If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
This week's announcement that the Justice Department is going to drop its appeal against providing the morning-after birth control pill to anyone who needs it comes as such a welcome change that we feel the award is deserved.
The Bloomberg administration's attack on the judiciary signals a disturbing new track by the mayor and his team as they continue to cling to the notion that stop-and-frisk in its current form is being applied appropriately.
If we envision a better city in which all people are safe and free from discrimination and profiling, then we need laws protecting the communities who are most targeted. Our laws need to enforce non-racist, non-homophobic, non-sexist, non-transphobic and overall non-oppressive behaviors.
Stop-and-frisk has become a lightning rod for criticism because its Jim Crow-style policing tactics are so brazen, but the reality is that it resides within a much more sophisticated security economy that relies on dark bodies to drive its astounding growth.
An appeals court recently overturned a federal judge's ruling regarding ethnic discrimination in the FDNY's hiring practices. The FDNY has been under ...
Joe Lhota may or may not be the wildest and craziest of this year's mayoral candidates. But he does have the brassiest set of balls.
Under a new administration, stop and frisk would have probably been cut back to constitutional levels. And Bloomberg would not be sounding like Rudy Giuliani.
What the mayor offered New Yorkers Tuesday was a pep rally for his failing proposition that our city has to choose between better policing and safer streets, between saving lives and protecting our Constitutional rights.
It comes as no surprise: The top NYPD official that ran stop and frisk supports the highly controversial police tactic as an effective law enforcement tool.
The most intriguing question of the current stop and frisk trial is why Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is not testifying.
Is the idea of an inspector general to monitor the NYPD as far-fetched and unworkable as Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and his claque of supporters claim?
The belief that male "black teens" are inherently more likely to be criminals is ingrained in our society. It has seeped into our institutions in the form of racial profiling, and too often it poisons the judgment of those who are supposed to protect us.
The next day as my mother brushed my hair for school, I saw a different me in the mirror. At age 8, northern, white parents had spat on me and torn my clothes for trespassing what they saw as their "turf" and I saw as school. Now, touched by King, I felt cleansed.
Although acceptance of LGBT Americans is at an all-time high, the relationship between the NYPD and this community remains fraught. An inspector general in New York can help.
For two weeks, I have sat in the lower Manhattan 15th floor courtroom of Federal Judge Shira Scheindin stunned at the testimony I was listening to with regards to "Stop and Frisk."
A shrewd move by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, appointing Phil Banks, a high-ranking black officer, as the NYPD's chief of department.
