NEW YORK, N.Y.–On Father’s Day, June 17th, the NAACP and a diverse group of civil rights activists, civil liberty advocates and outraged community members will march silently down the streets of New York City to protest stop-and-frisk policing. Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s policy, hundreds of thousands of innocent people are stopped, interrogated and humiliated by the NYPD each year simply for walking down the street, the groups says, charging that the police employ racial profiling on a daily basis, and the large majority of those stopped are Black or Latino. The NAACP released this statement:
“In 1999, when many of us were protesting the killing of Amadou Diallo, NYPD performed 80,000 stop and frisks. This year they are reportedly on pace to do 800,000. Last year they did almost 700,000.
“Approximately 90 percent of those stopped and frisked by the NYPD have been people of color. Approximately 90 percent are so completely innocent they do not receive a ticket. Approximately 99.9 percent do not have a gun.
“Bloomberg’s massive street-level racial profiling program is a civil and human rights catastrophe that both hurts our children and makes our communities less safe.
“Every year, hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers and visitors to the city are needlessly targeted for physical searches and public humiliation because of their skin color.
“Most of the victims of this form of police abuse are young. Many are forever changed by being assaulted and degraded by the very people who have sworn to protect and serve them.
“For years, many criminologists have warned that racial profiling ultimately undermines effective law enforcement. New York City’s failure to lower violent crime as far as many other major cities, suggests those criminologists have a point.
“In the 10 years Mayor Bloomberg says New York City has lowered violent crime by 29 percent with this program, other cities have done far better without it. Over the past decade, violent crime is down 37 percent in Baltimore, 49 percent in Dallas, and 56 percent in New Orleans. In Los Angeles violent crime is down by 59 percent–falling more than twice as far as it has in New York.
The “Silent March to End Stop-and-Frisk” will begin at 3 p.m. at 110th St and Fifth Ave. More information is available at www.silentmarchnyc.org
