During the just-concluded trial on the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, the city argued that officers’ disproportionate targeting of black and Latino New Yorkers was not due to racial profiling but because each stopped individual was doing something suspicious at the time. The data, however, tells a different story: weapons and drugs were more often found on white New Yorkers during stops than on minorities, according to the Public Advocate’s analysis of the NYPD’s 2012 statistics.

White New Yorkers make up a small minority of stop-and-frisks, which were 84 percent black and Latino residents. Despite this much higher number of minorities deemed suspicious by police, the likelihood that stopping an African American would find a weapon was half the likelihood of finding one on a white person.

• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded a weapon was half that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.

• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out every 43 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and 61 stops of African Americans to find contraband.

It’s unlikely that the appropriate lesson to take from these findings is that stops of white people should increase because they are more likely to carry weapons and drugs. Rather, they suggest that police are excessively targeting minorities. Officers may be netting more successful stops of white New Yorkers because they are only likely to stop a white person when they actually suspect that person of committing a crime. Considering one officer’s testimony that superiors explicitly directed him to target young black men, minorities are judged by a much more flexible definition of “reasonable suspicion.”

And this loose approach to the Constitution’s ban on unlawful searches and seizures is part of a larger pattern of African-Americans being targeted by police. In one incident an officer cuffed and detained a 13-year-old African American boy, the son of a former cop, for six hours because he allegedly reached into his pants’ waistband. Other cops punched and pepper-sprayed a 38-year-old veteran who was discussing Memorial Day plans with friends on a street corner. Yet another black man reported being stopped and arrested 4 times in one year on criminal trespass charges later dismissed by a judge.

In general, stop-and-frisk has proven to be remarkably ineffective; nearly 89 percent of all stops result in no charges. The city has also had to settle a surging number of civil rights lawsuits against police to the tune of $22 million in one year.

After months of evidence from more than 100 witnesses suggesting the New York Police Department sets quotas on the number of stop-and-frisks, instructs officers to target black men, and taunts young teens, federal judge Shira A. Scheindlin ended the trial by expressing considerable alarm about the “high error rate” of the controversial stop-and-frisk program, and questioned whether police racially profile. The New York Times reports:

“A lot of people are being frisked or searched on suspicion of having a gun and nobody has a gun,” Judge Scheindlin, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said on Monday during closing arguments in the trial. “So the point is: the suspicion turns out to be wrong in most of the cases.” […]

Observing that only about 12 percent of police stops resulted in an arrest or summons, Judge Scheindlin, who is hearing the case without a jury, focused her remarks on Monday on the other 88 percent of stops, in which the police did not find evidence of criminality after a stop. She characterized that as “a high error rate” and remarked to a lawyer representing the city, “You reasonably suspect something and you’re wrong 90 percent of the time.”

“That is a lot of misjudgment of suspicion,” Judge Scheindlin said, suggesting officers were wrongly interpreting innocent behavior as suspicious.

Scheindlin was referring to the constitutional standard — “reasonable suspicion” —  required for a police stop. She also questioned whether NYPD officers who make the “worrisome” argument that a higher stop and frisk rate among blacks and Hispanics mirrors higher crime rates in those populations are therefore using race as a basis for making otherwise inexplicable stops.

Plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit now underway allege an expansive and racist use of police stops has been applied without legal justification, subjecting vast swaths of the city’s young African American and Hispanic men to invasive frisks, unwarranted searches, and detention at police centers for alleged minor crimes, often marijuana possession. Scheindlin has already ruled in another stop-and-frisk case that police stops in the Bronx are likely unconstitutional.

The aggressive stop-and-frisk program has been justified as reducing crime, but new figures show that the crime rate went down with a drop in the number of stop-and-frisks under public pressure.

The number of stop-and-frisks performed by the New York Police Department dropped in the first three months of 2013, and so did the city’s crime rate, according to new data from the New York City Council. The statistics come as the NYPD’s aggressive use of stop-and-frisk is under review in a major lawsuit challenging the practice’s constitutionality. Plaintiffs allege an expansive and racist use of police stops has been applied without legal justification, subjecting vast swaths of the city’s young African American and Hispanic men to invasive frisks, unwarranted searches, and detention at police centers for alleged minor crimes, often marijuana possession.

The latest statistics represent a continued slow decline in stops since the practice has come under fire, but the stops continue to have a severe disproportionate effect on minorities. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The number of stop-and-frisk reports filed by New York City police fell 51% in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year. […]

From Jan. 1 through March 31, officers conducted 99,788 stop and frisks, compared with 203,500 during the same period in 2012, according to New York Police Department data. It wasn’t clear how many of those encounters resulted in a subject being frisked after a stop.

They also showed that the reduced stops in the first quarter of 2013 resulted in a 43% decline in weapons recovered compared with the same period in 2012.

Overall crime is also down 2.7% this year through April 28 with murders leading the way with a 30% decline compared with the same period last year, police data show. […]

Data from the first quarter of this year has been consistent with previous years: Black and Hispanic people accounted for the vast majority of stops.

African-Americans were the subjects of 56% of the stops and were 65% of the violent-crime suspects identified by alleged victims, according to the NYPD data. Hispanics were the subjects of 30% of stops and were 27% of violent-crime suspects.

Officers testifying during the weeks-long trial on the policy have revealed that they were told to target young, black men, and expected to meet monthly quotas for stop-and-frisks and arrests.

Police argue that the stop-and-frisk policy is necessary to ensure public safety. But the New York Civil Liberties Union is pointing out that the drop in crime — particularly murder – weighs heavily against the argument that more frivolous stops means more safety. Last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I-NY) blasted the NYCLU for its advocacy to reform stop-and-frisks, calling the civil rights group “extremists” akin to the NRA.

(HT: Capital)

On Tuesday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I-NY) launched an impassioned defense of the New York Police Department, which sparked outrage for spying on Muslims and aggressively targeting minorities in their stop-and-frisk program. Bloomberg attacked a bill that would make it easier for stop-and-frisk victims to sue the police, as well as one that appoint an Inspector General to oversee the NYPD’s counterterrorism operations.

The mayor warned that the bills’ scrutiny on police would make the city less safe, invoking the Boston bombing, the September 11 attacks, and gun violence. The installation of an Inspector General, Bloomberg claimed, could make intelligence gathering agencies “less willing to share information” if they knew it could be seen by the City Council. “Passing any legislation that undermines our counterterrorism capabilities would be the height of irresponsibility. God forbid terrorists succeed in striking our city because of a politically driven law that undermines the NYPD’s intelligence gathering efforts.”

He also argued stop-and-frisk is an essential part of his campaign for responsible gun laws, even equating the New York Civil Liberties Union, a civil rights advocacy group, with the National Rifle Association, the powerful lobbying organization for gun manufacturers:

I loathe that illegal guns threaten our communities every day, especially black and Latino communities, because politicians don’t have the courage to stand up for the measures that can save lives. In Washington, some elected officials don’t have the courage to stand up to the special interests on the right and pass common sense gun laws. And in New York City, some don’t have the courage to stand up to special interests on the left and support common sense policing tactics like stop and frisk. We don’t need extremists on the left or the right running our police department, whether it’s the NRA or the NYCLU.

The dire consequences of allowing citizens to sue police, Bloomberg warned, would deter police from doing their job and would let judges “micro-manage the NYPD.” He also denied that over 86 percent of the people stopped by the police were black or Latino, stating, “Critics who claim that police stops are based on race never seem to mention the fact that the majority of the NYPD’s patrolling officers are minorities.”

While minorities have made significant inroads in the police department, patrolling officers recently testified that high-level officials, who are still overwhelmingly white, directed them to target young black males and pressured them to meet a quota of five stops per month, regardless of whether or not they resulted an arrest. Commissioner Ray Kelly openly admitted that the policy was targeting minorities because he wanted to “instill fear” in them, according to the testimony of a state senator.

Far from letting “extremists” run the NYPD, the NYCLU and many other civil rights advocates support the bill in question because it would help people sue the police if their rights are infringed upon. The NYPD’s misconduct has already cost the city $22 million in one year’s worth of lawsuits, with plaintiffs ranging from a 12-year-old girl who was arrested for doodling on her school desk to a 38-year-old veteran who was punched and pepper-sprayed while discussing Memorial Day plans with a friend on the street. Last month’s stop-and-frisk trial uncovered even more widespread abuses, such as the detention of a 13-year-old boy who was taunted for “crying like a little girl” when NYPD officers cuffed him.

During a 2010 meeting, New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the city’s aggressive stop-and-frisk policy targeted so many young black and Latino men because “he wanted to instill fear in them, every time they leave their home they could be stopped by the police,” according to testimony by State Senator Eric Adams (D). Adams, a former NYPD captain, said the statement came during a private conversation Kelly had with Gov. David A. Patterson and Adams to discuss the stop-and-frisk tactic’s significance as a crime-fighting tool.

Kelly denied the allegation Monday, saying that Adams’ suggestion that he targets minorities is “absolutely, categorically untrue.” The New York Times reports:

The disagreement between Mr. Kelly and Senator Adams is nothing new; the senator has long criticized the department for what he says are unlawful street stops. But Mr. Adams usually issues his criticism at one of the various street-side news conferences that he has held over the years — not in federal court as the only elected official scheduled to testify at the trial.

Given Commissioner Kelly’s robust denial, it is unclear how the judge hearing the case, Shira A. Scheindlin, will interpret Senator Adams’s recollection of one comment. Still, the senator’s testimony served to underscore one of the trial’s central constitutional questions: Do the police conduct street stops only when they observe individuals behaving suspiciously, or are the police increasingly stopping people without justification, as a way to discourage criminals from carrying guns in the street? […]

Mr. Kelly, in his affidavit, noted that he told Governor Paterson and Senator Adams about “my view that stops serve as a deterrent to criminal activity, which includes the criminal possession of a weapon.”

In his affidavit, the commissioner observed, “I said nothing at the meeting to indicate or imply that such activity is based on anything but reasonable suspicion.”

Reasonable suspicion is the required constitutional standard for a police stop, and Judge Scheindlin has made clear that testimony about the effectiveness of the policy in reducing crime is not relevant to its constitutionality.

Adams’ testimony is the latest piece of damning evidence to come out of trial in a class action challenge to the New York Police Department’s rampant use of “stop and frisks,” a practice in which officers stop someone suspected of a crime, and may subsequently frisk that individual if they have justification for doing so. Last week, an officer testified that he was told to target young, black men, and others testified that the New York Police Department imposes quotas for stop-and-frisks. In 2011, NYPD made more stops of young black men than there are young black men in the city. And since Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, 86 percent of people stopped have been black or Latino.

During the second week of testimony on New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk program, an officer admitted to detaining and then mocking a 13-year-old boy when he started crying. Though the boy was innocent, he was still cuffed and brought to the station:

Appearing on the stand Wednesday, police officer Brian Dennis testified that he had taunted a 13-year-old boy after he detained him. Dennis told the handcuffed child, Devin Almonor, to “stop crying like a little girl.”

The teen was reportedly stopped on the street in Harlem when he reached into his pants’ waste-band. The two officers that stopped him claimed to have been searching for a firearm, but Almonor was found to be carrying no weapons. He was nonetheless handcuffed, taunted and taken to the stationhouse.

Dennis conceded that he no longer thought the taunt was appropriate, but another officer, Jonathan Korabel, maintained the stop of the boy was a “lawful frisk.” He claimed the teen was jaywalking and started “yelling and making a scene” when officers tried to frisk him.

Almonor is hardly the NYPD’s youngest target. In December, the police were once again sued for cuffing and arresting a 7-year-old boy for stealing $5 from a classmate. Lawsuits over police misconduct cost the city $22 million in just one year.

The current case, Floyd v. City of New York, has exposed many harrowing new details about stop-and-frisk. Last week, other officers testified that they were pressured to meet quotas of 5 stop and frisks, 20 summons and 1 arrest every month. Another cop recorded his superior instructing him to specifically target “male blacks 14 to 21″ years old.

These instructions have been carried out with gusto; in 2011, the NYPD stopped young black men more times than the total number of young black men in all of New York City. Since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002, more than 86 percent of the people stopped by the police were black or Latino. Almost 90 percent of these stops resulted in no ticket or arrest.

New York police officers testified this week that their office set quotas for both the number of police stops and arrests. Officers Adhyl Polanco and Pedro Serrano are two of the more than 100 witnesses to testify during a trial in a class action challenge to the New York Police Department’s rampant use of “stop and frisks,” a practice with constitutional implications in which an officer stops someone suspected of a crime, and may subsequently frisk that individual if they have justification for doing so.

The Department has conducted more than 5 million stops since Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, more than 85 percent of which targeted blacks or Latinos and only 12 percent of which resulted in criminal charges. Both Serrano and Polanco testified that supervisors required at least 20 summonses and one arrest each month, and that they were pressured to stop individuals — regardless of the grounds for doing so —  under threat of punishment. Polanco also said police later added a stop-and-frisk quota of five per month. During the trial, Polanco played an exchange he recorded in 2009. The New York Daily News reports:

In the tapes, one of Polanco’s supervisors is heard demanding that cops make their “20 and 1” quota and lambasting those who came up short.

“If you want to be a zero, I’ll treat you like a zero,” patrol Sgt. Marvin Bennett fumed on tape.

Polanco also recorded his patrol commander, Lt. Andrew Valenzano, telling officers to meet their quotas by ticketing bicyclists.

“If you see people over there on bikes, carrying the bags, you know, good stops,” Valenzano says on tape. “That’s what we need.”

Officer Angel Herran, a union delegate, was taped telling officers the quota was agreed to “in this last contract.”

“They’re telling you to ‘go make money,’ ” Herran is heard saying.

In his testimony, Pollanco added that officers who did not meet their quotas were pressured to find stops any way they could, or else:

Those numbers were “nonnegotiable,” Mr. Polanco testified, with supervisors warning that anyone failing to meet the goals would “become a Pizza Hut delivery man.’”

Punishments could include denial of overtime assignments and requests for days off, schedule changes or a move to another precinct. “They can make your life miserable,” Officer Polanco said. […]

When lagging behind those benchmarks, he said supervisors directed him to street locations where other officers had detained people. His instructions, he said, were to make arrests or issue tickets for offenses he hadn’t observed.

At other times, Officer Polanco said, he was directed to fill out stop-and-frisk forms documenting stops he didn’t make.

As a last measure, Officer Polanco described in his testimony a task called “driving the sergeant,” in which he was allegedly assigned to drive the streets with a supervisor. He said he would perform stop-and-frisk searches and even make arrests searches on people selected by the supervisor.

“You have absolutely no discretion,” he said.

Polanco is among those who came forward about police pressure to meet quotas in 2010. Many other officers alleged quotas, pressure to make stops, and attempts to manipulate crime statistics in an extensive 2010 Village Voice exposé. A jury even concluded that the NYPD used an illegal quota system during a trial on injuries resulting from a 2006 arrest. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has written off the allegations, saying the Department has ”productivity goals,” “just like your job does, just like any job does.”

In 2010, New York State passed a law explicitly making quotas as a consideration for punishment illegal. But even if they weren’t banned by statute, quotas such as the one described by witnesses this week are subject to legal challenge because they pressure police officers into making stops without a constitutional basis for doing so. Allegations that systematic police stops are made without the constitutionally required “reasonable suspicion” are the basis for the class lawsuit. The federal judge overseeing this lawsuit has already ruled in another stop-and-frisk case that police stops in the Bronx are likely unconstitutional.

Systematic and widespread monitoring of Muslims’ everyday life by undercover informants, brought to light by an Associated Press investigative series last year, has had a severe chilling effect on speech, religious activity and community life, according to a new report by several civil rights organizations. Muslims fear speaking out even about the New York Police Department surveillance itself, and even youths described the fear of being arrested as “very real,” deterring them from activity that ranges from community involvement and speaking in class, to posting expressive messages on Facebook. “[W]hen your speech is limited, you can’t really do much: you can’t write on the internet, you can’t talk on the phone because they’re tapped, you can’t speak in public,” said one 22-year-old Sunday School teacher.

In interviews with 57 students, business owners, community leaders and educators, many recount having been asked to spy on their peers. One student recalled having been called into the principal’s office at age 16 and asked by the NYPD about her online activity. Several individuals described being questioned as suspects, and then later offered bribes to serve as informants when police realized they were not suspicious – told in moments of financial weakness that the police could “give them their freedom” by paying them for spying or providing them with a place to live. “These incidents – not infrequent in certain communities – have led many to realize that others, possibly their own peers, may not be as able to resist the pressures of working as informants,” the report said. This has bred mistrust both within the Muslim community and of law enforcement officers, prompting individuals and even businesses to accuse one another of being informants.

One of the most widespread and alarming elements of this NYPD surveillance was the recruitment of young people to infiltrate college groups. AP reports revealed that informants even accompanied students on a whitewater rafting trip, leading to fear that informants could be anyone and infiltrate anywhere. The report explains the impact on college campuses:

For college students, typically aged between 17 and 22, the prospect of dealing with surveillance by a police department, infiltration of events and extracurricular activities by informants, and the potentially devastating academic, professional, and personal repercussions can be overwhelming. … We found that the NYPD’s surveillance of students chilled First Amendment activity in what is perhaps the single most important formative and expressive space for any American youth: the college campus. […]

[W]ith a general understanding that dealing with “politics” is controversial, Muslim students find themselves steering away from those majors, classes, or extracurricular activities. Two students, both active members of their MSAs, reported switching their majors from political science to more conventional majors after becoming concerned about law enforcement scrutiny of “political” young Muslim males. […]

The isolationism that comes with being a member of a “spied on” community means that Muslim students are getting a fundamentally different, and less rewarding college experience compared to their non-Muslim peers.

As the report explains, these impacts suggest both First Amendment (free speech and religious suppression) and Fourteenth Amendment (discriminatory practices) implications, in a program that that may have broken the law and yielded no leads or cases.