Federal District Court Judge Shira A. Scheindlin decided May 16 to grant class-action status to a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights against the New York Police Department policy known as “stop and frisk.” Scheindlin described the NYPD’s attitude towards violating the Fourth Amendment rights of hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino people as a “deeply troubling apathy.”
This decision will allow hundreds of thousands of New York City residents who were stopped by the police for no other reason than the racial demographics of their neighborhoods to seek legal recourse. It is great to see this important case moving forward, but the fight against police brutality and racism must be fought outside of the courts as well. On the streets, the working class of NYC can demand more than simply restitution for the injured parties but an end to the conditions that produce so much injustice.
The policy of stop and frisk appears to be based on the racist idea that Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable search and seizure” do not matter in Black and Latino neighborhoods.
In 2009, 93 out of every 100 residents in Brownsville, Brooklyn, were stopped by the NYPD.
Last year, the NYPD stopped more Black youth between the ages of 14 to 24 than there are actual Black youth in the entire city.
Out of the close to 700,000 stops in 2011, 85 percent were conducted on Black and Latino people and only 1.9 percent of stops turned up weapons.
Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly argue that they are doing what it takes to “save lives,” citing that this year the city is on track to have the lowest number of murders in recorded history.
They argue that the policy has nothing to do with race and that officers are very careful to follow the laws against illegal stops and only “go where the crime is,” as Mayor Bloomberg recently stated.
What is a crime under capitalism?
French author Anatole France may have put it best when he wrote, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
When Bloomberg and the NYPD talk about going “where the crime is,” they are not referring to Wall Street, where the big banks that profit off the drug trade do their dirty work, or to the corporate high-rises in midtown, where the billionaires who outsource our jobs conduct their perfectly “legal” activities.
The law under capitalism does not consider it a crime to deny health care to the sick or jobs to the healthy. Therefore, you will never see CEOs, bankers or Pentagon generals behind bars or being arbitrarily stopped and frisked in their own neighborhoods. However, if you are a young Black man in New York City, something as minor as pulling up your pants can result in not just an unconstitutional but sometimes a deadly reaction from the NYPD.
The same politicians and billionaires who keep us without jobs, housing and health care are now trying to portray themselves as our defenders, saying they use stop and frisk to stop people from becoming victims of crime. In short, under capitalism, the villains become heroes and the victims become criminals.
Across the country, the Lindsay/Osorio campaign is involved in the fight to stop racism, racial profiling and police brutality. Whether it is racist immigration laws in Arizona, justice for Ramarley Graham in the Bronx or the FBI’s monitoring of Muslim organizations, the Party for Socialism and Liberation joins in struggling with anybody looking to replace this racist system with a just and anti-racist society.
Under a socialist government, people of color will no longer have to accept the criminalization of our communities.
Under a socialist government, the social basis for crime—poverty, drug addiction and social alienation—will be tackled head on. A job with a living wage will be made a constitutional right. Access to free, quality mental health centers and the creation of an inclusive participatory society would aim to reduce alienation and drug addiction. A socialist government would prosecute the real crime bosses, the heads of the world’s biggest banks, which finance and profit off the multi-billon dollar drug, theft and prostitution business. And it would seize the banks, place them under democratic control of the people, and use those resources in the interests of the vast majority.
Our answer to Ray Kelly, Mayor Bloomberg and the apologists of stop-and-frisk is simple and comes in chant form: “Stop and Frisk! Prison Gates! They won’t make our city safe!” Stop and frisk must stop immediately and the NYPD must be held accountable for every life affected by this racist policy.
