NYCLU and Parole Prep Secure the Release of Paroled, Terminally Ill Man After Legal Challenge
Civil Liberties Union
The New York Civil Liberties Union today released an analysis of the NYPD’s 2012 stop-and-frisk data showing that the stop-and-frisk program’s stark racial disparities and ineffectiveness in recovering illegal guns continued last year despite a decline in the overall number of stops. The analysis includes new information on how the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program contributes to the city’s soaring arrest rates for marijuana possession.
The analysis includes new information on how the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program contributes to the city’s soaring arrest rates for marijuana possession.
“Despite the welcome decline in the overall number of stops, the NYPD last year still subjected hundreds of thousands of innocent people to humiliating, intimidating and unjustified stop-and-frisk encounters,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “With a 90-percent failure rate, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program remains a tremendous waste of resources, sows mistrust between police and the communities of color and routinely violates fundamental rights. The city’s next mayor must make a clean break from the Bloomberg administration’s ineffective and abusive stop-and-frisk regime.”
Last year, the NYPD stopped and interrogated people 532,911 times, a 448-percent increase in street stops since 2002 – when police recorded 97,296 stops during Mayor Bloomberg’s first year in office. Nine out of 10 of people stopped were innocent, meaning they were neither arrested nor ticketed. About 87 percent were black or Latino. White people accounted for only about 10 percent of stops.
The NYCLU analyzed the NYPD’s full 2012 computerized stop-and-frisk database, which contains detailed information not included in the quarterly stop-and-frisk reports the Police Department provides the City Council. The analysis examines multiple aspects of the 2012 stop-and-frisk data, including stops, frisks, use of force, reason for stop and recovery of weapons. The analysis provides detailed information at a precinct level and a close examination of race-related aspects of stop-and-frisk.
The NYCLU’s analysis reveals that:
“The NYPD defends its abusive stop-and-frisk program as the reason why New York City’s streets are safe. But last year stops went down 22 percent and homicide was at an all time low. This gives the lie to the NYPD’s repeated claims that more and more stops are needed to save lives,” said NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn.
The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices have been on trial over the past two months in Floyd v. City of New York – a federal class-action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the constitutionality of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices.
The remedy phase of the trial, which concluded Monday, involved Ligon v. City of New York, a lawsuit filed by the NYCLU, The Bronx Defenders, LatinoJustice PRLDEF and the law firm of Shearman & Sterling LLP challenging the NYPD’s enforcement of Operation Clean Halls – a citywide program within the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk regime that allows police officers to patrol in and around certain private apartment buildings.
The NYCLU sued the NYPD in 2007 for access to the Police Department’s electronic stop-and-frisk database. In 2008, a State Supreme Court judge ordered the NYPD to turn over the database. Prior to that, the NYPD withheld detailed information of its stop-and-frisk program.
The NYCLU has also been working with its coalition partners in Communities United for Police Reform and leaders in the City Council for passage of the Community Safety Act, a landmark police reform package designed to help end discriminatory policing and bring real accountability to the NYPD by creating an Inspector General over the NYPD and creating a strong ban on profiling.
“The evidence remains clear: The NYPD’s stop, question & frisk policy has a disparate impact on young men of color – the overwhelming majority of whom have done nothing wrong,” said City Councilman Brad Lander. “Even in Park Slope, where 67 percent of the population is white, 84.8 percent of the stops in 2012 were of black and Latino people. So this is not a matter of simply going where the crime is. That’s why we must pass Intro 800-A, to strengthen New York City’s prohibition on discriminatory profiling by establishing a thoughtfully-tailored private right of action. We all want a safe city, but we can’t make our city truly safe by profiling our neighbors.”
“The NYPD’s policy towards stop, question and frisk is still inordinately targeting young men of color and harassing an overwhelming majority of innocent New Yorkers,” said City Councilman Jumaane Williams. “This practice has been utterly divisive and corrosive to the essential relationship between historically disenfranchised communities and the police charged with protecting them. I am confident that with the passage of the Community Safety Act, including an enforceable ban on bias-based profiling and an inspector general over the NYPD, we can bring about better policing and safer streets for all.”