THE NATION REVEALS

New York Police: “We’re Going To Go Out There & Violate Some Rights”

By Elizabeth C.

NEW YORK’S FINEST ARE WAGING WAR AGAINST MINORITIES’ CIVIL RIGHTS WITH ITS “STOP-AND-FRISK” policy, resulting in nearly 700,000 body searches in 2011 — 84 percent of them on blacks and Latinos. The practice is allegedly on the wane, in part because the Bronx District Attorney’s office “essentially accus[ed] the police of wrongfully arresting people,” according to the New York Times.

But the force’s racial profiling and heavy-handed tactics — an estimated 1,800 such stops are made daily — have provoked numerous attacks on its professionalism as well as fear and loathing among New York’s black residents.

Now a secret audio obtained by The Nation captures police threatening a Harlem teenager named Alvin in June, 2011 during a “250″ stop.

“He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down,” the teen recounts in the above videotape exploring the controversial practice. “…He just kept pushing me, pushing me, it looked like he we was going to hit me. I felt like they was trying to make me resist or fight back.” When Alvin questions why they’re detaining him, the cops called him a mutt, threatened to break his arm and punch him in the face.

Alvin’s claims are bolstered by cops speaking anonymously about the department’s heavy-handed push for more “250s” — stop and frisks. “That’s exactly how some shit will go down,” one cop in silhouette says after hearing Alvin’s audio. “Just like that, just like that. People don’t like police because of the harassment. And what civilians don’t understand is that the police department is forcing us to do these unreasonable stops or we’re going to get penalized.”

An August poll found that 57 percent of white New Yorkers supported the practice while 25 percent of blacks did not.

“I know that situation,” 19-year-old “Trevor” from Brooklyn, comments on the tape. “They just don’t got no respect for us. And they wonder why we don’t have respect for them.”

One officer tells The Nation: “When I came in to the police department I wanted to help people. But the civilian population is being hunted. Instead of being protected by us, they’re being hunted, and we’re being hated.”

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly insists that community residents “want more” searches. But Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP, says, “It is time for [New York] Mayor Bloomberg to come to grips with the scale of the damage his policies have inflicted on our children and their families. No child should have to grow up fearing both the cops and the robbers.”

Via The Nation by way of Gawker.