Here's a cheery thought

It's being reported by the NYCLU (the New York branch of the ACLU) that more than 273,000 innocent people have been stopped and frisked by the NYPD – all in the first six months of 2009. Not only were they all innocent of any crimes, and not only are their names and home addresses now stored in NYPD databases, but a particularly interesting (which is to say, troubling) factor is that the very vast majority of these folks were Blacks and Latinos.

“These aren’t statistics – these are innocent New Yorkers who have had their dignity man-handled by the very people who are sworn to protect and serve them,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Hundreds of thousands of our neighbors who have done absolutely nothing wrong have been humiliated in front of their parents, children, friends and neighbors. This stunning abuse of power must end. It is not a crime to walk down the street in New York City, yet every day innocent black and brown New Yorkers are turned into suspects for doing just that.”

According to an NYPD report obtained and analyzed by the NYCLU this week, police stopped and interrogated New Yorkers 140,552 times between April and June. Nearly nine out of 10 of these stops resulted in no charges or citations. This record number of stops fell disproportionately on the city’s communities of color – 74,283 of those stopped were black and 44,296 were Latino, while only 13,906 were white.

The Department made another 171,094 stops between January and March. Overall, this record number of stops represents a 15 percent increase from the 270,937 stops conducted during the first six months of 2008. If stops continue at this pace, the NYPD will conduct a record 610,000 stops in 2009. In 2008, the current record, police stopped New Yorkers 531,159 times.

Very telling.

(via The Agitator)