Black teenager 'stopped 50 times' plans to sue Met police for harassment [The Guardian]
ETA— I find it so amusing that stories like this never just straight up come out & say what’s painfully obvious to black & brown folk: THE POLICE LIE ALL.THE.TIME TO JUSTIFY ARRESTS/INCARCERATION/ASSAULTS/MURDER OF PEOPLE OF COLOR
This. Also the average citizen (and even the average law enforcement officer themselves) needs to buy this often repeated myth that the accused is always wrong and the agency is always right. The casual observer sees numerous cases to the contrary and tends to be asked to dismiss this because the perp doesn’t fit their concept of what it is to be a “good guy”.
(Source: crankyskirt)
![sonofbaldwin:
What I’d like to know is: Where is the information that shows us how many people of color vs. how many white people ACTUALLY have contraband on them when they are stopped?In 2009, for example, the NYPD stopped approximately 575,000 New Yorkers: approximately 490,000 were black or Latino and approximately 53,000 were white. And even though NINE TIMES AS MANY people of color than white people were stopped and frisked, they found that MORE white people than people of color had contraband (illegally concealed weapons, illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia, etc) on their person. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/nyregion/13frisk.html?pagewanted=all)Now with those results, it seems CLEAR that the NYPD—if they insist on this DREADFULLY draconian and unconstitutional policy—should be stopping those who their own statistics show would be most likely carrying something illegal. But that would assume that the NYPD was as interested in preventing crime as they are in perpetuating racism and white supremacy. And as a native New Yorker, I can tell you with a great deal of certainty that the NYPD is only MARGINALLY interested in crime prevention. Even their whistle-blowers can tell you that (source: http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-03-07/news/the-nypd-tapes-confirmed/ and http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/03/nypd_crime_stat_1.php).And police officers of color are NOT exempt from this racist perpetuation and are often MORE eager and zealous in the perpetuation of it than their white counterparts. As James Baldwin once said: “[W]e feared black cops even more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder—on your head—to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other n****rs.”The NYPD is an institutionally racist organization; that’s not difficult to discern for anyone with even a gnat’s brain. The difficulty comes in when we realize that we’re actually going to have to do something about it.
kemetically-ankhtified:
87% Of People Stopped And Frisked By The NYPD In 2011 Were Black And Hispanic
The Wall Street Journal reports that NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk reached an all time high last year (2011) with just about 684,330 stopped and questioned. What is more alarming is that 87% of those folks happen to be Black and Hispanic Latino. Here are some stats:
And who was it that got stop-and-frisked the most? 92 percent of those stopped were males, and 87 percent of those stopped were black or Hispanic, a glaring disparity considering blacks and Hispanics make up only 59 percent of the city’s population.
Just 12 percent of those stopped were arrested.
“Last year alone, the NYPD stopped enough totally innocent New Yorkers to fill Madison Square Garden more than 30 times over,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement. “It is not a crime to walk down the street in New York City, yet every day innocent black and brown New Yorkers are turned into suspects for doing just that. It is a stunning abuse of power that undermines trust between police and the community.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzg0k1tDNw1qfvy6ho1_500.jpg)
