Solutions to Ease Tension

As we know there are obviously tensions present in communities with high police presence and minority residents. That tension is caused by the harassment to the people by the police due to the "stop and frisk" policy, a violation that nobody should have to go through. Solutions to these tensions should be less random frisking and more concentrated. Don't stop people on a regular block just cause its dark. Stop people loitering on a busy corner known for drug activity and disorderly conduct. Don't ignore the people standing on the corner and keep driving or keep walking. Loitering is a crime after all, walking on the street is not, freedom of movement.

If police officers picked the right laws to enforce things would be good, because the good guys would go about their business freely and the bad guys will stand out, standing on a corner and going in and out of a building, and be apprehended. More experience officers should conduct stop and frisks if they must be done due to the fact that they have an idea of the people in a neighborhood and how to not make a person feel violated or humiliated. Opposed to sending these rookies out with orders to be aggressive, remember they're rookies, so they're scared as hell. So them being so scared cause them to think about only them and leads them to disrespect the people they're protecting, therefore humiliating and making an innocent person feel violated. The P.D should also consider that 4% number, we think it means something you should too, it means stop and frisk is not producing worthy results. So stop telling them to police aggressive and tell them to look out for specific things, like robberies,murders, rapes, drug transactions and users. All offenses that the city is plagued with, I could imagine the amount of unsolved murders that's just going nowhere and the cops are harassing us instead of getting the rapists murderers and muggers.

Simply do the right things as a Police force and the People would do the right thing and give support to and give respect to the police; which is a very hard to find at this tense hostile time for minority relations with police. You can't just go around violating your supporters, then you just won't have any.

You must Violate Peoples' Rights!

I always like to look up when I'm criticizing any kind of structural organization. Especially government, whenever things have to do with government, there is almost always a chain command present. That means that commands go down the line from the top. Being either the Police Commissioner or the Mayor, all the way to the officer hearing the command from their supervisor and having to carry it out on the streets. I say the Mayor, because the Commissioner is appointed by and takes orders from the Mayor. Commands lead to quotas, numerical production requirements, that must be satisfied or else. There is no direct stop and frisk quota but there is a quota on the stop and frisk reports that are filed, UF-250 forms.

This is very bad because rookies are flooding to the streets with orders to "police aggressively", that is write summonses, make stops, and make arrests. These officers' jobs are getting harder everyday because of the strict orders giving to them to fill their quotas. Its not a win-win for these officers. If they meet the quota, they face more civilian complaints; if they don't make the quota they face poor performance evaluations, reassignment, and even placement in the performance monitoring program that could impair their career and even their personal life.

So now why are minorities harassed so much for real, its not the officers they're only following orders. It must be due to the Head Commander, the Mayor. Keep crime low harass minorities, that sounds like it, I wonder. Still don't let the cops office cause they're doing their job, when we give them a hard time and question them and do not act with compliance we're doing our job, that is taking our rights that we should already have that are slowly disintegrating.



Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn: STOP, QUESTION, FRISK: RACIAL PROFILING AT SEVENTH AVENUE F-TRAIN STATION
PBA Magazine, Summer 2005 | Stop-and-Frisk Quotas: A time bomb ready to explode

Your 4th Amendment Right and the Butchering of it!

We as residents of the United States have rights "guaranteed" to us. The first set of rights, the bill of rights, were the first ten amendments of the U.S Constitution. Specific rights make us feel safe and secure in our everyday lives, like the right to say whatever you want except for threats of crime, and the right to assemble peacefully. All of these make you feel secure but if this one is infringed on legally or not, you will feel some sort of violation. This right is, The Fourth Amendment, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seize, to be reasonable the authorities should have a warrant to search and seize anything unless they have probable cause. Probable cause is the reasonable belief that a crime has been committed and the person being stopped has some kind of involvement in that crime. A seizure has different degrees, a low degree can be when you are stopped and aren't free to leave because the officer is physically stopping you or showing their authority, by speaking at a certain tone or blocking your path. The highest degree is arrest, where you obviously can't just walk away. A personal search is more than a frisk, a pat-down of your outer garments, its a search where an office actually puts their hands inside your garments.


So more butchering of the amendment is now the requirement for a stop and frisk, reasonable suspicion. Interesting police don't need a warrant due to probable cause, police don't need probable cause due to reasonable suspicion. how much more butchering can this amendment take, what's next the standard lowered to assumption observation, they must have made a reasonable observation to assume criminal offense. You put your hand in your pants pocket then in your jacket pocket, and what they observed you switch pockets leading them to assume you moved a weapon to a bigger pocket. It sounds ludicrous, but with the way things are going, why not let the police violate us a little more, they haven't stopped. So something designed to make us feel safe and secure in our neighborhoods has been butchered and now justifies the violation of our rights and personal or even public humiliation.

And if your a youth and your parents or anyone tells you if a police officer stops you obey and do what they say unless they tell you don't move exercise your fifth amendment right to remain silent and your right to be left alone. And if they say you can't leave, say "Why, what is your main purpose for stopping me, how did I give satisfy your reasonable suspicion by walking home". Don't be afraid say it, I wish I knew all that I do now about a year ago. I tell you this because we should all stand up for our rights, butchered or not, their still ours. And if they dear arrest you and charge you with resisting arrest or disorderly conduct you better hit your head on the roof of that impala so you can have a bruise to show so you can sue their asses.

Stand up for your rights people of all colors because if you don't they'll just stand over them, let them know we mean business Civil Rights Business.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Resent and Tension in Communities, the Downside

The stop and frisk policy is aimed at getting weapons off the street, high crime streets. Although that's a good aim, a good intention, the plain truth of the matter is that the majority of civilians, including the youth, in "high crime" minority areas are not armed. I can say that, because, I know that most people are not violent gun possessing offenders; even I've been a victim to this violation of rights, and I wasn't in possession of a firearm and never have been. This must be obvious to police too, if they know the the stats and they have to, that 4% of all these " stops and frisks" led to an arrest. If you've stopped over half a million people in certain areas of a city and have only made 4% arrests, that must tell something to the police force. And when a person is stopped and is unarmed and innocent it just brings about a feeling of hostility towards the police as a whole not just one officer, because of the people knowing that the good and bad cops overuse their authority with this tactic and aggression, and that just builds social tension and personal tension with people in the communities and police. In an independent survey conducted by myself the results were no surprise, they are as follows:



82.4% of People between the ages of 16-19 said that they would feel hostility or tension towards police officers if stopped and questioned while being unarmed. 82.4% of the people that answered yes also said they lived in crime burdened neighborhoods. 17.6% of people surveyed said they would feel no hostility or tension, most of those that said no lived in areas unburdened by crime.

My point again the more the police stop and question civilians in crime burdened areas is the more they build the tension between the police and community members. The police need to do more observation and less initiation, to reduce the tension that is building very fast, a tension that will not help their crime fighting efforts, and quite possibly undermine them. Whats more important, trying to get guns off the street in a bad neighborhood with no reason and only racial profiling, with the people against you; or actually getting guns off the street with more observation ,and less initiation, violate the bad guys and not the good guys with the people for you and making your job easier.



"Stop & Frisk" Report - Chapter 2, Part 1
Stop and Frisk – Who's Being Searched? (Gotham Gazette, October 9, 2007)

Guidelines for Stop and Frisk

The fourth amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure has been trample and distorted by the patriot act, justifying injustice and violation of rights in the name of national security.

Someone may wonder, how do these police officers go about stopping people? Well they should go about it by following the guidelines set up by the federal government and/or impartial rational reasoning produced by experience, not based on skin color or community. The federal standards for stop and frisk were set in a landmark Supreme Court case, Terry v. Ohio in 1968. The ruling made probable cause unnecessary to make stops on the street, they said an officer needs articulate "reasonable suspicion", a belief, based on experience, observation, and/or prior knowledge, that the person is in the process of carrying out a crime. New York has its own standards that are more subtle and have been established in People v. Debour. The Debour levels of stop and frisk were established, where escalating levels of intrusion of a stop are categorized into four levels. To initiate any kind of questioning, either harmless inquiry or intimidating interrogation police must have an objective or credible reason, not necessarily initial criminal suspicion for their questioning. Alot of people do not know, I didn't, Federal and New York have made it clear that you have the right to not answer or physically evade questions without the fear of pursuit and you may even refuse to provide proof of identity, all legal. New York Courts have also established that police officers may not base "reasonable suspicion" on the refusal to provide proof of identity and/or the disregarding and evading of questioning.
The levels of intrusion are as follows:

• The first level of intrusion is harmless police questioning, that you don't have to answer or adhere to, of your identity, reason for being where you are, and travel plans; they must have an objective and credible reason still to ask these questions; still a "stop" has not occured.

• The second level of is when an officer closely and intensly questions a citizen to gain information beyond travel plans, still not a stop because the citizen has the right to leave legally; at the second level the officer must have suspicion that crime is afoot.
  
• The third level is when the citizen is actually detained and now a stop has occurred. In order to make an official stop where a citizen is not able to walk or exercise their right to be left alone a police officer must "entertain reasonable suspicion that a particular person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a felony or misdemeanor." An officer may frisk a suspect if the officer feels that he/she poses a threat of physical injury in the event of the detainee being armed.
• The fourth level of intrusion is the arrest itself. At this arresting level the officer must have probable cause that the detainee has committed a crime or offense in his presence.

Also a bulge in the pocket is not enough to warrant a stop because it could be any object. A waistband bulge is enough to warrant an official stop because it could be a gun; the touching of the waistband or waist area upon questioning could lead an officer to believe that the person possesses a weapon and lead to a frisk being performed. The only way a stop can be made due to a pocket bulge is if the shape of the bulge can be articulated and defined by the officer as a firearm.





Police Practices and Civil Rights in New York City
"Stop & Frisk" Report - Chapter 2, Part 1

A Violation of Civil Rights

NYPD Stop and Frisk Policy, is it a basic policy crime fighting policy or is it more a violation of constitutionally guaranteed rights. Stop and frisk has been going since 1998 in an effort to combat crime before it initially happens but through this effort statistics have unfortunately led to racial profiling. The statistics are that according to witnesses and victims 68.5% of all murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults are black. Discrimination and racial profiling is inexcusable, the NYPD should be impartial and act solely on their knowledge and investigative experience, not on the color of an innocent civilians skin. Over 50% of people subject to stop and frisk were minority last year; 55% Blacks, 30% Hispanics, and 15% Whites, blacks make up 24% of New Yorkers and whites make up 34.5%. Out of all of these stops only 4% of them led to an arrest, violation of civil rights for barely any productivity. This means that approximately 21,000 arrests were made out of 508,540 people stopped. The police increase their presence in the high crime areas, due to residents complaining and asking for it, to protect innocent civilians from criminal harassment. The conflict is that in the eyes of the law abiding residents the same police become suspects of harassment and the majority of innocent civilians become victims to it and to the indiscretion and partial unreasonable judgement of police officers. Then being victimized by the "protector" and "law-enforcement" officer leads to cumulative tensions between innocent law abiding residents, the majority in these high crime areas, and police officers patrolling the neighborhood.






http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-02-07hm.html
http://blogs.nyls.edu/khiggins/2007/02/the_nypd_stop_and_frisk_data.html