Mayor Bloomberg’s Apartheid Policing Extends To New York’s Schools

Critics contend Mayor Bloomberg’s and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s police have a racially-biased attitude when it comes to dealing with Blacks and Latinos in this city; especially young males.

[Police Watch]

The number of Black students arrested by the New York Police Department’s School Safety Division was 12 times higher than that of their White counterparts, according to a report released on May 30, 2012, by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).

The analysis further states that 96 percent of the 327 arrests made in the first quarter of this year were of Black or Latino students. Blacks make up a mere 31 percent of the student population, and Latinos make up 40 percent.

“It tells us that instead of dealing with unruly kids’ misbehavior in school with a trip to the principal’s office, our schools are dealing with it with the police,” Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU, told NY1 News. “We are sending the police in to treat our kids like criminal suspects which puts them right on the path from school to prison.”

The numbers reflect the discriminatory policing strategy such as stop-and-frisk that the New York Police Department practices in African American neighborhoods.

A record number of Black people, 685,724, were subjected to the NYPD’s discriminatory and illegal stop-and-frisk policing last year. During the first quarter of this year, already an astonishing 203,000 have been ensnared.

Critics contend Mayor Bloomberg’s and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s police have a racially-biased attitude when it comes to dealing with Blacks and Latinos in this city; especially young males.

Last week top New York lawmakers called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the NYPD’s Apartheid style Stop-and-Frisk practices.

With these alarming statistics, and the NYPD’s history of killing unarmed Black men it’s clear that the U.S. Department of Justice needs to intervene in the affairs of the NYPD to prevent the rights of New Yorkers from further being violated and to prevent the loss of lives of any more unarmed Black men at the hands of the very officers who are sworn to protect them.

On May 16, 2012 a federal judge approved a class action lawsuit against the NYPD, which charges that they have violated and continue to violate the fourth and fourteenth amendment rights of millions of New Yorkers on a daily basis.

Thousands of New Yorkers will gather on Father’s Day, June 17th, 2012 for the “End Stop-and-Frisk Silent March Against Racial Profiling.”

For more information, please visit www.silentmarchnyc.org. Amongst those calling for the march are National Action Network’s Rev. Al Sharpton.


“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

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