CRDC FORUM: STOP & FRISK
OR GLOCK & DON’T FLINCH

NYPD Tactics reveal deep bruises to the psyche of Chelsea minority youth and their parents.

At the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club’s January 19th general meeting, very concerned panelists questioned the lasting effects of the NYPD’s ‘stop and frisking’ tactics on our community youth and their parents. Panelists included Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer; Desiree Lassiter, an attorney with Bronx Defenders, a non-profit organization providing free legal representation to those charged with crimes, and Miguel Acevedo, President of both the Robert Fulton Tenants Association and the Fulton Youth of The Future. A walk-on panalist was Lobi RedHawk, of Gray Panthers.

The forum was moderated by CRDC president Steven Sykes-Mulligan and hosted by CRDC’ s Recording Secretary John R. Johnson, and William Newsome.

The ‘Stop and Frisk’ term refers to a law enforcement officer right to detain an individual with specific facts that a crime has or will be committed and, or, that officer has reasonable suspicion that the individual is in possession of a gun. The officer may conduct a pat down of the suspects clothes and may seize contraband discovered. In New York City, last year alone had 600,000 stops with 85% Black or Latino, that resulted with over 500,000 totally innocent (86%). According to the NY Civil Liberties Union, the practice is used at twice the rate of anywhere else, other than, in this writer’s opinion, third world dictatorships. The vast majority of those stopped are males of minority, in their teens or early twenties.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer opened the forum with a strong argument that the NYPD is using racial profiling in it’s efforts to fight crime in Chelsea: “Of the 2,760 stops in Chelsea, 80 percent were non-white. And during just one year, Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street had 148 stop and frisk confrontations of which 131 were non-white. There were only 6 arrests. You know the corner. You do the math!”

The NYPD, who were invited to the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club’s sponsored forum, but chose to not attend, are on the public record pointing out that escalated use of stop and frisk tactics has helped reduce the number of violent crimes in the city to historic lows as well as helping keeping guns off the streets. Statistics show that with every 500 stops, one gun is recovered.

Stringer, a possible mayoral candidate in 2013, counters that the stop and frisking program is creating community discord. “It has created a wall of distrust between people of color and the police that makes it harder, not easier to solve crimes. It also condemns too many of our young to minor records that become major problems when it comes to obtaining a job.”

Desiree Lassiter, an attorney with Bronx Defenders, gave a view from inside the court room. “Teens that are found to have contraband, often small amounts of marijuana, are given misdemeanor tickets which they often crumple up and toss, like one might do with a parking ticket. They’re too young to know that an unanswered summons becomes a much more serious charge later. To the teen it becomes a justice system that’s not always just.”

Lassiter also related a particular case of just how ugly a stop and frisk can turn. “I have one client, a short skinny fifteen year old that was stopped, thrown down to the ground and beaten from head to toe. No gun or knife was recovered, and yet the police claim he was a threat to them... a little fifteen year old.”

Lobi RedHawk, of Gray Panthers added “it is a system that is criminalizes our youth. It is a system that traumatizes our youth.”

For Miguel Acevedo, President of Chelsea’s Robert Fulton Tenants Association, the problem of stop and frisk is much closer to home. “Our kids that often hang at 17th Street and Ninth Avenue are stopped and frisked on almost a daily basis. With 85 percent of those in Fulton Housing living in poverty, the kids have no where else to be. There are no programs available to lift them off the streets. And with new million-dollar condos across the street, complaints to the police of noise and trouble are only getting more in number,” Acevedo continues, “It’s come to a mother to think twice about sending their kid to the store to get a quart of milk. The mother worries whether their son will be stopped by police and not come back home.”

Stringer sums it up. “There is no question that stop and frisk has succeeded in subjecting innocent New Yorkers to frequent and unnecessary harassment. If you are an 18 or 19 year old, black or Latino, the chances that you’ve been stopped by police are over 80 percent and probably not just once.

On an another invasive but positive note in removing the need of frisking, the NYPD recently revealed plans on scanning pedestrians using heat imagery in detecting concealed guns from as far as twenty feet. Commissioner Raymond Kelly wants to increase that distance to 75 feet.

—Donathan Salkaln