The New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has statistics on the NYC stop and frisk program. The overwhelming majority of the New Yorkers stopped and frisked are innocent. The overwhelming majority of them are also minorities. As I write this, a Democratic NYC council member is on TV defending the programming by arguing that the S&F statistics "exactly match" the incidence of violent crimes committed by race. But that is REALLY, REALLY not the point.
Here are the 2012 statistics. They can be found here.
In 2012, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 532,911 times
473,644 were totally innocent 89%
284,229 were Black 55%
165,140 were Latino 32%
50,366 were White 10%
Compare the S&F stats to the racial make-up of NYC from the 2010 census.
White 33%
Hispanic 29%
Black or African American 23%
Asian 13%
So, despite making up a third of the city's population, whites are only subjected to S&F 10% of the time. But Black New Yorkers make up more that half of the total S&Fs despite making up not even a quarter of the population.
The defense that the S&F stats match crime rates is bogus. If you "over-police" a group based on racial profiling, the way African Americans clearly are in NYC, the result is a disproportionately high incidence of convictions. What I'm saying is, if more white people were S&Fed, there would be more white people convicted of crimes. And if fewer Blacks are S&Fed, you will see a drop in crime statistics among the Black population. It is neither rational nor factually accurate to proclaim disproportionate crime rates as justification for racial profiling when the racial profiling itself has led to the disproportionate crime rate.
A great example of this type of institutionalized racism is the statistics for marijuana use and convictions nationally. Whites and Blacks use marijuana at close to the same rates. But Black pot-users are 3-4 times (that's 300% to 400%) more likely to be arrested for toking up. So, if we just look at convictions, we would think more Blacks than Whites use pot, i.e. are criminals. In this area, we know this is not the case, and we know that Blacks are being "policed" at much higher levels that Whites. But who is going to answer honestly on a survey admitting to other, more serious crimes?
I have no doubt that Mayor Bloomberg is trying to keep NYC safe. But he's doing it by making its innocent, minority citizens feel like criminals. The NYPD walking around the Big Apple like jack-booted thugs may lower crime statistics, but it is accomplishing this goal by trampling the rights and dignity of hundreds of thousands of its citizens.
Get Above Your Raisin', New York City. You are America's bellwether city. We need you to be better than this.
Here! Here!
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