7-3-2012
http://news.yahoo.com/insight-under-siege-stop-frisk-polarizes-york-050442831.html
Let Me See Your Papers:
"Stop and frisk" polarizes New York
Telly Hudgins has been stopped and frisked by the police too many times to count in the Brownsville, New York, public housing project where he lives. One occasion sticks in his memory. "I had my pajamas on and my slippers on and I'm emptying my garbage" at the trash chute. "They asked me for ID to prove I lived there. Who walks around in their pajamas with ID?" asked the black, 35-year-old counselor for the mentally handicapped. He says he complained about the search and was issued a summons for disorderly conduct.
Police stops in New York City have climbed steadily to more than 685,000 last year from nearly 161,000 in 2003.
A Reuters analysis of more than 3 million stops from 2006 through 2011 shows that by far the densest concentrations fell in areas of public housing, home to many of the city's poorest families and where 90 percent of residents are black or Hispanic. Although one would expect a heavy concentration of police stops in these densely populated areas, the stop rate is disproportionate: In 2011, police stopped people in these areas at a rate more than three times higher than elsewhere in the city, the analysis found.
The study also shows that more than half the searches happened not on the streets and paths around these buildings but inside them - in stairwells, lobbies and corridors.
Last spring, years after the pajama incident, Hudgins stepped out of an elevator in his building as a pair of cops were getting in. As it often does on Mondays, Hudgins said, the elevator smelled of alcohol. Police stopped him, saying they suspected he was drinking alcohol from the cup in his hand. They insisted he hand over his drink, sniffed it, and told him it smelled like alcohol, Hudgins said. No, he insisted; it was a mix of iced tea and lemonade. There in the lobby of his own building, at the age of 34 and with no criminal record, Hudgins was issued two tickets - one for disorderly conduct and another for having an alcoholic beverage in an open container.
Hudgins had had enough. He filed a formal complaint with the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board. Both summonses were eventually dismissed, according to court records provided by Hudgins. "You can be stopped on any given day, for anything," he said. "It's humiliating."
Vanessa Chandler, 47, who is black, said she has lived in city housing on Brownsville's Sutter Avenue since she was a child, and that aggressive policing in the area is intrusive.
"If I go back to my building in the morning because I forgot my bus pass, they are on you with, Why did you go into that building and back out again?' Or if I walk outside to check the weather and go back in, it's the same thing," she said. "I mean, don't you step outside to check the weather where you live, officer?"
http://news.yahoo.com/insight-under-siege-stop-frisk-polarizes-york-050442831.html
Let Me See Your Papers:
"Stop and frisk" polarizes New York
Telly Hudgins has been stopped and frisked by the police too many times to count in the Brownsville, New York, public housing project where he lives. One occasion sticks in his memory. "I had my pajamas on and my slippers on and I'm emptying my garbage" at the trash chute. "They asked me for ID to prove I lived there. Who walks around in their pajamas with ID?" asked the black, 35-year-old counselor for the mentally handicapped. He says he complained about the search and was issued a summons for disorderly conduct.
Police stops in New York City have climbed steadily to more than 685,000 last year from nearly 161,000 in 2003.
A Reuters analysis of more than 3 million stops from 2006 through 2011 shows that by far the densest concentrations fell in areas of public housing, home to many of the city's poorest families and where 90 percent of residents are black or Hispanic. Although one would expect a heavy concentration of police stops in these densely populated areas, the stop rate is disproportionate: In 2011, police stopped people in these areas at a rate more than three times higher than elsewhere in the city, the analysis found.
The study also shows that more than half the searches happened not on the streets and paths around these buildings but inside them - in stairwells, lobbies and corridors.
Last spring, years after the pajama incident, Hudgins stepped out of an elevator in his building as a pair of cops were getting in. As it often does on Mondays, Hudgins said, the elevator smelled of alcohol. Police stopped him, saying they suspected he was drinking alcohol from the cup in his hand. They insisted he hand over his drink, sniffed it, and told him it smelled like alcohol, Hudgins said. No, he insisted; it was a mix of iced tea and lemonade. There in the lobby of his own building, at the age of 34 and with no criminal record, Hudgins was issued two tickets - one for disorderly conduct and another for having an alcoholic beverage in an open container.
Hudgins had had enough. He filed a formal complaint with the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board. Both summonses were eventually dismissed, according to court records provided by Hudgins. "You can be stopped on any given day, for anything," he said. "It's humiliating."
Vanessa Chandler, 47, who is black, said she has lived in city housing on Brownsville's Sutter Avenue since she was a child, and that aggressive policing in the area is intrusive.
"If I go back to my building in the morning because I forgot my bus pass, they are on you with, Why did you go into that building and back out again?' Or if I walk outside to check the weather and go back in, it's the same thing," she said. "I mean, don't you step outside to check the weather where you live, officer?"
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