The Right to Not Be Stopped.

[cross-posted from TAPPED]

From ColorLines comes this excellent video, and accompanying story, of what it feels like to be stopped and frisked by police in Brownsville, Brooklyn. That neighborhood, along with nearby neighborhoods of Crown Heights and East New York, are some of the “Impact Zones” flooded with police officers to address the sorts of low-level, quality-of-life crimes police departments believe lead to more violence. The goal is to stop individuals under legal authority to do so, no matter how tenuous the premise, and frisk them to determine if they have drugs or weapons.

The truth is, such policies probably do work to curb some violence. If it’s ok to carry a gun around, it’s much more possible that arguments that could end peacefully will instead escalate to violence. The problem is, as Chris Mitchell noted in his New York Magazine piece a few years ago, the goal of ending all murders is going to, necessarily, start butting up against individual rights. At some point, the potential for murder is a necessary consequence of living in a free world with other flawed humans.

I always try to use the above argument as an example to conservatives that I can acknowledge some things are true, but still disapprove of them because they don’t align with my values. So, it’s true that stop-and-frisk policies probably contribute to the basket of tactics that help save lives. But I’m not sure the cost we pay, that the citizens of Brownsville live in a police state, is worth it, especially since the people who usually have to put up with those kinds of intrusions of state power are poor and brown. At what level it’s worth it, and at what level it’s too much of an intrusion, are the first conversations we should be having about policing, but we’re not. In the meantime, such policies serve only to exacerbate the already worn tensions between police departments and communities of color.

quadmoniker

Monica is a reporter who lives in Washington D.C.

Latest posts by quadmoniker (see all)

  • Darth Paul

    I might be able to support “random” frisking if it was a matter of simple confiscation or fining, but the gross majority of it spells out as harrassment, baiting, and political posturing (re: arrest quotas, proving to legislators that they’re “doing something”). Alleged zero tolerance laws are also a menace as they completely demonize the most minor of offenses disproportionately. They also demand enormous budgets, which are harder and harder to come by. It should be a matter of common sense, but politics never subscribe to common sense.

  • Unfortunately this is nothing new under the sun. The NYPD has profiled minorities this way since the crack epidemic of the 80s. The NYPD gets higher arrest stats, “hot” areas get visibly quieter allowing the NYPD to claim success and the Mayor eventually gets his photo op. As far as they’re concerned it works.

    The only thing that really bothered me in the video was the kid who couldn’t resist being the person he was and wound up taking a beating and 3 days at Rikers. He should have known better. Someone needs to teach these kids being profiled the value of being subservient to the police. Pride is very dangerous here.

    • Darth Paul

      “Subservient”? No way. Quiet compliance does not amount to subservience. The attitude that being anything other “real” or “hood” amounts to “subservience” is damaging unto itself.

      • I didn’t mean that anything other than “real” or “hood” amounts to subservience but in this case I do think real subservience is the safest bet for these kids. I just don’t think quiet compliance gets them out every time. These kids, especially the young men, are targets. The kid who wound up at Rikers fell right into the trap head first but the cops that put him in had dinner with the family that night. These kids should all be trained how to swallow all of their pride in one gulp, polish up all of their very best “Yes Sirs” and “No M’aams” in order to always make it home in one piece. I don’t consider this a loss in any way for the kids; it’s just working and surviving in a shitty system.

  • Kyle

    it’s true that stop-and-frisk policies probably contribute to the basket of tactics that help save lives. But I’m not sure the cost we pay, that the citizens of Brownsville live in a police state, is worth it, especially since the people who usually have to put up with those kinds of intrusions of state power are poor and brown.

    The saved lives that you’re talking about are also mostly poor and brown, just as a point. But my real question is:

    How would you make this argument to a mother who has just lost her son to a stray bullet?

    I’m not trying to be blasé – I’m genuinely curious. Because this line, the line between safety and infringement of civil rights, has always been tough to find. And on the one hand it is extremely hard to justify these kinds of police tactics – but on the other hand, I just moved outta Crown Heights, soon after some dude took his gun up onto a roof and started shooting down at eastern parkway.

    • quadmoniker

      Kyle,
      So two things. For starters, I think the mom whose child is killed by a stray bullet is likely the same mom whose other kids are stopped and frisked by police officers and who may be stopped and frisked herself. So I don’t actually know if we need to make this argument to her at all, I think it’s something she lives with every day. And that’s part of the problem, the communities most affected by aggressive policing policies are often the same communities who need good police the most. You can say that stop-and-frisk policies might be working, in some sense, without thinking that it’s good policing.

      The other thing is, as Darth Paul said, stop-and-frisk policies don’t stop those kinds of determined, mass murders that are likely planned in advance.

  • Darth Paul

    “but on the other hand, I just moved outta Crown Heights, soon after some dude took his gun up onto a roof and started shooting down at eastern parkway.”

    And how would police frisking random kids have occluded this, especially if this man was firing from the building he lived in?

    I don’t know any mothers whose child was killed by stray bullets, but hypothetically, I’d advise her to work within the proper avenues to push for the prosecution and attention she felt the case deserved. This doesn’t mean only police cooperation, but publicity efforts so the media doesn’t sweep the case under the proverbial rug because it was just another minority killed. I think it’s the lack of attention *after the fact* that’s more galling to victims of violence in low-income urban areas than excessive, harrassing “preventative” attention.

  • zak822

    I’m sympathetic to the arguments about quality of life, etc. I think the real problem with Impact Zones is that they always seem to be minority communities.

    The question I have raised in the past is when are they going to do stop and frisk sweeps targeting predominantly white communities? Aren’t there some lives to save in those communities?

    When the municipal authorities start doing that on a consistent basis, I’ll stop believing that the whole idea is just an excuse to harass African-Americans.

    • quadmoniker

      Just to be clear: when I said “quality-of-life” issues I wasn’t trying to make the argument that enforcement of those problems are good for communities. It’s that police use “quality-of-life” enforcement issues as excuses to stop and frisk people. They’ll stop someone with an open alcohol container in a paper bag because they think that person might also have a gun, not because they care about the alcohol in the paper bag.

    • quadmoniker

      And yeah, that’s also the question. They could probably turn up as many drug busts if they started sweeping the areas around universities in Manhattan, but they don’t.

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