“But while the stop [and frisk] program, like all NYPD tactics, should be — and is — constantly reassessed, the effort to portray stops as a racist assault on minorities is poisonous and irresponsible. To date, no other government initiative has come close to saving as many lives and improving the quality of life in poor communities as the NYPD’s proactive policing.” – Heather Mac Donald, protecting NY’s poor, nypost.com
Well she writes for a NY propaganda paper, so what else would you expect? And yes, the random searches are both unconstitutional and racist since they admit that they primarily target blacks.
I would have to disagree with the racist angle.
All political correctness aside, if you have a certain demographic in your city that commits a disproportionate amount of crimes, it would seem to make sense to give that demographic the attention it needs.
According to NYCs own murder rate breakdown (available here in PDF format) for 2011, 83% of all murders in the city happened in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. 61% of all murder victims were shot that year, as opposed to being stabbed (22%) or bludgeoned (10%).
Blacks, who made up 23% of NY population, accounted for 62% of all murder victims. Of those, 38% had prior arrests for drug sales or possession, 20% were on probation or parole or had a warrant for their arrest, and 11% were confirmed gang members.
Of the black suspects arrested in murder investigations, 83% of the time their victim was also black. 62% of all male murder suspects are between the ages of 16 and 37.
So there you have it. Black males between 16 and 37 commit (and are victim of) most of the murder in New York. Why does it not make sense to give black males between the ages of 16 and 37 additional scrutiny? I’d rather see it given to them than to 80 year old grandmothers in wheelchairs.
All this racial profiling BS is why we have the situation we have at airports, with the aforementioned grandmothers and crippled children being harassed by glorified security guards in order to keep from offending anybody wearing a burqa or a turban.
If police are to be effective, they should be allowed to go after the criminals and the likely criminals, not forced to waste their time chasing ghosts in order to keep racially sensitive people from shitting themselves in outrage.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m of the opinion that the country would be a better place without the armed revenue generation agents swarming among us to eat out our substance. But, if we have to have them, at least have them work efficiently.
The policy isn’t racist. It is merely a violation of our Constitutional protections from unreasonable search required by the City to enforce the violation of other Constitutional rights.
+1
+1
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http://newsone.com/2016964/brittany-rowley-honor-student-roughed-up-by-nypd-in-brooklyn/
Very much so.
Cops are human too and as such have the potential to act in ways judged racially motivated, but the term racist should be reserved for those people who consistently use a persons race as a factor in making decisions about their character, intent and guilt. On this I don’t think cops generally qualify.
I now await the barbs of contrary opinion.
Let me sum this up: If you are poor and live in a high crime area the 4th Amendment does not apply to you.
+1 so true.
“But while the Random Home Inspection program, and the exclusion of the NYPD to the wiretapping laws, seem unconstitutional, to date, no other government initiative has come close to saving as many lives and improving the quality of life in poor communities .” Are Cops Racists Second Edition
Why are the NYPD merely “stopping and frisking”?
Clearly lives are being saved here! That takes priority over civil rights and due process of law, so let us vest the NYPD with instant powers of judicial authority. Not only can we save the taxpayer millions of dollars on paying for lawyers and scheduling court hearings, but we can streamline the life-saving business much more efficiently. We all know Innocent until Proven Guilty is a policy that’s much too reckless for public safety.
Not entirely related but here is a new video of the NYPD that popped up a day or two ago.
How come governments can legally profile a demographic group (and do it frequently in practice) while we, the Proletariat, are lectured and punished for doing a far more mild version of profiling to an individual who sometimes deserves it?
We must never forget that some animals are more equal than others.
It might have something to do with crime statistics.
wow the nypd should hire you to write policy for them.
It’s a diversionary tactic; calling it “racist” (always a hot button issue to easily-impressionable sheep) takes the focus off of how incredibly unconstitutional it is. So rather than deal with the larger problem, people are pulled into that ever-divisive quagmire. Keeps people fighting amongst themselves rather than righteously fighting against the government.
+1
True. Dive and Conquer ones enemies or opposition— Machiavelli Strategy. In this case, the USG and the elites are dividing and conquering the American people by race, social-economic class, and sex.
Very true. Keep the public divided so your omipresent government takes no heat.
“To date, no other government initiative has come close to saving as many lives and improving the quality of life in poor communities as the NYPD’s proactive policing.”
What a ridiculous, unfalsifiable claim.
+1 Bloomberg is total scum and so are their msm media shills.
Whatever happened to all those Obamacom “Yes, we can” plans to create a people’s security force as powerful as the regular military?
“Nothing is so dangerous to the political and social stability of America as the people becoming divided into a multitude of squabbling nationalities.”
— me paraphrasing several leading American (real) statesmen from the past.
NYC cops cannot be called racists — they treat everyone like shit.