at the hands of the NYPD. This explains why so many young people don’t trust the police and won’t help the police,” she adds. “It’s not good for law enforcement and not good for the individuals who face this harassment.”
The audio also betrays the seeming arbitrariness of stops and the failure of some police officers to fully comprehend or be able to articulate a clear motivation for carrying out a practice they’re asked to repeat on a regular basis.
And, according to Charney, the only thing the police officers do with clarity during this stop is announce its unconstitutionality.
“We’ve long been claiming that, under this department’s administration, if you’re a young black or Latino kid, walking the street at night you’re automatically a suspicious person,” says Charney, who is leading a class-action lawsuit challenging the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices. “The police deny those claims, when asked. ‘No, that’s not the reason we’re stopping them.’ But they’re actually admitting it here [on the audio recording]. The only reason they give is: ‘You were looking back at us…’ That does not rise to the level of reasonable suspicion, and there’s a clear racial animus when they call him a ‘mutt.’”
The audio was recently played at a meeting of The Morris Justice Project, a group of Bronx residents who have organized around the issue of stop-and-frisk and have been compiling data on people’s interactions with police. Jackie Robinson, mother of two boys, expected not to be surprised when told about the contents of the recording. “It’s stuff we’ve all heard before,” she said at the gathering. Yet Robinson visibly shuddered at one of the audio’s most violent passages. She had heard plenty about these encounters, but had never actually listened to one in action.
“As a mother, it bothers you,” says Robinson. “The police are the ones we’re supposed to turn to when something bad happens. Of all the things I have to worry about when my kids walk out the door, I don’t want to have to worry about them being harmed by the police. It makes you feel like you can’t protect your children. Something has to be done.”
Officers who carry out such belligerent stops face little accountability under the NYPD’s current structure. The department is one of New York City’s last agencies to operate without independent oversight, leaving officers with no safe place to file complaints about police practice and systemic problems.
“An independent inspector general would be in a position to review NYPD policies and practices—like the recorded stop-and-frisk shown here—to see whether the police are violating New Yorkers’ rights and whether the program is in fact yielding benefits,” says the Brennan Center’s Faiza Patel. “An inspector general would not hinder the NYPD’s ability to fight crime, but would help build a stronger, more effective force.”
NYPD spokespeople have said that stop-and-frisk is necessary to keep crime down and guns off the street. But those assertions are increasingly being contradicted by the department’s own officers, who are beginning to speak out about a pervasive culture of number-chasing.
Two officers from two different precincts in two separate boroughs spoke to The Nation about the same types of pressures put on officers to meet numerical goals or face disciplinary action and retaliation. Most chillingly, both officers use the word “hunt” when describing the relentless quest for summonses, stops and arrests.
“The civilian population, they’re being hunted by us,” says an officer with more than ten years on the job. “Instead of being protected by us, they’re being hunted and we’re being hated.”
The focus on numbers, and the rewards for those who meet quotas has created an atmosphere, another veteran officer says, in which cops compete to see who can get the highest numbers, and it can lead to the kind of arbitrary stop that quickly became violent in this recording.
“It’s really bad,” says the officer after listening to the audio recording. “It’s not a good thing at all. But it’s really common, I’m sorry to say. It doesn’t have to be like that.”
Lieberman from the NYCLU agrees: “It’s time for the Mayor and the Police Commissioner to stop trying to scare New Yorkers into accepting this kind of abuse, and to recognize that there is a problem.”
Additional reporting by Erin Schneider. To see this and other related media, go to: facebook.com/stopandfriskmedia or e-mail stopandfriskmedia at gmail dot com
Ross Tuttle and Erin Schneider
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Sharp Words at Hearing Over Tactics of the Police
By WENDY RUDERMAN
A City Council hearing discussing bills aimed at police reform featured
arguments among council members and Michael Best, a counselor to Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg.
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Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr. testifies during hearings on the NYPD's
controversial stop and frisk tactics at City Council Chambers at City
Hall on October 10th, 2012.
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City Council hearing on NYPD's controversial stop and frisk policy devolves into racially charged argument
Councilwoman Helen Foster tells Councilman Peter Vallone that she's not one of his 'boys'
Comments (89)By Joe Kemp / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 1:10 PM
Updated: Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 6:24 PM
Craig Warga/New York Daily News
Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr. testifies during hearings on the NYPD's
controversial stop and frisk tactics at City Council Chambers at City
Hall on October 10th, 2012.
A City Council hearing Wednesday on the NYPD’s controversial
stop-and-frisk policy degenerated into a racially charged shouting match
with a black councilmember telling her white colleague, “I’m not one of
your boys.”
The tempers flared after City Councilman Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) argued that the policy of stopping hundreds of thousands of mostly black residents is a form of profiling.
Jackson specifically cited an audiotape, recently posted on the website of The Nation magazine, that captured cops calling a stopped Harlem teen, “a f---king mutt.”
Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens), who is chairman of the Public Safety Committee that was holding the packed hearing, interrupted Jackson to tell him to stop making speeches.
That’s when Councilwoman Helen Foster (D-Bronx) jumped in, accusing Vallone, a frequent defender of the NYPD, of not following that very rule.
Vallone tried to respond, but Foster cut him off.
“I don’t work for you. I am not one of your boys,” she said. “You will not talk to me like that.”
Council Speaker Christine Quinn helped Vallone quiet the crowd, which
burst into a mixture of laughter and applause. Foster then suggested
that Vallone may understand how emotional the debate was for some
council members if he were black.
“If his father were an 88-year-old man who’s being pulled over and being called a ‘boy’ and fitting a description, then it would be different,” Foster said.
Before the fireworks, the committee was mulling four bills that would reform stop-and-frisk policies. One would require cops to actively inform people of a widely unknown right not to consent to a search when stopped.
Another would create an Inspector General for the NYPD.
Mayor Bloomberg’s counsel Michael Best accused the council of trying to supercede state law.
“These issues are governed entirely by state law — specifically the criminal procedure law, which sets forth the powers of police officers in these areas,” Best testified.
Best also warned that one bill, which allows payment of attorneys’ fees and expert fees to victims of any law enforcement activity, could bring enormous costs to taxpayers if passed.
Vallone agreed.
“It will blow a massive hole in the city budget and end NYPD policing as we know it by taking control of the NYPD from Ray Kelly and give it to judges,” he said.
NYPD brass declined to testify.
The tempers flared after City Councilman Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) argued that the policy of stopping hundreds of thousands of mostly black residents is a form of profiling.
Jackson specifically cited an audiotape, recently posted on the website of The Nation magazine, that captured cops calling a stopped Harlem teen, “a f---king mutt.”
Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens), who is chairman of the Public Safety Committee that was holding the packed hearing, interrupted Jackson to tell him to stop making speeches.
That’s when Councilwoman Helen Foster (D-Bronx) jumped in, accusing Vallone, a frequent defender of the NYPD, of not following that very rule.
Vallone tried to respond, but Foster cut him off.
“I don’t work for you. I am not one of your boys,” she said. “You will not talk to me like that.”
Craig Warga/New York Daily News
Councilman Jumaane Williams questions Bloomberg administration attorney Michael Best during stop and frisk hearings on Wednesday.
“If his father were an 88-year-old man who’s being pulled over and being called a ‘boy’ and fitting a description, then it would be different,” Foster said.
Before the fireworks, the committee was mulling four bills that would reform stop-and-frisk policies. One would require cops to actively inform people of a widely unknown right not to consent to a search when stopped.
Another would create an Inspector General for the NYPD.
Mayor Bloomberg’s counsel Michael Best accused the council of trying to supercede state law.
“These issues are governed entirely by state law — specifically the criminal procedure law, which sets forth the powers of police officers in these areas,” Best testified.
Best also warned that one bill, which allows payment of attorneys’ fees and expert fees to victims of any law enforcement activity, could bring enormous costs to taxpayers if passed.
Vallone agreed.
“It will blow a massive hole in the city budget and end NYPD policing as we know it by taking control of the NYPD from Ray Kelly and give it to judges,” he said.
NYPD brass declined to testify.
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