A year ago, cottonheaded Washington Post heartthrob Richard Cohen wrote a column on the contentious issue of "stop and frisk" that took no position whatsoever. That column was absolutely worthless. Amazingly, his writing on the issue has gotten worse since then.
Following a recent ruling by a Federal judge who declared the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program unconstitutional, Mayor Bloomberg said he planned to appeal the decision claiming the discriminatory practice of detaining the city's residents based on their skin color didn't get "a fair trial."
After yesterday's ruling that stop-and-frisk is unconstitutional, StreetsBlog looks at the "virulent" culture of NYPD cops, who sometimes say things like this: "We own the block. They don’t own the block, all right? They might live here but we own the block. ... We own the streets here. You tell them what to do."
A federal judge has ruled that the NYPD's infamous stop-and-frisk practice "violated the constitutional rights of tens of thousands of New Yorkers"—but didn't order the NYPD to end the policy immediately.
Echoing New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's recent statement on the subject, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a radio interview today that, as far as he sees it, blacks and Latinos are actually not being stopped enough under the city's racist stop-and-frisk program.
Supporters of the NYPD's "stop and frisk" minority harassment program often argue that, hey, it's worth stopping and searching thousands of people with virtually no probable cause, because it makes this city a safer place. According to a new NYCLU analysis, though, it mostly just sends people to jail for weed.
Ever since the New York City Police Department initiated its reviled stop-and-frisk technique, the force's laughable refrain has been that its officers are not engaging in racial profiling. It may not look like racial profiling to Mayor Michael Bloomberg or NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who oversee stop and frisk, but…
The NYPD's public safety policy of "Harass all young minority males who show themselves in public," politely dubbed "Stop and frisk," is currently on trial for its legal life. Hilariously (unless you are a young minority male), police officials are still able to insist with a straight face that such a program does not…
Today the New York City Police Department, under the leadership of Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, will conduct its five millionth stop-and-frisk procedure, according to a data analysis from the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Here's the popular consensus: In the mid-nineties, New York City finally got tough on crime. By using the ground-breaking CompStat computer system, cracking down on misdemeanors and criminalizing social situations (like hanging out with other people in parks or hallways), as well as instituting its controversial "Stop…
Now that the New York Police Department is not allowed to stop and frisk every brown person on the street, Commissioner Kelly's going to have to find a new way to invade the privacy of New York's citizens. Luckily, the man beloved by three of four New Yorkers works fast: yesterday at the Waldorf-Astoria, Kelly…
Sometimes the American justice system is too complex even for trained bloggers, so someone please feel free to explain to us the moral rationale for this sequence of events: the NYPD has a "stop and frisk" program, expressly designed to harass minorities without probable cause, which is clearly unconstitutional.…
It will already be less risky to possess marijuana in New York City in 2013 after a Manhattan judge ruled against the NYPD's "stop and frisk" program. Well, okay, that applies to minorities, who were the only ones arrested and jailed for possessing small amounts of marijuana discovered during "stop and frisk" in the…
The NYPD's "stop and frisk" program would more accurately be called the "minority guy harassment program"—the police indiscriminately search black and Latino males, and a tiny percentage are found to be doing something illegal. As far as white people are concerned, the system works! But a judge disagrees.
Last Friday night, after hearing about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, I spent the last hour of my son's preschool day in class with him. I feared for his safety. The thought that scared me most wasn't the possibility of some white man draped in a black trench coat, carrying semi-automatic weapons, charging…
I fought Jimmy Nuñez when I was in the sixth grade. He was in the eighth. I was already tall. I may have even had half an inch on him, but I was clumsy. He was a much better fighter than I was.
In May, New York State Senator Eric Adams alleged that NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told him in 2010 that he hoped to "instill the fear in black and Hispanic youth that every time they leave their homes they will feel that they could be stopped."
The NYPD's "stop and frisk" program is essentially a program in which black people are stopped and frisked due to their display of criminal risk factors, like being nonwhite. A shocking new poll finds that black people tend to believe there's something wrong with the program.
Ray Kelly, the head of the NYPD, is just so full of shit. His police department has a massive "stop and frisk" program which, by the NYPD's own statistics, is existentially programmed to stop and frisk hundreds and hundreds of thousands of completely innocent young black and Latino men with no real cause. It is a…
Critics of New York's "stop-and-frisk" policy have suggested that it overwhelmingly targets men of color, but Mayor Bloomberg still think it's necessary to preventing crime.
