Hearings in the federal case against stop-and-frisk will include pretrial testimony from officers Michael Noboa, Kha Dang, and Edgar Gonzalez, three of the four cops responsible for the most recorded stops in a three-month period in 2009. The Times obtained hundreds of pages of the testimony, much of which focused on the reasons the officers might stop a particular person. Here’s a few of helpful hints, if you’re looking to get stopped.
“If someone is in the middle of a dark street, staring into the car and then when we drive by, they start ripping up garbage bags,” offered Noboa. “That would give me reasonable suspicion to conduct a stop, question,” and frisk.
Dang suggested that he’d make a stop if he saw someone repeatedly looking into the bushes, because, “You know, no person would sit there and keep looking at the bushes like that,” and, you never know, there might be a gun stashed that shrubbery.
Gonzales gave another tip, saying he’d question someone if they were sitting at a bus stop and “every possible bus that they could possibly get on has come through and went, and this person is still there.”
OK, so let’s review. If you’re just dying to get stop-and-frisked, you should either:
A) Be a homeless person.
B) Look at bushes.
or C) Wait a long time for the bus.
Got it? Oh, and being black or hispanic doesn’t hurt either.
(Photo: Pamela Drew/Flickr)
