If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
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.
Bloomberg and his crew have elevated themselves as the benevolent parents, empowered to restrict soda, discipline, and punish if necessary.
The New York Post proved last week their recklessness with the facts during the Boston bombings. Let's make sure they don't do the same thing in the important debate surrounding stop and frisk in New York City.
Stop and frisk is a valuable police tool, but its application should be amended to ensure that no one is stopped in violation of the Constitution. So how do we do that? We need to go straight to the root of why so many young people are being arrested: marijuana.
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.
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.
This week, I was joined in the studio by NYC Comptroller and newly declared mayoral candidate John C. Liu. Topics include the controversial "stop & frisk," housing and LGBT politics.
People arrested by NYPD for marijuana possession have spent 5,000,000 hours in police custody over the last decade.
In 1977, New York removed criminal penalties for private possession of marijuana and made possession in public view a criminal offense. For years, there were relatively few arrests in New York for possession of marijuana in public view -- 1990 saw about 1,000. By last year, that number had skyrocketed to 45,000.
A Brooklyn judge was apparently none too impressed by the prosecution's arguments in a trial of four men who were arrested while protesting the NYPD's...
Mayor Bloomberg's legacy is in danger of looking a lot like Governor Rockefeller's. Just like the Rockefeller Drug Laws, policing policies under Mayor Bloomberg have proven to be costly, harmful and racially biased. But it's not too late for New York to change.
Martin Luther King, as many would argue, and I would be one of them, has essentially been white washed. He's been turned into a figure to represent the civilized movement but a figure that has been stripped of all his radical politics and analysis.
Protecting rights is an integral part of protecting communities. Keeping our city safe and treating all people with dignity and respect are not mutually exclusive. The NYPD should stop and think about that.
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