Study: Blacks and Latinos Make up about 80% Stopped and Questioned by NYPD

Once again, New York’s Finest, the NYPD is in the news. The NYPD is on pace to have stopped and frisked 500,000 people — 80% of them black or Latino. The Center for Constitutional Rights, citing NYPD data obtained in a suit, said the vast majority of those stopped and questioned in 2005 through June 2008 weren’t charged with any crime.

In 2007, for instance, the last complete year of data, cops arrested only 5.8% of the 472,096 people they stopped (27,632). “The New York City Police Department continues to prey on African-American and Latino communities in New York City,” Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said. The center obtained half of the 2008 data but projected that 543,982 people will be stopped in the entire year if the NYPD maintained its pace. Cops made fewer than 400,000 stops in 2005.
“The problem actually is getting worse,” CCR lawyer Darius Charney said. Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD’s chief spokesman, said the number of minorities who were singled out under the policy is consistent with overall descriptions by race provided by victims and surviving witnesses of crime.

He pointed to a RAND Corp. study that found no racial profiling in its examination, “and warned against the kind of simplistic comparisons made by the center.” “Their assertions do not constitute a study of the data, but a restatement of accusations in its lawsuit,” he added. Source: NY Daily News

The statistics are pretty damning and go beyond the notion of happenstance. It seems that the NYPD has a penchant for picking on blacks and Latinos, for no other reason, but the automatic assumption that they are up to no good. Commissioner Paul Browne points to another study, but if you ask many black and Latinos males in New York City, they will tell you they were pulled over or stopped by a NYPD officer, for no other than profiling. Let me end by saying that this disturbing pattern of racial profiling is not representative of every police officer in the NYPD or across this country. There are many decent, hardworking police officers who do not engage in racial profiling or racist behavior.

Filed under: NYPD, Racial profiling, RAND Study