Citing "overwhelming evidence" that the New York Police Department is running a centralized stop-and-frisk program that has led to thousands of...
Read full entry »
By Perry Chiaramonte
While other cities are re-thinking the practice, New York argues its Stop, Question and Frisk policy is crucial to crimefighting.
In the debate over the police tactic known as stop-and-frisk, both sides agree there's nothing wrong with officers stopping more black and Hispanic than white residents, at least in cities where violent crime is concentrated in minority neighborhoods, says the Philadelphia Inquirer. The question is at what point does stopping a disproportionate number of minorities cross the line into illegal, race-based policing? Determining those limits has been one of the controversial topics in big-city law enforcement, and a question that often has gone before the courts to be answered.
In Philadelphia, civil rights lawyers filed a federal lawsuit this month arguing that police have been targeting people based solely on race. Last year, officers stopped 253,333 pedestrians, 72 percent of whom were African American, the suit says. Lawyer David Rudovsky acknowledges that racial profiling can't be proved "solely by the numbers." "The key question is: If you control for factors like police deployment and crime rates, would that explain the disparity?" he said, adding that a better benchmark would be the "hit rate" - how often the stops result in arrest or the discovery of a weapon or other contraband. The lawsuit says just 8 percent of the 2009 stops resulted in arrests, often for "criminal conduct that was entirely independent from the supposed reason for the stop." Academic studies on stop-and-frisk data in Los Angeles in 2008 and New York City this year found that minorities were being stopped unconstitutionally. Both studies were following city-commissioned reports that found no pattern of race-based policing. Jerry Ratcliffe, a Temple University professor of criminal justice who advises Philadelphia police, said arrest data are not the best way to examine stop-and-frisk. The tactic, in which officers can stop and frisk pedestrians as long as there is "reasonable suspicion" of illegal activity, was designed to drive down the number of illegal guns on the street.
Read full entry »Civil rights attorneys sued the Philadelphia police in federal court yesterday, charging that they illegally stop pedestrians based on race and question them with little or no justification, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. The lawsuit accuses the department of crossing a line with its aggressive "stop-and-frisk" policy, started in 2008 after Mayor Michael Nutter declared a "crime emergency." It asks the court for remedies to prevent race-based pedestrian stops and other constitutional violations.
In 2009, police stopped 253,333 pedestrians, 72 percent of whom were African American, the suit said. Only 8 percent of the stops led to an arrest, often for "criminal conduct that was entirely independent from the supposed reason for the stop," the suit charged. Implicitly, the message is, make as many stops as possible, and hopefully you'll find something," said David Rudovsky, one of the lawyers suing the city and the Police Department. The suit was filed by Rudovsky's firm and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Among the eight named plaintiffs is Mahari Bailey, a Georgetown Law graduate who has been stopped four times since 2008 in West Philadelphia "without probable cause or reasonable suspicion." Nutter and Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey embraced the stop-and-frisk approach in 2008 in response to a rising tide of gun violence and crime. Violent crime has dropped significantly since.
Read full entry »How will New York state enforce its new law overturning the New York Police Department’s policy of keeping a computer database of people stopped by officers on the street but found to have done nothing wrong? The New York Times asks that question, noting that the measure failed to include any explicit mechanism for ensuring that the police put an end to the practice, such as the appointment of a monitor with auditing powers. It also lacked any penalty provisions for failing to comply with it.
If the police now choose to keep a stealth form of the electronic database, said Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union, there are “built-in mechanisms” to expose it, including a self-policing one: a force of 36,000 officers who are notorious for complaining about malfeasance. “You know, whistleblowers,” she said. An aide to Gov. David Paterson said, “The enforcement on this is going to be when someone sues" the police department. “That is where this is headed.”
Read full entry »New York City police officers no longer can keep a giant electronic library of everyone they stop on the street - but officers can still collect names the old-fashioned way, reports the New York Daily News. Just after Gov David Paterson signed a law banning the department from entering personal information of innocent people into a citywide database, a memo wa sent reminding cops they legally can gather the intel, as long as they use a pen and paper.
"The law does not affect an officer's ability to collect identification information at the scene of a street encounter, and does not affect the preparation, copying or filing of stop, question and frisk report worksheets," the memo reads. "Commanding officers shall ensure that copies of stop, question and frisk report worksheets are maintained in a precinct file." Civil libertarians and others battled against the database. They said blacks and Latinos were disproportionately targeted in the searches and their information was stored indefinitely, even though the stops ended in an arrest or a ticket only about 12 percent of the time.
New York Gov. David Paterson will sign legislation prohibiting the New York Police Department from electronically storing the names and addresses of people stopped on the streets but found to have done nothing wrong, the New York Times reports. Paterson’s support of the measure, which would fundamentally alter how police can use information from street stops, comes despite heated opposition from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
Kelly argued for a veto and warned that the bill would probably lead to more New Yorkers’ becoming “victims of crime — unnecessarily.” City officials hastily prepared a report intended to show instances in which data gathered in street stops had helped detectives in solving crimes. Said Kelly: “Albany has robbed us of a great crime-fighting tool, one that saved lives. Without it, there will be, inevitably, killers and other criminals who won’t be captured as quickly or perhaps ever.” Critics have said the database improperly included information on thousands of innocent people stopped on the streets and questioned and sometimes frisked, but not fined or arrested.
Read full entry »New York Times coverage of the New York Police Department's allegedly racist stop-and-frisk practices is criticized by Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute. MacDonald cites a story this month (which was cited in Crime & Justic News reporting that blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by the police in New York City in 2009, but, once stopped, were no more likely to be arrested.” The fact that blacks, Hispanics, and whites are arrested at the same rate after a stop undercuts, rather than supports, the thesis of racially biased policing, MacDonald says.
When the Times gets around to mentioning crime rates, more than halfway into the piece, it does so because the New York Police Department raises them in its defense, quoting police spokesman Paul Browne as saying "the stops mirrored crime—that while a large percentage of the stops involved blacks, an even larger percentage of violent crimes involved suspects described as black by their victims.” Any given violent crime is 13 times more likely to be committed by a black than by a white perpetrator—a fact that would have been useful to include in the Times' lead, MacDonald says.
Read full entry »A New York City police database culled from random police checks came under fire yesterday as a civil-liberties group filed a lawsuit and two City Council members questioned the practice, the Wall Street Journal repors. The New York Civil Liberties Union accused the New York Police Department of violating constitutional privacy protections and breaking state laws that require arrest and summons records be sealed unless there is a criminal conviction.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the database "has proven to be invaluable" in solving cases. He declined to comment on the legality of including people who weren't convicted of a crime. Since 2003, the police department has stopped nearly three million people and arrested or given summonses to 360,000. The lawsuit seeks to have records from the stops and arrests that didn't lead to conviction expunged from the database. Of 149,753 people stopped by police between Jan. 1 and March 31 this year, 9 percent were whites, though whites comprise 44 percent of the city population. City Council members Christine Quinn and Peter Vallone, spoke out against keeping the information indefinitely in the database.
Read full entry »
What do NYC reporters want to know from the city’s top cop? Forget crime rates or terror trials – where’s my parking permit?!
On Tuesday night, 33 floors above 42nd Street, working and retired journalists gathered to question New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Billed by the sponsoring New York Press Club as an “on-the-record” Q&A with the city’s top cop, the event turned into a complaint session about press-police relations.
Kelly, dressed in a crisp blue suit and sporting a white pocket handkerchief, began the evening by laying out the NYPD’s plans for the upcoming, though as-yet unscheduled trial of five 9/11 terror suspects. New Yorkers, he said, should expect random vehicle stops, sniper teams and 2,000 metal barriers around the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse on Worth Street in downtown Manhattan. Kelly explained that, with 6,000 fewer police officers on the streets today than in 2001, the city would rely heavily on overtime, and has asked the federal government for $215 million to cover the costs of the first year of the trial, which, he said, “could go several years.”
Under questioning, Kelly admitted that he had not been consulted by the Department of Justice on the decision to hold the 9/11 trial in New York City, and was not given the opportunity to make recommendations about how such a move would affect the city. Indeed, he said he was only informed of the decision 20 minutes before it was publicly announced. Still, Kelly said he told the federal government that “we can provide the security—provided we get the money.”
Once Kelly stepped down from the podium, moderator David Diaz (a former television news anchor and current lecturer for the journalism school at the City University of New York), perhaps inadvertently opened a can of worms when he invited the audience to relate stories of “the alleged uselessness” of the department’s Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Relations, otherwise known as DCPI.
“There’s a growing unease and tension and hostility even between members of the working press and the NYPD,” said Diaz.
After a knowing murmur through the crowd, hands shot up.
“When you call DCPI, nobody knows anything for hours and hours,” complained one reporter.
“When I send follow-up questions to the crime notification system I don’t get a response back,” said a Village Voice reporter, referring to the automatic emails the department sends out to alert press to homicides and other crimes. “What message does that send?”
A New York Post reporter relayed a story about one of his paper’s reporters being physically pushed by a DCPI officer, and told Kelly that the reporter didn’t dare file a complaint for fear of losing precious access.
“For 35 years my company enjoyed press credentials with the police department,” said a reporter with Black Radio Network. “But the past year we’ve migrated…to the Internet and were denied credentials. Can you explain?”
Out of the issue of credentials came the issue of press vehicle placards, which reporters complained weren’t respected or understood by police (“I’ve been towed!”) and were in short supply.
Kelly’s response to most of these questions and complaints was similar: “Well, I think that’s something we can look into,” he said, but made no promises to follow-up on specific cases. He said he would like to see the NYPD get out of the business of issuing credentials and press placards—which they are already limiting—altogether: “We have other things to do.”
By the time the various grievances had been aired, there was little time left in the 90-minute session to discuss much else. When one reporter asked him to muse on the historical role and responsibility of the police in protecting our freedoms, including the freedom of the press, Kelly wouldn’t bite, saying only that there was a lot of “gray area” in police-press relations, and that there were just some cops that “don’t like the press.”
The commissioner also avoided answering questions about whether a recently arrested Queens imam was a paid NYPD informant, referring the questioner to the department’s website for information.
When The Crime Report asked if Kelly still credited the department’s stop-and-frisk operations with lowering the crime rate, he was quick to defend the controversial program.
“I think it’s a life-saving practice,” said Kelly. “Young men in this city ages 18 to 24 are killing each other with guns. In 2008, we collected 8,000 weapons — mostly knives — from stop-and-frisk. I think that policy has saved a lot of lives and is one of the reasons crime is at its lowest. We’re going to continue to do it.”
Julia Dahl is a contributing editor for The Crime Report.
Read full entry »
More than 120 U.S. police officers have lost their lives so far this year on the job. Michael J. Carroll, new president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, met recently with The Crime Report's Ted Gest and Stephen Handelman to discuss his priorities in the year ahead, including concerns about officer protection and better media relations.
THE CRIME REPORT: Have relations between reporters and the police gotten better or worse in today’s environment?
MICHAEL CARROLL: I think there's a problem on both sides of the equation. On the law enforcement side (there’s a feeling) that the state of journalism today is a "gotcha" mentality. Rather than being a source for the police to use to get a message to the community, the press are seen by police as approaching them (with the attitude) that if I can nail a big name to the wall, it's going to enhance my career. In smaller communities, there is not a whole lot of press presence, unless you have an incident that the press is interested in. [In my area] we’ll have an incident that has news value, and we'll get all three TV channels there in 20 minutes. But unless there's something they are interested in covering, we don't see them.
TCR: Have you had a good relationship with the press?
CARROLL: Yes. There was a huge case that lasted about three years (from 1977-1981) …relating to a group of individuals known as the Johnston Brothers, who ended up killing six people in Chester County (Pennsylvania). During the course of that investigation, relationships were entered into that were beneficial not only to the press and the public, but also to the police and investigators. Information was not (published) if an official asked a press person, "would you hold this?" Sometimes (reporters) would pass along sources to investigators to follow through. That kind of relationship, in which the reporter is part of the process and not an adversary, is important.
Police officials also have to learn to make the media a tool that's useful in completing our mission. That can be done by being open, by having a relationship in which it's possible to say, "I can't do that now, but when I can, I'll get back to you." That's how it should work on both sides. But I don't think they're being taught that mentality in journalism schools. There's a place for the media in our society to be a watchdog on the police. That's an important part of our system. But it has to be directed against corruption, against impropriety, as opposed to "Officer Jones was stopped for DUI last night."
TCR: What are your own goals for your presidency of the IACP?
CARROLL: My most important issue, the one I hope to accomplish in my year, comes under the umbrella of police officers’ safety. I don't celebrate when I hear the news that, compared to 170 officers killed last year, only 140 were killed this year. Things are improving. Don't get me wrong. But 140 killed is a problem that needs to be addressed. It is a leadership problem and a training problem. But we can reduce this in a major way (with) a tool that has already been proven to have saved 3, 000 lives. (I’m speaking of) protective vests. Today, 60 percent of police chiefs do not require their officers to wear those vests. Most provide the vests, but don't require them to be worn. Some don't even provide it at all. I don't think anyone should ever have to knock on someone's door and say their loved one was killed, while the vest is hanging in their office completely usable. This is not a question of money. The vests cost $800 apiece, and the federal government pays 50 percent. Getting them is not the problem. It's just a question of making them wear the vest.
Some unions say the vests aren't comfortable, but it's a helluva lot more uncomfortable to have your family go to a funeral. The vests are very thin. they're not uncomfortable, and they protect you. If I catch one of my group when they're working without a vest they've got a problem, and they know it.
TCR: Other priorities?
CARROLL: My second priority is related to the first. If you look at how officers are getting seriously injured or killed, the perpetrator who starts the violence has a one-second or two- second jump on the officer reacting to that violence. There are things we can do to cut down on that reaction time to give the officer a better chance of surviving. (One) is to study every segment of that incident---not to blame the officer for doing something wrong, but to look for an indicator that the officer didn't see. You can then train other officers to look for (that indicator), and maybe save a half second or second in reaction time. We are in talks right now with the Northwestern University Center for Public Safety (to create) a center for the study of violence against police. It will come up with training keys for officers to look for, to keep them on their toes. It's going to save lives.
TCR: Beyond that, are you concerned about institutionalizing some of the changes that the latest generation of police executives have brought to policing, especially since some of the leaders of that generation, such as Bill Bratton of Los Angeles, have moved on.
CARROLL: We have the number one police leadership program in the world, but it's only been attended by less than 1,500 officers so far. We want to get to the level of a national academy, so when you go to look for an executive job, in addition to entering the FBI National Academy on your resume you can also show that you completed the IACP leadership program.
Access to Obama Administration
TCR: Are you finding any traction with the new administration in Washington DC?
CARROLL: In the Bush administration the (law enforcement) budget was either zeroed out, or the funding that state and local law enforcement relied on was reduced. We had to go to Congress to fight to get it put back---and then just at the level of 60 percent of what we needed. There was no access for many of the law-enforcement associations, including the IACP, to the executive branch of the government. (We) were peripheral; we sat down at high levels for half an hour, and that was the end of it.
That's all changed. I’m not making a political comment when I say this, but we are being asked for our opinions. And our answers are being considered. (Last month) I was in DC and I met with the two closest people to the Secretary of Homeland Security. I met with the new drug czar. I met with the head of the US marshals. They all wanted to know what was important to our members, how they can help us. I've met twice with the Vice President on law enforcement issues. We have access that we hadn't had before.
TCR: Will that access lead to more money?
CARROLL: It's very hard to predict, because of the economy. The total stimulus package was $4 billion for law enforcement. We're really looking for that attitude (of support) to turn over to the executive budget presented in Congress. I think that’s going to happen. We're going to see the importance of law enforcement in (the budget), which is the only way state and local police get money from the federal government. It goes to the states that comes from Congress through the states to local police.
TCR: You need money for better technology, more cops?
CARROLL: Both. (President Obama) has indicated the importance he places on our priorities by what he did with the stimulus program. But as much as he made some people happy, he made a lot of people mad. There is a small group that got the grants -- God bless’em-- but there was a bigger group that got told no. He knows he has to do something to rectify the situation.
TCR: A persistent complaint is that many law enforcement resources are being diverted to Homeland security
CARROLL: It's a disbursement of funds issue. We always dealt with Justice. But once Homeland security appeared, a lot of disbursement was transferred to Homeland Security and then to the states through a person who represented FEMA or its equivalent. That meant fire people and rescue people. So you'll find firehouses full of brand-new equipment, while police departments didn't get (basic) stuff. You'll probably hear that before they couldn't get a fire truck and we got a police car. But there has to be a middle ground. And we need someone in law enforcement to (be involved) in those decisions. As in every other area of emergency, police officers are first responders. But in terrorism the only duty of a first responder is to clean up the mess. That's not what police officers do. We are preventers when it comes to terrorism, and we need to have the means, the education and the training to operate as preventers, as opposed to first responders. That's something the government needs to pick up on.
TCR: Legislation to create a national commission on criminal justice or the bill is currently pending. The IACP has had issues with it. How do you feel now?
CARROLL: We want a commission that looks at all aspects of the criminal justice system, from pre-arrest and prevention to arrest, incarceration, trial, conviction -- the whole process. The model is 1965 when President Johnson had his commission on crime. I don't think this is going to be as revolutionary, but we’re looking for something that could codify the responsibilities of law enforcement, the judiciary, the corrections system, so there's more working together instead of bumping heads. There is so much bureaucracy in our system. That wastes time and effort. It doesn't have to be that way.
TCR: Are you concerned about the fact that criminal justice has dropped lower in the national agenda over the past few years, partly as a result of the reported drop in crime, and because other issues seem much higher right now. Are policymakers and the media dropping the ball?
CARROLL: When the crime rate goes down, they pull the funding; and when it goes up they put the funding back. It's a roller coaster, and that concerns us. Health care, Afghanistan and Iraq are all important issues, but they're going to be solved in the next 10 to 15 years. The crime problem is never going to be solved unless we make it a priority in our political agenda, as well as the social agenda.
Quality of Life Policing
TCR: From the perspective of your members what are the crime threats out there?
CARROLL: Crime statistics don't (reflect) the quality of life. That's reflected by everyone's personal experience, where they live, and how they get along. In most areas, there is a reduction in violent crime, homicides, assault, rape. But quality-of-life crimes, burglaries, robberies, assault below the level of aggravated, have not been reduced. There's more confrontation between citizens than there has been in the past.
(We know) that you will make a greater impact on your community if you arrest the 18-year-old who was baseball-batting mailboxes than by arresting the homicide, the one guy who killed his wife. The community is more interested in you taking care of the vandalism than what happened in that person's house. Of course it's equally important to catch the killer.
TCR: Are you comfortable with the evidence-based movement underway now to reduce prison populations?
CARROLL: I don't know enough about it to comment, but I'm suspicious of rules being made by people who don't know the reality of the situation. It's much different studying a situation a week or month or a year later than living through it. (My recommendation) is that when you are dealing with these studies, don't leave the law enforcement community out of discussions. That's where the rubber meets the ground, and where the reintegrated felon is going to make it or not within the community.
Read full entry »A panel of politicians is trying to get to the bottom of what went wrong with Minnesota's Metro Gang Strike Force, which seized money and property from people never accused of a crime — and then took the property for personal use, reports the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The joint legislative panel convened at the Capitol to review a pair of reports that say some officers of the now-defunct Metro Gang Strike Force committed behavior that was "shocking" and listed a litany of abuses.
It also listed some valuable property that it appeared task force officers took from people in cases that resulted in no criminal charges, and it said that some of the officers took the property home for personal use or sold it to friends and relatives. "The panel was struck by the number of large-screen and flat-screen televisions, along with electronics and computer equipment, that officers seized in case after case," said the report, written by former federal prosecutor Andrew Luger and retired FBI agent John Egelhof.
Read full entry »
Dr. Delores Jones-Brown, a former New Jersey prosecutor and director of John Jay College’s Center on Race, Crime and Justice, responds to Paul Butler’s recent interview with The Crime Report
Far too many Americans blame conditions in “high crime” areas solely on the people that reside there. They either choose to ignore—or they are ignorant of—the legally enforced discriminatory practices that led to the creation and perpetuation of these racially or ethnically segregated enclaves.
The peril of being black and living in certain neighborhoods is captured in the closing lines of a story published in the 2007 issue of DonDiva magazine on the controversial shooting, the year before, of Sean Bell by plainclothes New York City police officers: This criminal justice thing is a game at the highest level and our communities are suckers for playing in it,” the article said. “If you can avoid it stay away from it; but...unfortunately for the Sean Bells of the world, even that might not be enough.”
This is the reality captured by Paul Butler in his just-published book, “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice” – and which he discussed in his recent interview with The Crime Report. Some may question his argument that drug prohibition, and in particular the way that drug laws are enforced, has not only robbed the American legal system of its legitimacy, but has also created a significant counter-culture where going to prison or some form of involvement with the criminal justice system is the norm for many Americans of color. But, I wholeheartedly agree.
Like Prof. Butler, I am an African American former prosecutor having served in the Monmouth County, New Jersey prosecutor’s office for three years. My point of view is also informed by my experience as a social scientist conducting empirical research on the police use of informants, as an academic who has studied issues of race and justice for more than 20 years, and as a member of the so-called “black middle-class.”
The truth is, most Americans fail to understand how the criminal justice system affects a large segment of the population. Our country was founded on high-minded legal principles that were developed during a period of overt racial and ethnic discrimination, and we are currently still experiencing the implications of that paradox.
For a vivid illustration of what that means, DonDiva magazine is a good place to start. It will probably not be familiar to many readers of this site, but for a certain audience it is known as the “Original Street Bible.” Its 2007 anniversary issue makes clear why. Multiple articles focus on information intended to be useful to those at risk of confronting the criminal justice system. For instance, one piece warned of the FBI’s ability to use cell phones as microphones for eavesdropping on private conversations. Another described the differences between misdemeanors and felonies under federal versus state law. One was titled “Five essential things to know about a criminal case.” And yet another was headlined “Conspiracy law and you!” DonDiva is just one example of the cottage media industry that has arisen to address members of communities where the expectation and probability of involvement in the justice system, regardless of guilt or innocence, is high.
Such is the legacy of racialized justice that Paul Butler’s work highlights. Because the law has been used over time as a tool of oppression for some groups and an instrument of progress for others, it is questionable whether Americans can ever reach complete consensus as to what is “just,” and which behaviors warrant punishment and under what circumstances. But it is indisputable that residents of some communities have come to accept the inevitability of getting “caught up” in “the system.”
Prominent scholars such as Robert Sampson and William Julius Wilson use terms such as “concentrated poverty” and “socially isolated” to describe the communities where Butler notes that “catching a charge” is like “catching a cold” Through no choice of their own, children born into those environments begin a process of social learning that is antithetical to much of what we think of as “conventional” ways of thinking and behaving. From the work of Elijah Anderson, we know that even those who are fortunate enough to have “decent” family backgrounds and training must still learn to survive in environments marked by physically inadequate facilities, unsafe and under-funded schools, limited legitimate recreational outlets, virtually non-existent legitimate employment opportunities, and a criminal justice system that presumes their criminality.
In these communities, the police use criminals to inform on others and then reward the criminal informants. In his book, Prof. Butler argues that the “Stop Snitchin" movement is a legitimate response to this situation. My current research suggests he is right. The practice of using informants is particularly prevalent within drug enforcement. Some of those informed on are guilty of crimes; some are not. Either way, this practice sends a mixed message about whether “crime pays,” and creates an environment where no one can be trusted. It is easy to victimize (even violently) those from whom you feel socially distant.
Butler’s call for jury nullification is a desperate cry for relief from a “war” that, with few exceptions, has created tremendous harm within a finite group (African Americans) that many have argued it was intended to help (see for example the federal mandatory prison sentences originally created to punish crack cocaine offenses). I understand Butler’s frustration but firmly believe that even among those most harmed by the enforcement of drug laws, there is still a desire to believe that “the system” can work or that at the very least, that they can win “the game” by playing within the existing rules (with nullification being the exception not the rule). Grassroots organizations and others have lobbied for change in drug legislation and are seeing some measure of success. As we continue to document the harm caused by drug prohibition, perhaps it won’t take the 10 to 50 years mentioned by Butler, to move away from criminalization and toward some more meaningful approach to addressing the social demand for mind altering substances.
Butler also raises the question about whether young African American lawyers should avoid careers as prosecutors. I can understand his doubts, but I see the matter differently. While a black prosecutor may not be able to affect overarching systemic change, he or she can still provide a different perspective in an otherwise all-white “justice” environment—an environment that, in any given case, might be affected by unwarranted conscious or subconscious racial presumptions. In my experience, such presumptions, if left unaddressed, can result in a myriad of unjust outcomes—ranging from the over-prosecution of a factually innocent minority defendant to undue leniency for a factually guilty white defendant, particularly where a minority victim is involved.
The generic fear of “black” crime or of crime by other visible minorities, leads to generalized suspicion and increased surveillance of people who visually or by language or dialect fall into groups that have been stereotyped as criminal. There is mounting evidence that being educated and gainfully employed does not prevent innocent members of minority groups from suffering under these overgeneralizations. A black prosecutor who has had a similar experience may more easily (than a non-black counterpart) recognize such an injustice when it occurs and take action to correct it. In my opinion, therefore, having prosecutors who come from varying backgrounds has the potential to increase the quality of justice in individual cases, even if it doesn’t change the world. Sometimes that is as good as it gets.
Dr. Delores Jones-Brown is a Professor in the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Further reading on "Stop Snitching":
"Beyond Unreliable: How Snitches Contribute to Wrongful Convictions" and "Snitching: The Institutional and Communal Consequences" by Alexandra Natapoff, Loyola Law Review
"Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't" by Marc Lamont Hill, PopMatters.com
Read full entry »
A new report by the ACLU and the Rights Working Group analyzed racial profiling by federal, state and local law enforcement in all 50 states, including post-9/11 profiling of Muslim, Arab and South Asian persons, as well as Latinos. The report says racial profiling is "widespread and pervasive," and that Department of Justice guidelines actually "promote" profiling.
Click here to read the report.
Use The Crime Report for more information on Racial Profiling, Immigration and Homeland Security Issues.
Read full entry »New York City police officers made more than 170,000 stops of people on the streets in the first three months of 2009, the most for any quarter in the eight years since the department began reporting the data. The figures are part of the Police Department’s quarterly report, “Stop, Question and Frisk Activity.” The department must divulge the numbers to the City Council under a law enacted in 2001 after the fatal police shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, in 1999.
The report, released to the City Council on May 1 and made public by the New York Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday, says the stops made from January through March of this year was an 18 percent increase over the previous record for a quarter. The ACLU also charged that the report shows that a disproportionate number of blacks and Latinos were among those stopped. The Police Department has defended the program, saying the practice of stopping, and sometimes frisking, people in high-crime neighborhoods has been effective.
Read full entry »
