New York Lawmakers Condemn Bloomberg’s Apartheid-style Stop-and-Frisk

According to NY1 News more than two dozen Black, Latino, and Asian city and state lawmakers sent a letter to Holder complaining about the discriminatory and illegal NYPD campaign that targets African Americans and Latinos.

[Police Watch]

Enough is enough.

A group of New York lawmakers are calling on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the New York Police Department’s racist and abusive Stop-And-Frisk practice.

According to NY1 News more than two dozen Black, Latino, and Asian city and state lawmakers sent a letter to Holder complaining about the discriminatory and illegal NYPD campaign that targets African Americans and Latinos. The lawmakers expect to travel to Washington, D.C., to meet Holder next week.

“We have to get across the message to people who believe they are safer because of this,” City Councilman Jumaane Williams of Brooklyn told NY1 News. “Not only is it racist, prejudice and violating civil rights and liberties, it’s also ineffective in doing the very thing it’s supposed to be doing.

“We cannot pretend that these current strategies are effective, that they are protecting our communities,” said Assemblyman Karim Carmara of Brooklyn. “The shootings continue, the guns are still on the street.”

Last year the NYPD reportedly stopped-and-frisked a record 685,724 people most of whom were Black, Latino or Asian with less than 6% of those stopped actually being arrested or issued summonses.

From the beginning of this year alone the NYPD illegally stopped-and-frisked more than 203,000 people. This means the NYPD under Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg could break last year’s record by more than 100,000 at the rate they’re going.

The lawmakers will meet with their federal counterparts in the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.