Nat Hentoff has a terrific column in the Village Voice on the stop and frisk tactics of the New York City Police Department. Here’s an excerpt:
Commissioner Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg, your stop-and-frisk approach trashes the Fourteenth Amendment. So while Governor Paterson merits our cheers for not being at all intimidated by you, a lot more has to be done to bring the Constitution back into New York City.
A co-sponsor of the bill, Assemblyman Jeffries, reminded all of us (The New York Times, July 16) that the signing of the bill was “the beginning point, not the end point, of a larger evaluation of the effectiveness and legitimacy” of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk electronic dragnet.
Since there will continue to be stops, questions, frisks—and some arrests—I would be grateful, Commissioner Kelly, for your reaction to this tiny but very inflammatory story buried at the very bottom of page 14 in the July 10 Daily News, “Cuffed Brooklyn Woman Hit Back at Cops.”
The story describes that, in a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, two Brooklyn women, Taneisha Chapman and Markeena Williams, “claim they were wrongfully arrested by the NYPD after following the advice of a flyer (by the American Civil Liberties Union) entitled: ‘What should you do if stopped by the police?’ ”
When stopped by cops last August outside the Marcy Houses and asked to produce identification, they showed the flyer (commendably issued by the office of Assemblyman Nick Perry, Democrat, East Flatbush) that says—and James Madison would have fully approved—“It’s not a crime to refuse to answer questions. You can’t be arrested for merely refusing to identify yourself on the street.”
Daily News reporter John Marzulli wrote: “The cops were apparently in no mood for a legal debate and hauled off both women to Brooklyn Central Booking. The unspecified criminal charges were later dismissed, according to the suit.”
Read the whole thing.
