The NYPD has released a report detailing the precinct and racial demographics of all stop-and-frisks from 2011, after receiving pressure from the New York Civil Liberties Union. The results are astounding, and just another indication of the racial profiling and bias that goes into the practice. Ninety percent of stops in all of the city were of black and Latino people, and many of the neighborhoods with the most stops are majority black or Hispanic.
Brooklyn’s 75th precinct, covering East New York and Cypress Hills, ranked first, with 31,000 stops. Ninety-seven percent where of blacks and Latinos. In second came BK’s 73rd precinct, covering Brownsville, which logged 25,167 stops, 98 percent of which were against people of color. Queens’s 115th precinct, covering East Elmhurst Corona and Jackson Heights, came in third with 18,156, 93 percent were of blacks and Latinos. And in fourth was the Bronx’s 40th, covering Mott Haven, with 98 percent of stops agains blacks and Latinos.
The department, unsurprisingly, is claiming that no racial profiling is involved. “We’re constantly accused, unfairly, of racism, like we’re looking only to stop minorities,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. “That is not true. Are there more stops in [East New York] than in Riverdale? Yes. Why? Because there is more crime there and because we put more resources into that precinct.”
NYCLU associate legal director Christopher Dunn disagrees. Police have “stopped hundreds of thousands of innocent black New Yorkers in recent years,” he argued. “Rather than spin the numbers, the department should confront this problem.”
(Photo: Alan Greig/Flickr)
