This Is Why Some People Hate the Police: Man Documents His Stop & Frisk Encounter With the NYPD
Last year, the NYPD conducted 685,724 stops of residents throughout the city. Of those numbers, 53 percent of people stopped were black, 34 percent were Latino, and just nine percent were white. Most alarming, however, is that 88 percent of those stopped and frisked by the police were totally innocent.
In spite of the disparity in the amount of stops between minorities and whites, the NYPD and Mayor Michael Bloomberg insist the stops are not a form a racial profiling, but rather aggressive police work. The mayor also contends that the stops are harmless and a brief annoyance to those who are innocent. But a recently obtained audio clip tells a completely different story.
Recently, the Nation procured a recording from a young man who documented his run-in with the police. After being stopped just a few blocks before, Alvin, a Harlem teen, was stopped once again by two plainclothes officers in his neighborhood.
What’s captured on tape is disturbing. After the young man, whose father is a traffic cop (the officers find this amusing), asks why he’s being stopped, one officer snarls it’s because he’s a “f—king mutt.”
During the recording, we also hear an officer threaten to punch the young man in the face, break his arm, and lock him up for having the audacity to ask questions.
The Nation used Alvin’s audio recording to delve deeper into the stop and frisk issue. During the short film clip, current and former NYPD officers detail how they have been encouraged to harass young black and Latino men who they know are not breaking any laws just to fulfill department quotas.
During one of the most honest and chilling parts of the film, one officer with over 10 years in the NYPD admits minorities are being “hunted.”
“The civilian population, they’re being hunted by us,” he says. “Instead of being protected by us, they’re being hunted and we’re being hated.”
*Photo via The Washington Post
We need to take it back to the Black Panther days. My dream is to start an org. like that which would police the police. Stand openly with cameras and legally permitted weapons and watch these frisks. If nothing else, it would bring more attention to this dreadful situation.
I’ve often wondered why we’re not rioting in the streets at this point. We have Republicans, on camera and documented, explicitly stating that they wish to and ARE TRYING to actively prevent black people from voting. People in our government… stating that they want to try to prevent others from exercising their fundamental rights in this so-called “democracy.” That has to be some level of treason… and yet I haven’t heard this get anywhere near the level of coverage as “missing white girl xyz.”
What are people expecting the prison is a business.
cops feel they have way to much power.
True story! I was coming out of the NYC subway two weeks ago when two cops, one black and buff and the other Latino rushing up the steps to stop a young black man who had something in his back pocket. The cops cornered him and asked what he got in his back pocket and the poor thing looked so confused! Then one of the cops pulled out a a supposed weapon from his pocket when in actually it was a hairbrush. Everyone in the subway laughed and the cops looked really stupid! Even though it was funny at the time this is really a serious matter that must be addressed by our community. It is really getting out of hand, these cops harassing these young men. It’s the cops duty to protect and serve but if they keep harassing people like this it’s getting hard for us as people of color to trust them.
How is this racist or racial profiling when the cop was black?? So ignorant!
Fuc* these d*ck sucking ass police! You catch one of these punks without they’re gun, and they shook daddy! I know I snuffed one of them at the club.
police are really the lowest, most despicably sickening, corrupt, disposable, downright worthless infectious forms of bile that exist on the planet.