Hey, Ray Kelly, Frisk This

Before signing a bill into law on July 16 that was introduced by State Senator Eric Adams (formerly a police officer for 22 years) and Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, Governor Paterson was bullied by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to veto the legislation.

The new law prohibits the NYPD from continuing to include—in a bottomless computer database—personal information (names and addresses, etc.) of New Yorkers, nearly 80 percent of the total being blacks or Latinos, who are stopped, questioned, and frisked by police.

Since 2004, there have been nearly three million (that is not a typo) of these police stops of people who look “suspicious,” are maybe “furtive,” or who go into a public housing project without a key (in New York City, not Tehran).

Newscom

Related Stories

• Police Commissioner Ray Kelly: Mayoral Candidates Don't Understand Terrorists' "Enduring Obsession With New York"
  September 10, 2013
• An (Early) Handicapping Of Some Possible Candidates For The Next NYPD Commissioner
  September 23, 2013
• NYPD Officers Suing Chopper Companies for Crash-Landing
  September 24, 2013
• Bloomberg Hates Eric Holder's NYPD Federal Monitor, Calls It a "Terrible Idea"
  June 14, 2013
• Tabloids Completely Freak Out Over City Council's Vote for More Oversight of the NYPD
  August 23, 2013

More About

• Michael Bloomberg
• Ray Kelly
• David Paterson
• World Politics
• U.S. State Politics

The fact that nearly 90 percent of all those stopped are indeed actually innocent—having neither been arrested nor handed a summons—is immaterial, say Kelly and Bloomberg. You see, they say that some of those who appear to be innocent may well eventually turn out to be persons of actual criminal interest. The database will tell the NYPD where to find them.

Before David Paterson showed—not for the first time, but not often enough—that he has a spine, our agitated Police Commissioner said of the proposed law: “It makes no sense!” (The New York Times, July 3).

Forgive me for being personal, Commissioner Kelly, but try role reversal. If you were black or Latino, in some other job, the odds are considerable that as you walked our streets, you would be among the hordes who were suddenly and inexplicably stopped. And in this residentially segregated city, you would probably live in one of these neighborhoods of color where the very great majority of stop-and-frisks occur.

In Martin Luther King’s time, Bull Connor’s police in Alabama used fire hoses, clubs, dogs, and fists on blacks. Ray Kelly’s cops are not of that brutal ilk, though they’ll sometimes slam a reluctant person being questioned against a wall or onto the ground. But many of this city’s blacks and Latinos, young and old, have come to feel like illegal immigrants on the streets of Phoenix.

And if you, a black citizen, had not been busted or handed a summons by the cops when stopped, your innocence would be tentative. Before Governor Paterson acted, you, Mr. Kelly, would be on a computer list of suspects.

Even now, with this law signed by the Governor, New Yorkers can be stopped again and again. What this law does not end—and why there will continue to be court action by the NYCLU and more bills in the legislature—was explained by the NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman (Daily News, July 4): “In many communities [of color], residents are at risk of being stopped and questioned by police officers every time they step outside. Each trip to work, the subway or the store can result in an unpleasant encounter with law enforcement for no good reason.”

The New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who has been tenaciously on this shame-of-New-York story, puts the continual risk more intimately: “People are made to feel low, intimidated, worthless, helpless. They dread the very sight of the police” (July 6). That includes kids of color too, Commissioner Kelly.

Sir, does it make sense to continue treating these New Yorkers as second-class citizens, or not citizens at all?

I don’t know if Chancellor Joel Klein requires our public schools to teach the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. The latter has been called “the second American Revolution” by some constitutionalists because it declares, without reservation, that neither the federal government—nor any state—shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Commissioner Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg, your stop-and-frisk approach trashes the Fourteenth Amendment. So while Governor Paterson merits our cheers for not being at all intimidated by you, a lot more has to be done to bring the Constitution back into New York City.

A co-sponsor of the bill, Assemblyman Jeffries, reminded all of us (The New York Times, July 16) that the signing of the bill was “the beginning point, not the end point, of a larger evaluation of the effectives and legitimacy” of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk electronic dragnet.

Since there will continue to be stops, questions, frisks—and some arrests—I would be grateful, Commissioner Kelly, for your reaction to this tiny but very inflammatory story buried at the very bottom of page 14 in the July 10 Daily News, “Cuffed Brooklyn Woman Hit Back at Cops.”

The story describes that, in a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, two Brooklyn women, Taneisha Chapman and Markeena Williams, “claim they were wrongfully arrested by the NYPD after following the advice of a flyer (by the American Civil Liberties Union) entitled: ‘What should you do if stopped by the police?’ ”

When stopped by cops last August outside the Marcy Houses and asked to produce identification, they showed the flyer (commendably issued by the office of Assemblyman Nick Perry, Democrat, East Flatbush) that says—and James Madison would have fully approved—“It’s not a crime to refuse to answer questions. You can’t be arrested for merely refusing to identify yourself on the street.”