by guest blogger Gordon Shumway
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/opinion/stop-and-frisk-continued.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
I decided to post about this article because I felt like it was related to one of my previous posts on an opinion’s page regarding the NYPD targeting Young Black and Latino Males because of crime rates.
Here’s a little of what the article had to say about the “Clean Halls” program.
“Civil rights lawsuits may now force the (Bloomberg) administration to examine this policy, which has largely focused on minority neighborhoods and has created anger and distrust among black and Hispanic New Yorkers who feel that the police view them as suspects, not citizens.”
Furthermore,
“residents in buildings enrolled in the Clean Halls program are subject to being stopped and illegally ticketed or arrested for trespassing in their own buildings if they fail to produce identification when they take out the garbage, check the mail, duck out to the store for a quart of milk. Young people growing up in these buildings, lawyers say, are routinely searched without legal cause and detained”
Here’s another article, which gives more details on the lawsuit against the NYPD.
Although, I have been posting quite sometime on the current race issues which seem to be happening at a rate in which I can post about them on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, I am scratching my head as to how you could properly train this police department on racial sensitivity. Perhaps the lawsuits as the first article suggests, may force the NYPD to reevaluate the Clean Halls program.
I don't believe it is a matter of racial sensitivity rather it is a issue of the need to end racial profiling. Racial profiling is nothing new in this country and sometimes it is subtle, but the majority of the time now it is more blatant. I don't know many "minorities" who are not taught about racial profiling at very young ages, since curfew laws have been in affect for years and the laws have always focused on "urban" areas.
ReplyDeleteSo, how do we end racial profiling? People need to report the incidents along with reporting the offenders each and every time racial profiling is committed. The organizations which handle issues of race discrimination and profiling need to be contacted each time as well. I also suggest law officials (lawyers, judges, congress, senators, mayors, governors, presidents) as well as police officers need to be reprimended and removed from their jobs, if they continuously committ racial profiling.
Racial profiling is an issue here in NY State...
ReplyDeleteHere the question is that Law-Enforcement must take action when there need to...in which case some people will take it as Racial profiling.
ReplyDelete