Some 80 concerned citizens and advocates gathered at a Mott Haven church on Nov. 16 to discuss ways to reform the city’s stop-and-frisk policing policy, which opponents argue unfairly singles out minorities for random searches by NYPD officers.
The forum was one in a series being organized by community groups and civil rights organizations to encourage communities to exchange ideas for overhauling the policy. A federal court judge mandated the forums in 2013 when he ruled on a lawsuit brought by plaintiffs who had been pulled over that stop-and-frisk is unconstitutional and discriminatory.
Three Bronx grassroots groups — Community Connections for Youth, the Osborne Association and the Northwest Bronx Clergy Coalition — organized the event at the Mott Haven Reformed Church on East 146th Street, bringing New Yorkers between 12- and 85-years-old to take part.
“No amount of any legal or police expertise can showcase what policing should look like in these communities,” said Justice Ariel E. Belen, who co-facilitated the event, along with South Bronx activist Reverend Que English.
In 2011, 675,000 people were detained under stop-and-frisk, and 95 percent of them were people of color, Belen told the group. New Yorkers were stopped by the NYPD 45,787 times in 2015, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. Fifty-four percent of those stopped were black, 29 percent Latino and 11 percent white. In its 2011 report the group found that Mott Haven and Melrose had the fourth most stops due to stop-and-frisk of all city neighborhoods, while Hunts Point had the fourth most as a percentage of the population.
The NYC Bar Association found that four out of every five stops resulted in no discovery of wrongdoing by police, making the policy more harmful than helpful because it stigmatizes minorities, they concluded.
One of the participants, Leroy Downs, is a plaintiff in Floyd v. City of New York, one of the three lawsuits.
“Something needs to be changed,” said Downs, 42. “With NYPD it is not stop and frisk, it’s stop and search. They are all over you. The blue shirts, community relations people, are cool. The Narcotics don’t deal with you the same way. They can be very aggressive, disrespectful, and at times, they escalate the situation, taking it way too far.”
Jim Fairbanks, 77, a former Mott Haven resident who now lives in Highbridge, said he wants to see a moratorium imposed on stop-and-frisk. Fairbanks, who is white, has 4 adult sons, one white and three black. He said that his 3 black sons have been pulled over and searched as part of stop-and-frisk numerous times. His white son has never been pulled over.
The larger group split up into smaller ones to discuss ideas for changing the policy. At the end of the evening, all agreed that accountability should be heightened for all NYPD officers, through annual evaluations, psychological testing and community sensitivity training.
Judge Belen’s role in the process is to collect data from about 40 focus groups and draft a report listing the recommendations to present to plaintiffs, the NYPD and the court-appointed monitor in the Floyd v. City of New York lawsuit.
The next focus group meeting will be held at noon on Saturday, November 19 at Eastchester Gardens’ Community Center.
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