Personal Impact Of The NYPD’s Stop-And-Frisk Policy
Comments (0) It’s pretty hard to counter the conclusion that the New York City Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk policy is biased against blacks and Latinos. The statistics, which are the NYPD’s own numbers, indicate about 80% of the people stopped are black or Latino. Of those people who are stopped, more than 85% are completely innocent.
On, December 18, the New York Times published a story that illustrates the way Stop-And-Frisks impacts individuals. Nicholas K. Peart is a 23-year-old black college student who has been stopped and frisked four times in nine years. He was never arrested and was released every time. He describes the effect those stops have had on him.
After the third incident I worried when police cars drove by; I was afraid I would be stopped and searched or that something worse would happen. I dress better if I go downtown. I don’t hang out with friends outside my neighborhood in Harlem as much as I used to. Essentially, I incorporated into my daily life the sense that I might find myself up against a wall or on the ground with an officer’s gun at my head. For a black man in his 20s like me, it’s just a fact of life in New York.
It also changed the way Peart feels about police.
When I was young I thought cops were cool. They had a respectable and honorable job to keep people safe and fight crime. Now, I think their tactics are unfair and they abuse their authority. The police should consider the consequences of a generation of young people who want nothing to do with them — distrust, alienation and more crime.
Read the entire article here.
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