Guide to Stop-and-Frisk

• • criminal justice, NYC, police

We’ve blogged here before about the issue of racial discrimination in the stop-and-frisk policing practice in New York City. There is lots of data that shows stop-and-frisk is discriminatory, harmful to communities and is not effective at “getting guns off the streets,” as is frequently claimed by advocates of the policing strategy. And, it’s very likely unconstitutional.

 

protestors hold sign saying "stop stop + frisk"

(Image source)

Bill diBlasio, the newly elected mayor of New York City, has promised to end stop-and-frisk and that means there is a new future ahead for the city and the communities most affected by this policy.

In an effort to assess where we are with stop-and-frisk, what the data shows, and how scholars, activists and journalists have worked to change this policy, JustPublics@365, a project of the Ford Foundation based at the CUNY-Graduate Center (and that I lead), recently curated a series on this topic.  And now, that series has been compiled as an all-in-one guide to stop-and-frisk (pdf)

The Information Guide is structured around three levels of social justice outcomes:

  • Make Your Issues Their Interest: Raising Awareness About An Issue with an Audience
  • Make Your Issue Their Issue: Getting an Audience More Deeply Engaged in An Issue
  • Make Your Issue Their Action: Moving an Audience Towards a Specific Action

If you are teaching a class or training people in your organization, you can also use this Information Guide as a tool for teaching and learning about stop-and-frisk.

You can download the guide(pdf) and reuse it for teaching, research, activism or media.

Mapping NYC Stop-and-Frisk Data

• • criminal justice, NYC, police

This short video (3:51) presents data of stop-and-frisks in an interactive, visual format:

This video was created by the really amazing Morris Justice Project. The Morris Justice Project brings together people affected by the NYPD policing practices together with academic researchers to resist criminalization in new ways. This map is just one of those ways.

The Morris Justice Project is an initiative that is part of the Public Science Project at the Graduate Center, CUNY. You can follow updates on the Floyd case at the Morris Justice Project Tumblr, and on Twitter, @public_science.

NYPD Racial Profiling Challenged in Court

• • criminal justice, NYC

There is a major court case happening in New York that seeks to challenge the NYPD’s practice of racial profiling through it’s “stop-and-frisk” policing.  The case, known as Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al., makes the claim that the NYPD’s policy is unconstitutional because it unfairly targets black and Latino people, specifically young men.

According to The Nation:

The NYPD has just surpassed 5 million stop-and-frisks during the Bloomberg era. Most stops have been of people of color, and the overwhelming majority were found innocent of any wrongdoing, according to the department’s own statistics. And though the number of stops may have gone down recently—as pressure on the department and increased awareness of the policy has officers and supervisors thinking twice about how they employ the practice—the existence of quotas ensures that New Yorkers will continue to be harassed unnecessarily by the NYPD.

Not familiar with the “stop-and-frisk” practice?  Here’s a video, secretly recorded by someone enduring stop-and-frisk policing from October, 2012 (about 13 minutes – and pardon the oil company advert at the beginning):

I’ll post more here about the Floyd case as it unfolds.

“You’re a Mutt” : Racial Policing Practices

• • NYC, police

On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin, one of 600,000 mostly Black and Latino young men who are stopped for no reason except their race (and gender) each year in New York.

The stop and frisk of would have been unremarkable, except that Alvin secretly captured the interaction on his cell phone, and the resulting audio, part of a new video released by The Nation, is one of the only known recordings of stop-and-frisk in action. When Alvin asks why he is being threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, “For being a fucking mutt.” Later in the stop, while holding Alvin’s arm behind his back, the first officer says, “Dude, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ arm, then I’m gonna punch you in the fuckin’ face.”
The video about stop-and-frisk (13:15) is here:

The audio was recently played at a meeting of The Morris Justice Project, a group of Bronx residents who have organized around the issue of stop-and-frisk and have been compiling data on people’s interactions with police. Jackie Robinson, mother of two boys, expected not to be surprised when told about the contents of the recording. “It’s stuff we’ve all heard before,” she said at the gathering. Yet Robinson visibly shuddered at one of the audio’s most violent passages. She had heard plenty about these encounters, but had never actually listened to one in action.

Although perhaps not surprising, part of what is compelling about this short video clip is that includes interviews with two members of the NYPD. With their identities disguised, two officers from two different precincts in two separate boroughs speak about the same types of pressures put on front line police from higher-ups to meet numerical goals or face disciplinary action and retaliation. Most chillingly, both officers use the word “hunt” when describing the relentless quest for summonses, stops and arrests.

The racial pattern of these stops – something like 87% of the stops are of Black and Latino young men – and the utter lack of effectiveness in terms of ‘policing’ – only 1% yield any weapons – highlight the stark racial policing of these practices. It seems clear that the NYPD’s policing is intended to exercise control over young men of color in the city, and that these policies are guided by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg. These unjust, racist police practices will remain in place until those at the highest levels of city government decide to take action to dismantle these policies.

St. Patrick’s Day and the Changing Boundaries of Whiteness

• • history, NYC, white privilege, whiteness, whites

Today in New York City and throughout the U.S., Irish-Americans will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Irish heritage.  What few will acknowledge in this day of celebration is the way in which the Irish in American deployed whiteness in order to deflect the racism they encountered in the U.S.

Kerry Band from the Bronx

(Creative Commons Licensephoto credit: ktylerconk)

Like many immigrant groups in the United States, the Irish were characterized as racial Others when they first arrived in the first half of the 19th century. The Irish had suffered profound injustice in the U.K. at the hands of the British, widely seen as “white negroes.” The potato famine that created starvation conditions that cost the lives of millions of Irish and forced the out-migration of millions of surviving ones, was less a natural disaster and more a complex set of social conditions created by British landowners (much like Hurricane Katrina). Forced to flee from their native Ireland and the oppressive British landowners, many Irish came to the U.S.

Once in the U.S., the Irish were to negative stereotyping that was very similar to that of enslaved Africans and African Americans. The comic Irishman – happy, lazy, stupid, with a gift for music and dance – was a stock character in American theater. Drunkenness and criminality were major themes of Irish stereotypes, and the term “paddy wagon” has its etymological roots in the racist term “paddy,” a shortening of the name “Patrick,” which was used to refer to the Irish. However, this is also a gendered image and refers to Irish men, specifically. The masculine imagery of “paddy” hides the existence of Irish women, but did not protect Irish women from racism as they were often more exposed to such racism through domestic jobs. Women typically played a key role in maintaining Catholic adherence, which resonates closely with Irishness and difference. The “model minority” (if you will) stereotype of Irish-American women is of a “Bridget,” recognized for her hard work and contribution to Irish upward class mobility.

Simian, or ape-like caricature of the Irish immigrant was also a common one among the mainstream news publications of the day (much like the recent New York Post cartoon). For example, in 1867 American cartoonist Thomas Nast drew “The Day We Celebrate” a cartoon depicting the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day as violent, drunken apes. And, in 1899, Harper’s Weekly featrued a drawing of three men’s heads in profile: Irish, Anglo-Teutonic and Negro, in order to illustrate the similarity between the Irish and the Negro (and, the supposed superiority of the Anglo-Teutonic). In northern states, blacks and Irish immigrants were forced into overlapping – often integrated – slum neighborhoods. Although leaders of the Irish liberation struggle (in Ireland) saw slavery as an evil, their Irish-American cousins largely aligned with the slaveholders.

And, following the end of slavery, the Irish and African Americans were forced to compete for the same low-wage, low-status jobs. So, the “white negroes” of the U.K. came to the United States and, though not enslaved, faced a status almost as low as that of recently-freed blacks. While there were moments of solidarity between Irish and African Americans, this was short lived.

Over the course of the 19th and early 20th century, Irish Americans managed to a great extent to enter and become part of the dominant white culture. In an attempt to secure the prosperity and social position that their white skin had not guaranteed them in Europe, Irish immigrants lobbied for white racial status in America. Although Irish people’s pale skin color and European roots suggested evidence of their white racial pedigree, the discrimination that immigrants experienced on the job (although the extent of the “No Irish Need Apply” discrimination is disputed), the simian caricatures they saw of themselves in the newspapers, meant that “whiteness” was a status that would be achieved, not ascribed.

For some time now, Irish-Americans have been thoroughly regarded as “white.” Evidence of this assimilation into whiteness is presented by Mary C. Waters (Harvard) in a recent AJPH article, in which she writes that “the once-rigid lines that divided European-origin groups from one another have increasingly blurred.” Waters goes on to predict that the changes that European immigrants ahve experienced are “becoming more likely for groups we now define as ‘racial.'” While I certainly agree that the boundaries of whiteness are malleable – it is a racial category that expands and contracts based on historical, cultural and social conditions – I don’t know if it is malleable enough to include all the groups we now define as ‘racial’ Others.

As people rush to embrace even fictive Irish heritage and encourage strangers to “Kiss Me I’m Irish” today, take just a moment to reflect on the history of racism and the pursuit of whiteness wrapped up in this holiday.

From the archive (originally posted 03-17-2009)

Judge to FDNY: ‘Pattern, Practice and Policy of Intentional Discrimination’

• • discrimination, NYC, racism

First, let me begin with a personal note about the FDNY.    I was in New York City when the terrorist attacks occurred on 9/11.  I was grateful on that day that my loved ones came home that day from working in lower Manhattan, shaken but not physically harmed.  I was so moved by the heroism, and devastating loss, to the FDNY (343 died) on that day — and so befuddled about what to do in the face of that overwhelming tragedy — that one of the things I did was what my people do when someone dies:  I cooked and delivered food.  Specifically, I cooked a huge batch of fried chicken and walked it over to the firehouse nearest my apartment.   I say that to let readers know that I have a tremendous respect for the day-to-day heroism of firefighters and the work that they do.  And, yet, in watching all those funerals for firefighters after 9/11 it was impossible not to notice how overwhelmingly white and male the FDNY remains.    The racial composition of the fire department is no accident.

A judge in New York ruled that the FDNY had engaged in a deliberate “pattern, practice, and policy of intentional discrimination.” Back in July, 2009, Judge Garaufis  ruled that the FDNY used a test in 1999 and 2002 that had a discriminatory effect on black applicants.   In his ruling on Wednesday, January 13, 2010,  the judge found that the city intentionally discriminated against blacks in using those tests and in ignoring calls over the years to change the testing procedure. The suit was brought by three people who took the test and by the Vulcan Society, a fraternal organization of black city firefighters.

E 280 Gear racks

Creative Commons Licensephoto credit: MAG Photography Studio (Marc-Anthony G.)

Legal experts said the decision was the first in recent memory in which a court had found that the city had intentionally discriminated against a large group of people in the workplace.  There is also evidence that those at the highest levels in city government, including (former) Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scopetta and Mayor Bloomberg, were aware of this “pattern, practice and policy of discrimination” at the FDNY and did nothing to stop it, although the judge’s ruling stopped just short of holding them legally responsible.   However, the judge did write that he found strong evidence to suggest that they were made aware numerous times that the Fire Department’s entrance exams were discriminatory, yet failed to take sufficient remedial action. Mayor Bloomberg testified at a deposition in August that he “did not recall” receiving a report more than six years ago warning him about sharp differences in the pass rates between white and minority candidates for firefighter jobs.  Part of what is so remarkable about this decision is that it is one of the few court decisions in recent memory that finds there was racially discriminatory intent, rather than simply a disparate-impact.

The New York Times article quotes Paul Washington, 48, a firefighter in Brooklyn and a former Vulcan Society president, who said that the ruling validated “what we’ve been saying for the longest time, and which I’ve been saying since 1999 — that the Fire Department discriminates, intentionally, and they just continue to do it.” Washington says he believes that over the department’s 145-year history, there were probably “thousands of thousands of black men and women who should have had this job and didn’t get it.”

Washington’s comment in the NYTimes highlights gender discrimination, not addressed by this court decision.  Make no mistake, the FDNY has also systematically and intentionally discriminated against women over its 145-year history.  The story of Brenda Berkman  illustrates how difficult it is even for women with white skin privilege who still face gender discrimination.   Berkman is a white woman who sued the FDNY and eventually became a Captain in the Fire Department,  There is an excellent documentary by Bann Roy about Berkman, called “Taking the Heat.” The film also touches on the struggle of black firefighters and includes some interviews with members of the Vulcan Society.

Federal Judge Garaufis struck a blow for racial equality with this decision, but the FDNY has a long way to go before it will be an equitable organization in practice.   Until that time, the kind of excessive valorization of firefighters that goes on – perhaps especially in this city – will always be a bit tempered for me by the knowledge that this particular form of on-the-job heroism is only available to a few, white men.

Racism in NYC Restaurant Hiring: Matched Study

• • discrimination, NYC, racism, scholarship

A newly released matched study reveals racism in hiring patterns in New York City restaurants  (Creative Commons License photo credit: ktylerconk ).Busy lunch at Rue 57 Matched studies, like the one used in this research, are basically field experiments in which pairs of applicants who differ only by race (or sometimes gender) are sent to apply for housing, seek services or accommodations, or, in this case, apply for jobs.

In this study, economist Marc Bendick, Jr. sent pairs of applicants with similar résumés and matched for gender and appearance; the only difference in each pair was race.

Bendick found that white job applicants were more likely to receive followup interviews, be offered jobs, and given information about jobs, and their work histories were less likely to be investigated in detail than their black counterparts.

If you’re one of the many graduate students who read this blog and you’re contemplating what to do for a dissertation, consider a matched study.    We need more of them and this type of research gets well-reviewed in the top sociology journals.  Another recent matched study in sociology is the one that Devah Pager did for her 2003 AJS piece, “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” In this research, Pager matched pairs of individuals (again with similar résumés and matched on gender) applied for entry-level jobs—to formally test the degree to which a criminal record affects subsequent employment opportunities. The findings of her study reveal that a criminal record presents a major barrier to employment; and with regard to racism, Pager found that blacks are less than half as likely to receive consideration by employers, relative to their white counterparts.   Perhaps most disturbing in Pager’s research is the finding that black nonoffenders, that is African Americans with no criminal record, were less likely to get a job than whites with prior felony convictions.

Matched studies, such as the just released Bendick’s study of hiring in restaurants and Pager’s classic study of entry-level hiring of those with (and without) the mark of a criminal record, are important social science research for investigating the persistence of racial discrimination in hiring practices.

Protesting the Racism of the NYPost

• • NYC, protests

Yesterday, I joined a small crowd of fellow New Yorkers fed up and outraged by the racism of the New York Post’s editorial cartoon.  (The image is one that I took, you can see the full set of photos at Flickr.)  As usual with any protest about racism here in New York, there were lots of black and brown folks there, and not so many white folks.   Not surprising, but disappointing nevertheless.   One of the most notably missing white faces in this crowd was Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has not issued a statement about the cartoon.    Governor Patterson, speaking yesterday at an event unrelated to the cartoon at the New York Academy of Medicine, did respond to questions about the racist cartoon, saying that it is incumbent upon Post editors to explain “what the cartoon was intended to portray.”   Paterson added, images equating blacks with primates “do feed a kind of negative and stereotypical way that some people think,” and thus stretching the definition of “understatement.”

For its part, the editors at The New York Post have issued an apology that is a non-apology, saying:

Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon – caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut – has created considerable controversy. It shows two police officers standing over the chimp’s body: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” one officer says. It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.   Period.   But it has been taken as something else – as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.  This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.   However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.    To them, no apology is due.  Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

Those of you who’ve been following this issue closely will recall that the previous statement from The Post referred to Rev. Sharpton as a “publicity opportunist,” so this statement is clearly directed at him and others affiliated with his National Action Network.  As Rev. Al said last night when asked by Keith Olbermann about the “publicity opportunist” charge, “I’m an activist, so getting publicity is part of what I do.  At least they are acknowledging that I’m good at my job.”

The official written response from the editors of The Post is consistent with what I witnessed yesterday happening in midtown just beyond the perimeter of the protest.    The white office workers who came to the window at the News Corp building laughed, pointed and jeered.  One of my fellow protesters said they saw someone at the windows give the one-finger salute to the crowd gathered below, but I didn’t see it.   The white office workers on their lunch break that I overheard along 6th Ave. (across the street from the protest), said things like, “Wow – look at all of them!  I can’t believe they got that many to come out in the middle of the day, I guess they don’t have jobs.”

Clearly, we still have a lot of work to do in this putatively post-racial era.   If you’d like to take some action on this particular issue, you can sign on to the letter of protest at Color of Change.   If you’re in the New York City area, there’s another protest in front of the News Corp building (6th Ave., between 47th and 48th) later today, Friday, February 20th, at 4:45pm.

UPDATES (2/24/09): Lots has happened on this story since Friday.  Among the highlights (or, low lights if you prefer): There are widespread reports of dissention  in the ranks of The New York Post over the cartoon, ranging from an email sent by editor Sandra Guzman to reporters, saying she had “nothing to do with the cartoon,” to today, Murdoch including his own, slightly less half-hearted, apology in the paper. Michael Wolff, author of a book about Murdoch, appearing on Olbermann’s MSNBC show speculates that Murdoch is “livid” about the cartoon, and predicts that this is a career-ending decision for Col Allen, the current editor of The New York Post.   Meanwhile, Benjamin Todd of the NAACP is calling for the firing of Sean Delonas, the cartoonist who drew the offensive chimp-cartoon.    And, I continue to be amazed (I know, I know – I shouldn’t be) by the number of white people (and some other folks) who just don’t get the racism of this cartoon.

Racism in Murdoch’s New York Post

• • media, NYC, racism

Today’s New York Post, a tabloid paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, published an editorial cartoon that shows two cops talking,  standing over a chimpanzee they’ve just shot (a reference to this recent story in nearby Connecticut). The caption reads, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” a clearly racist jab at President Obama, comparing him to the chimpanzee.   You can see the image here (h/t to Emery Graham, Jane Adams, Andrea Siegel, Jerry Krause, Eric Margolis and all the good folks on the IVSA listserv).

The cartoon is created by Sean Delonas, who as Hamilton Nolan at Gawker notes, has a rich history of creating similarly vile, loathsome cartoons.

As I’ve pointed out here before, racist jokes and cartoons are nothing new, and indeed, racist cartoons and jokes were a consistent strategy used by detractors to Obama’s campaign.   In fact, Obama’s presidency has created a whole new category of racist jokes and cartoons.   A Google search of “racist Obama jokes” today yields 1,910,000 results; a similar search for “racist Obama cartoons,” yields 1, 050,000 results.

What’s really remarkable here is that this particular racist cartoon is not just getting published on some individual’s website dedicated to racist “humor,” but in fact, it is being published by a major (albeit, tabloid) newspaper in New York City.    Rev. Al Sharpton gets is right when he says that the cartoon is “troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys.” (An aside about Rev. Al: Y’all can say what you will about Rev. Al, but living in New York City and seeing him at most of the same rallies I go to and hearing him on local news, he gets it right more often than he gets it wrong.  In the national mainstream press, he’s regularly treated with derision, but I have a lot of respect for him.)  In fact, I think he doesn’t go quite far enough here.  What’s also troubling about this particular image is the not-so-subtle threat (again) to President Obama’s life and the similar way in which this cartoon legitimates the police-shootings of so many young, black and brown men on the streets of New York City and beyond.   Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, anyone?    It doesn’t matter though, they were just “monkeys” – as one of the commenters on this blog referred to Oscar Grant just a few weeks ago.    For those of you who might be new to studying and understanding how dehumanization works, one of the first steps is comparing human beings to animals.  This makes their mistreatment, torture, and murder easier to accept.    It’s an especially effective tool when a major newspaper runs images that dehumanize whole categories of people.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, the Post is standing behind the cartoon.   New York Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan said:

“The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.”

Right, so Rev. Al is an opportunist and therefore Allan doesn’t have to take anything he says seriously.     Well, I have a feeling there are going to be a lot more people outraged about this one.

If you’re in the New York City area, and want to get involved in a protest about this, there’s one tomorrow, Thursday, 2/19 at noon, at the midtown offices of the New York Post, 1211 6th Ave., between 47th and 48th Streets.    Rev. Al and I will be there.