Letter: The Right Call on Getting it Wrong (NY Daily News)

Manhattan: As long-time opponents of the NYPD’s aggressive stop-and-frisk program, we’re glad to see the Daily News’s mea culpa for supporting the strategy (“We were wrong” editorial Aug. 8). The drop in stop-and-frisks has not only lifted a massive burden from New Yorkers of color but has in fact corresponded with historically low crime numbers.

But there’s another area of ineffective and costly over-policing that The News continues to defend. In city public schools, for years students have been subjected to excessive discipline policies, metal detectors and police encounters. Instead of investing in kids’ futures with a safe and nurturing environment, schools push kids out. And like in street policing, during the 2014-15 school year nearly all police encounters were with students of color.

Thankfully, the city is working to turn things around: NYPD arrests in schools are down significantly since 2010-11, and schools are safer than they’ve been in a decade. Perhaps it’s time for The News to distance itself from another zero-tolerance relic from the Bloomberg era?

Donna Lieberman, executive director, New York Civil Liberties Union