Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that George Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin for “looking like he didn’t belong” in the upscale Sanford, FL neighborhood, before he hunted him down and murdered him. However, this case of racial profiling is not as rare as some may think.
New York City, the crossroads of the world, has its own version of racial profiling that is legally exclusive to the NY Police Department. It’s called “Stop and Frisk” and is causing waves of outrage in New York and beyond.
“Stop and Frisk” allows the NYPD to stop and search ANYONE they consider “suspicious.” They don’t need a legitimate reason or probable cause to stop anyone, and there is no rhyme or reason as to how they pick who to frisk. But for anyone curious about their selection process, the NYPD stopped and frisked 686,000 times last year. Out of that number, 87% were Black or Latino and 9 out of 10 were innocent. Reach your own conclusions.
Officers who don’t play along or submit a low numbers of stops and/or arrests are subject to disciplinary action. Officers who keep their numbers up are promoted to the next rank. Those who don’t are penalized with low evaluations, unwanted assignments and a negative paper trail that can follow an officer for the remainder of their police career. According to one anonymous police officer, “Instead of protecting the civilian population, police are hunting them.”
“Stop and Frisk” was recently outed by 17-year-old NY resident Alvin Melathe, who was stopped 3 times by police in just a 2 block radius — all within minutes of each other. Prior to his 3rd stop, Alvin decided to record the encounter using his cell phone and what happened next was amazing. The police on tape actively tried to bait Alvin into a fight, so that they’d have a legitimate reason to arrest him. When he didn’t give them what they wanted, they physically threatened and attacked him.
It is a remarkable peek inside the legal “racial profiling” that is happening every day of the year in a racially diverse and culturally cosmopolitan place such as New York City. WATCH:
This is crazy. Thanks for posting this DJ.