Racist profiling, cop-stops rampant in NYC

New York Gov. David Paterson signed a bill on July 16 limiting the use of a database of names collected by New York City cops of people who had committed no crime but whose names were gathered through the stop-and-frisk policy used by NYC cops and cops all over the country.

The database of people that have been stopped, frisked and released is supposed to be erased.

Since 2004 more than 3 million people in New York City have had their names entered into a database as a result of the stop-and-frisk policy used by the New York Police Department. Ninety percent of the people stopped were never charged with any crime.

People of color have been subjected to the abusive and demoralizing procedure at a high rate, illustrating the racism of the NYPD. In 2009, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a record 575,000 people — the overwhelming majority being Black and Latino/a — were stopped and frisked by cops in New York.

Blacks and Latinos/as were nine times as likely to be stopped and frisked, yet their arrest rate remained similar to whites although whites were a little more likely to be arrested. Whites were more likely to be carrying a firearm, but according to the data collected by the CCR, only 53,000 whites were stopped and frisked, compared to 490,000 Blacks and Latinos/as.

Multibillionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his chief of cops, Raymond Kelly, protested Paterson’s decision to sign the bill, citing the usefulness of the database in supposedly curtailing crime and solving already committed crimes. The governor, whose administration is pushing through a budget that severely cuts education and other social services, signed the bill despite opposition from Bloomberg and Kelly.

While both Paterson and the sponsors of the bill noted at the signing ceremony the violation of civil liberties that the database poses, the illegal nature of the stop-and-frisk policy, which clearly utilizes racist racial profiling, was not addressed.

A look at readily available information of prior years further illuminates the racism of the NYPD. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, in 2006, 89 percent of people stopped and frisked in New York were people of color: 55 percent were Black and 30 percent Latino/a.

The stops of whites account for only 2.6 percent of their total population, yet the stops of Black people account for more than 21 percent of the city’s total Black population. This is despite the fact that according to arrest statistics, whites were twice as likely to have been found in possession of a weapon, drugs or stolen property. In 2006, Black people were 50 percent more likely to be subjected by cops to physical force when stopped.

Racial profiling is not unique to New York City. It is a policy employed by police agencies across the country. In some places it is law, such as in Arizona, where SB 1070 takes effect on July 29. Some cities and counties use cops to question immigrant workers on their status, which is discrimination backed up in many places by the law.

The racism that is endemic to U.S. society guides the police agencies in how they view and treat people of color.