Last year, police officers in New York City stopped and frisked people 685,724 times. Eighty-seven percent of those searches involved blacks or Latinos, many of them young men, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The practice of stop-and-frisk has become increasingly controversial, but what is often absent from the debate are the voices of young people affected by such aggressive policing on a daily basis. To better understand the human impact of this practice, we made this film about Tyquan Brehon, a young man who lives in one of the most heavily policed neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

By his count, before his 18th birthday, he had been unjustifiably stopped by the police more than 60 times. On several occasions, merely because he asked why he had been stopped, he was handcuffed, placed in a cell and detained for hours before being released without charges. These experiences were scarring; Mr. Brehon did whatever he could to avoid the police, often feeling as if he were a prisoner in his home.

Tyquon Brehon

His fear of the police also set back his education. At one high school he attended, he recoiled at the heavy presence of armed officers and school security agents. “I would do stuff that would get me suspended so I could be, like, completely away from the cops,” he recalled. He would arrive late, cut classes and refuse to wear the school uniform. Eventually, he was expelled.

Mr. Brehon’s life turned around when he transferred to Bushwick Community High School and joined Make the Road New York, a community organizing group that is part of Communities United for Police Reform, a coalition of organizations. Because of his experiences, he now hopes to attend John Jay College of Criminal Justice and to become a lawyer, in part so he can help others who are subjected to racial profiling.

Watch the following video Of Tyquons’s story: The scars of Stop-and-frisk

The post How “Stop-and-Frisk” Takes a Toll on Innocent Youth appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Of course everybody knows a black person with a gun is problematic; hell, just look at what happened in Chicago last weekend — 46 people shot, of which 8 were killed. So here’s the thing, with crime being down in New York, clearly the racist “stop and frisk” policy is working. I mean, rarely do we hear news stories about weekend shooting sprees in the Big Apple. So yeah, maybe Bloomberg is right; as racist the practice may be, it works.

This from the New York Times:

Some former officers who worked the area say the stops seem less geared to bringing down crime than feeding the department’s appetite for numbers — a charge police officials steadfastly deny. Though none said they were ever given quotas to hit, all but two said that certain performance measures were implicitly expected in their monthly activity reports. Lots of stop-and-frisk reports suggested a vigilant officer.

“When I was there the floor number was 10 a month,” one officer said. Like many of the officers interviewed for this article, he asked not to be identified because he was still in law enforcement and worried that being seen as critical of the New York department could hurt his future employment opportunities.

He said if you produced 10 stops — known as a UF-250 for the standardized departmental reports the stops generate — you were not likely to draw the attention of a supervisor. “And in all fairness,” he said, “if you’re working in that area, 10 a month is very low. All you have to do is open your eyes.”

According to him, the program should be “mended not ended.” Obviously it’s an effective policing tool; so yes, maybe mending the policy is in order. Hell, as effective as it has been by getting guns and suspicious looking melanin afflicted criminals off the streets, if the program were expanded to not only include supposed high-crime areas, one could expect to see zero crime, and or guns on the streets of New York. I mean just think, if the NYPD starts groping random white people (just like they do people of color) New York City would be the safest place on the planet. No really, just look at the following results of in communities of color via Think Progress:

1. In 2011, NYC officers made 685,724 stops as part of the “stop-and-frisk” policy. Of that group, 605,328 people were determined not to have engaged in any unlawful behavior. [NYCLU]

2. Only 5.37% of all stops in a recent five-year period resulted in an arrest. In short, many people stopped did nothing wrong. [NYT, 5/17/12]

3. In 2009, 36% of the time officer failed to list an acceptable “suspected crime.” Reasonable suspicion of a crime is required to make a stop. [NYT,5/17/12]

4. More than half of all stops last year were conducted “because the individual displayed ‘furtive movement’ — which is so vague as to be meaningless.”[NYT, 5/14/12]

5. Of those frisked in 2011, a weapon was found just 1.9% of the time. Frisks are supposed to be conducted “only when an officer reasonably suspects the person has a weapon.” [NYCLU]

6. 85% of those stopped were black or Hispanic even though those groups make up about half of NYC’s population. [NYT, 5/17/12]

7. Young black and Latino men account for 4.7% of NYC’s population but 41.6% of the stops in 2011. [NYCLU]

8. The number of stops involving young black men in 2011 (168,124) exceed the city’s population of young black men (158,406).[NYT, 5/15/12]

9. Even in overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, police stopped more blacks than whites.[NYT, 5/15/12]

10. In 2012, police are on pace to make more than 800,000 stops, more than twice the population of Miami. [NYT, 5/15/12]

Yeah, in the interest of public safety, I propose that “stop and frisk” be expanded to cover the greater tri-state area; yes, be sure cops in all five boroughs are doing their jobs. Yes I live in Memphis, but my mother lives in New York. So let’s just say that I’ll be able to sleep better at night knowing that NYC cops are shaking down white folks with impunity, so she can be safe as she walks the streets.

The post Wouldn’t NYC be Safer if the NYPD Started Randomly Feeling-Up White People with “Stop and Frisk”? appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A major NewsChannel 5 investigation has uncovered serious questions about Tennessee’s war on drugs. Among the questions: are some police agencies more concerned about making money off the drugs, than stopping them?

At the center of this months-long investigation are laws that let officers pull driver over looking for cash.  Those officers do not even have to file criminal charges against a person to take his/her money.

It turns out, those kind of stops are now happening almost every day in Middle Tennessee.

Speaking to then District Attorney General Kim Helper about these stops and seizures in her jurisdiction, when  asked if it was a way to make money, she responded, “Well, you know, when you say ‘make money,’ I guess it is a way for us to continue to fund our operations so that we can put an end to drug trafficking and the drug trade within this district.” So how are police officers able to trample one’s 4th Amendment right as it relates to search and seizures? Easy. Under the guise of the “war on drugs,” the state allows police to seize money simply based on the suspicion that it’s linked to drug trafficking. The troubling part about the application of said practice, is that even without an arrest, an individuals money can be seized.

I guess this gives credence to the notion that money has no owners, just spenders.

In 2010 report, Tennessee received a D-minus from the Washington-based Institute for Justice, on the state’s “civil forfeiture laws,” which makes the practice all legal. As pervasive as the practice, per the law, money can be seized just on reasonable and unreasonable suspicion of money “found” in traffic stops being linked to drug trafficking. As you can imagine, this has given police officers on patrol the incentive to become state sanctioned pirates as they target out-of-town tagged vehicles along the I-40 east-west corridor, in what’s iknown as “Policing For Profit“.

According to the the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Blog:

In Tennessee, the police can seize your car, take your money, take your personal property, take your home, sell these items and use the proceeds of that sale for their benefit without the person being found guilty of a crime. In fact, the police can seize and sell these items without even charging the owner with a crime. And worst of all, the laws in Tennessee promote this activity.

[...] So why do the police do this? Money, Money, Money. The State of Tennessee receives millions and millions of dollars each year from civil asset forfeiture. They are among the highest in the country on the percentage of proceeds that go to law enforcement. And while some states use this money for education and public works, Tennessee allows local law enforcement to spend this money on drug enforcement. If the local police did not need any more incentive, the local law enforcement agencies receive 100% of proceeds for their respective agency. They cannot spend it on their salaries, but they do spend it on their agency which continues to operate in large part due to the millions of dollars they bring in each year.

[...] Further proof that the police activity is based on the money, sources reveal that the police on Interstate 40 are pulling over vehicles on the westbound lane of the interstate at a much higher rate than on the eastbound lanes. This is because they believe that drugs go east and money goes west. So they are clearly following the money and not the drugs. Again, the police agency that seized the property keeps 100% of the proceeds!

It’s too bad that unsuspecting drivers from out-of-state like New Jersey’s George Reby, aren’t aware of this practice. As a matter of fact, up until I read Reby’s story, I myself as a state resident, was not aware of the practice; heck, and to think I’ve been living here for the past six years. However, I’d like to think that if Reby were in the know, he would not have been as trusting of Monteray PD Officer Larry Bates, with whom he had a chance meeting last January when stopped for speeding en route to Nashville on I-40, on a business trip.

Check out the following via, Nashville’s NewsChannel 5:

But then again, maybe that’s just my “Liberal bias” creeping out as always. As pervasive and egregious this practice may sound, it is perfectly legal. aside from that, the main thing that keeps the practice alive and successful, is the ignorance of everyday citizens to their legal rights as afforded by the constitution. Police officers like Larry Bates above, count on us being ignorant about our 4th Amendment & 5th Amendment protections per the U.S. Constitution. I suggest you become aware of the fact that you do have the right to refuse to talk to the police without an attorney present, as well as the right to refuse or consent to a search of your property and person by the police without a proper warrant. Too often, not knowing your rights can become a hassle, and quite costly; but, like the old saying: knowing is half the battle.

QUESTION: Should law enforcement be allowed to carry out this practice?

The post Tennessee Cop “Robs” Out-Of-State Driver Of $22,000 After Traffic Stop appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

But, politicians want to sit around and debate the issue. They want to request a whole bunch of statistical analysis to prove what every Black person over the age of 2 years old understands: police profile racially. Why do politicians play this game? To pretend they are actually attempting to address the scourge of law enforcement bigotry without actually doing a goddamn thing about the problem.

If all these folks are going to do is sit around in a little room and say, “profiling is bad…. we should do something about it…” and then move onto the next topic, they need to get the fuck out of office, because they do not care about what happens to real people in the real world.

Who are the people compiling the statistics and where are they coming from? Most of the time, they work FOR the people in power, who are invested in maintaining the status quo. So, not only can they manipulate the facts to make them fit the narrative of the white dominators, but they rely on information given to them by the oppressive law enforcement community. Somehow, the word of a cop is seen as more reliable than that of his victim, so he can lie about absolutely anything and be seen as the “good guy” in the story. What is to stop a white police officer from incorrectly listing the race of his victims in order to “prove” that he is not engaging in racially biased behavior on the job? (In fact, it was proven that in East Haven, Connecticut, police officers did exactly this for many years)

If a victim of police oppression reports the crimes that officers commit against him, it is usually written off as unfounded, or uncorroborated. Yet the word of a single pig is enough to land a man behind bars. Why are police given more credibility than an ordinary community member, especially if that community member is Black?

There is also nothing stopping police officers from harassing and endangering anyone who reports profiling or brutish behavior. Everyone knows about the “blue wall of silence”. If a Black person walks into a police station to report to an officer that one of his fellow “boys in blue” has committed criminal acts against him, he is putting his safety in the hands of people who are invested only in defending and protecting the man carrying the badge.

Combating racial profiling is not about crunching numbers, compiling reports and making recommendations that the police look at as optional. In order to fight racist police practices, there needs to be serious consequences for officers who are caught profiling. They should be kicked off the police force and charged with a felony. They need to be held accountable. As it stands today, police officers can commit even most egregious offenses, like the murder of unarmed people, with little to no chance of repercussions. ANYTIME a police officer shoots an unarmed person, they should be charged and convicted for murder (or attempted murder if the person is lucky enough to survive.) Police officers complain that they do not want to have to stop to think before they act, that it could put their lives in danger… well… tough shit. Shouldn’t you HAVE TO take a second to think before you take the life of another human being?

Police officers also should not be foreign invaders. If there is a need for law enforcement presence in a given community, the officers should be recruited from among local residents only. No more white “good ole boys” rolling into a Black community and running roughshod over the rights of the people who actually live there. Let the white boys stay in their little suburban communities and arrest the folks with the meth labs in their garage.

I understand the desire for activist groups to enforce racial profiling laws. There is this belief that compiling statistics to “prove” that racial profiling exists will somehow force police departments to change their ways. That the threat of removing funding sources to police departments who are non-compliant will help alleviate the insidiousness of racial profiling. However, I think that until a police officer has to worry about facing VERY REAL CONSEQUENCES, like PRISON TIME for engaging in such practices, there is really no incentive for an individual officer to change his behavior.

Recently, there was an amendment passed for Connecticut’s racial profiling law, the Penn Act. A huge production was made about the “much needed changes” to the Penn Act that were added. Basically, the legislators decided that the Penn Act provisions would be enforced more stringently if they added a “traffic stop receipt” concept to the legislation, so that motorists who have been pulled over can be sure that their race was listed correctly. They also included a provision that allowed people to anonymously launch complaints about profiling, and appointed a committee to investigate the claims, as well as to examine the statistics compiled for evidence of profiling. Honestly, I do not see the efficacy of this sort of approach. Why do people need “proof” that profiling happens? We all know it does! How do statistics protect motorists from police officers? Where is the incentive for officers to stop this behavior?

And what about pedestrians? How many anti-profiling laws include people on foot? We all know that “stop and frisk” policies are steeped in racial profiling. Why not include people who are walking through the community under the umbrella of these profiling laws? One proponent of the Penn Act Amendment here in Hartford actually became angry when another activists mentioned that the Act did not go far enough because it only “protected” motorists! He said that the Penn Act was not intended to protect people on foot, therefore the amendment did not include them. Well, if you are “amending” a piss poor law, why not make the logical choice to extend the legislation to cover ALL people who are profiled, not just those in cars?

Compiling statistics is not the solution. SERIOUS consequences for INDIVIDUAL officers as well as departments who violate the rights of community members MUST BE INCLUDED in order for an anti-profiling law to offer any serious protection for the public. It is one thing to “work within the system”, it is quite another to ignore what REALLY needs to be done to address police profiling and brutality simply to get a piece of legislation passed.

The post Does Anti-Profiling Legislation Really Work? appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

This from the Bonner County Daily Bee:

SANDPOINT — It’s unlikely that any other Bonner County sheriff candidate spent their Friday night like Shaun Winkler.

At his compound just outside Priest River, Winkler and other family members of the northern Idaho Ku Klux Klan klavern held a get-together that included a nighttime cross lighting. Winkler, 33, is also tied to the Aryan Nations and Church of Jesus Christ-Christian. He has participated in racially-charged Kootenai County protests.

According to Winkler, cross lighting, more commonly known as cross burning, often provokes strong reactions from most people. That’s why the ceremony is conducted in private within the compound once a month or so.

“Generally, for a cross lighting, it’s extremely rare we’d let any media there at all,” he said.

However, after discussing the matter with his family and associates, Winkler agreed to allow photos and outside observation for the ceremony. He said the evening was meant to express both camaraderie and religious devotion.

The evening began like many a family picnic elsewhere in the country. Group members barbecued and enjoyed a congenial meal with one another. About 20 people attended the event, although not everyone wore the iconic klan robes. Three attendees specifically identified themselves as members of the klavern. Winkler mentioned that not every member of the group could make the trip.

Afterward, Winkler called everyone’s attention to speak for about a half-hour on the racial, political and social groups they opposed. Finally, once darkness fell, the evening concluded by setting a wooden cross afire.

That particular action, Winkler predicted, would be the source of much misunderstanding.

“Mainstream society looks at cross lighting as a symbol of hate, but it predates the klan by hundreds of years,” he said. “We look at it more as a religious symbol.”

According to Winkler, the religious component of the ceremony dates back to back to Scottish origins, when clan members used it as a means of communication. He also saw it as a pointedly Christian symbol, a representation of Jesus Christ’s light spreading to the rest of the world.

[...] Despite the unpopularity of his racial views, Winkler is soldiering on with his sheriff’s candidacy. On Monday, he participated in a candidate’s forum at the Blanchard Community Center. He continued to insist his Ku Klux Klan ties would not impact his performance as sheriff or make him susceptible to racial profiling. Instead, he would focus on tough stances regarding drugs and sex offenders.

“Most people don’t know that we don’t just oppose the Jews and the negroes,” he said. “We also oppose sexual predators and drugs of any kind.”

Winkler added that if he had his way, perpetrators of sexual crimes would be hung immediately.

As for the cross lighting and his other white supremacist links, Winkler admits that those who oppose him for his viewpoints probably won’t come around. Given that likelihood, he’s not worried about alienating potential supporters.

“I think at this point, whoever is going to disagree with me will keep on disagreeing, and those who agree with me will keep on agreeing,” he said.

Personally, I think it’s good to see a Republican candidate brave and honest enough to show their true color. I wish there were more candidates like Winkler. You know, this way we don’t have to waste time with the silly arguments about whether the Republican party is made up of racist xenophobes, and bigots. I don’t know about you, but voters tend to place a premium on a candidate’s honesty. That said, with candidates like Winkler, we sure can’t go wrong, no?

“In the event I was elected sheriff, I would not act on racial profiling,” Winkler said. “Being in the white power movement, I know how it feels to be profiled by law enforcement.” (source)

Yeah, I’m sure you do know about that profiling thing, Shaun…

I’m sure you do remember Cherie Buckner-Webb, and what y’all did to her.

The post Post-Racial Update: Republican KKK Leader Running for Sheriff Invites Media to Cross Burning appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

This via The Real News Network:

We are here to say that incarceration has nothing to do with solving the problems of American society it has everything to do with putting people in their place repressing people and it’s time for this to end, we want jobs, education, health care, we do not want jails…right now the United States represents 5 percent of the world’s population but we incarcerate 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, this in a nation that’s obsessed with the idea of freedom, the question is why, why do we incarcerate so many people than other places in the world, we clearly don’t have the answers so we are here to say we have to stand up for people like Mumia Abu Jamal. - JOHANNA FERNANDEZ, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, BARUCH COLLEGE, CUNY

It is imperative that we continue to bare witness to the many injustices suffered particular by people of color and poor people in general, all across these United States of America – a country where as you know, said people are over-represented within the criminal justice system, by no accident.

The post “Occupy the Department of Justice”: Trayvon Martin, Mumia Abu Jamal, & Mass Incarceration appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Systemic racism? What the hell is that? They ain’t burning crosses and hanging Black folks anymore. Hell, we’s post-racial now, RiPPa! Yeah I know, stories or studies like the following and the one I shared recently about Black folks and bankruptcy are all made up. Yep, studies such as this one aren’t valid. That is, unless they come from white comedians in Blackface on college campuses across America. I mean, why even listen to complaining Black folks, right?

A new academic study of 58,000 federal criminal cases has found significant disparities in sentencing for blacks and whites arrested for the same crimes. The research led to the conclusion that African-Americans’ jail time was almost 60% longer than white sentences.

According to M. Marit Rehavi of the University of British Columbia and Sonja B. Starr, who teaches criminal law at the University of Michigan Law School, the racial disparities can be explained “in a single prosecutorial decision: whether to file a charge carrying a mandatory minimum sentence….Black men were on average more than twice as likely to face a mandatory minimum charge as white men were, holding arrest offense as well as age and location constant.” Prosecutors are about twice as likely to impose mandatory minimums on black defendants as on white defendants.

In federal cases, black defendants faced average sentences of 60 months, while the average for white defendants was only 38 months.

The report concludes that sentence disparities “can be almost completely explained by three factors: the original arrest offense, the defendant’s criminal history, and the prosecutor’s initial choice of charges.” (source)

At any rate, what does it matter to have information like this if nothing is going to be done about it? Yep, simple-minded readers will say this is yet just another reason for people like me to “hate whitey,” I suppose. Rather than act in the interest of justice and equality. I’m pretty sure someone will digest this info and suggest that it’s better that Blacks are locked away longer, because we are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. Sounds crazy, but people actually believe we are.

The issue of mass incarceration is almost never discussed within our political discourse. That is with the exception of the occasional racist Willie Horton ad if you’d like to give the impression that as a candidate, you’re tough on crime. This is one issue that I suppose many see as a political liability. I mean how dare anyone running for president speak about the racial disparities in sentencing, the prison industrial complex, or even the opportunity cost of it all, right?

The post Post-Racial Update: Blacks Receive 60% Longer Criminal Sentences than Whites appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

You may have your eyes firmly planted on such fascinating things as the #OccupyWallStreet heros or the #TeaParty clowns where you may have missed the unfolding drama called Operation “Fast and Furious”.

Operation Fast and Furious was a tactical plan launched by the Feds that allowed the export of guns into Mexico. These “special guns” were embedded with “tracking technology”; the agents hoped these guns would make their way through the Mexican cartel pipeline.

Then, as these special “GPS” guns were sitting at the foot of many in a room full of crazy, Mexican warlords, the United States Feds would bust in and say ‘Gotcha’.

The idea is like a low jack for a car or even like a parental monitoring app for a pre-teen’s cell phone. It all sounds easy enough.

Unfortunately, these “special guns with tracking technology” suddenly went missing from the US’s specifically designed radar. The guns didn’t turn back up again until a dozen dead people later, one of which, was an ATF agent.

The House Judiciary Committee began holding Eric Holder’s feet over the fire since the beginning of the year about his knowledge of this operation.

He says he didn’t know anything about the sting operation until recently; a memo sent to him as of November of 2010 says differently. A additional memo says that not only did he know; the White House knew too.

Whose lying?

All I can tell you is that people in important positions often don’t pay attention to job responsibilities and he may have very well wiped his ass with that memo.

Or he could have read it and high fived his secretary over the sheer ‘smart factor’ of doing something as James Bond-ish as giving the enemy “special guns with tracking technology”.

The sad part is not whether the White House ‘knew’ about this covert operation. Of course, they knew, if not the White House then who do you think is in charge of operating the operations!?

The sad part is that our country thought they really had some type of master plan going by doing some slow/dumb bullshit like giving the Mexican mafia a Trojan Horse ass ‘tracking embedded’ set of firearms.

I can just picture the looks of the faces of the people who were put in charge of disarming the tracking on the guns. They had all kinds of good jokes about the U.S.

I wonder if the US at least made some money off the deal or did we also ‘entice’ the enemy by offering a recession buster deal of buy one get some free?

Please, stop your country; I need to get off.

The post Fast & Furious: Did the White House Supply the Mexican Cartel with Guns? appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

So when one of our most educated fellows looks at a piece of law and says “What the f*ck” then how in world would us simple people be able to make sense of it?

Better yet, how do you or I avoid breaking the law when neither the citizens, the pubic, the police, nor the justice system can figure out what the laws says?

Well that’s the same thing that District Judge Donald Mosley said when he dismissed an indictment earlier this week against Leonard Schwingdorf and more than 10 additional people who were charged with criminal marijuana distribution.

Schwingdorf and other employees of a medical marijuana were charged after selling marijuana for medicinal purposes to an undercover police officer who presented them with a valid medical marijuana card.

Well why don’t they (the Legislature) make up their mind if they want to make it legal or not,” the judge said. “I’m looking at it thinking I can’t make any sense out of this law.

“Are people supposed to give it away?” Mosley said. “I mean it just makes no sense.”

Robert Draskovich argued for the dismissal of the charges on several grounds because prosecution left out four key pieces of evidence; including the application filled out by the police officer which stated he was not required to give a donation in exchange for receiving marijuana.

Once the officer received the marijuana after presenting a valid medical marijuana card; he chose to make a monetary donation creating the manufactured circumstances used to charge the clinic with criminal marijuana distribution.

The Judge threw out the indictment and instructed the state of Nevada to go back to the drawing board and holla back when they figure out what it is they are trying to say.

Yet the defendants face more charges and will be in and out of court at the expense of tax payers as they fight over the details of the laws that they were charged under over the course of the next few months.

If states are weeping for money then why not legalize and tax marijuana?

I know, I know, everybody asks that question.

And how much more time and money will be spent paying people to create laws that no one understands?

And much more time and money will be spent prosecuting citizens for breaking laws that no one understands?

And how did the police get away with using these bubble gum stuck pretend circumstances to create criminal charges?

And what about those otherwise civilized folks sitting in jail?

And wasn’t that place serving sick people? Whatever happened to them?

And then there is question of the potential revenue available if marijuana was legal for medicinal or social consumption. The states either do or do not want or need an increase in revenue. I get so confused.

So, so many questions.

Too bad that no one has a straight answer.

The post Medical Marijuana Indictment? District Judge Throws Out Case appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

 More than 40 years later, I can still remember the incident as if it happened yesterday. It was my first real interaction with a NYC police officer. A few of us were headed home after being let out of school, waiting for the “M” train on the elevated Wyckoff & Myrtle platform. It was a rainy, drizzly early spring day. My friends and I were all “A” students — the talented tenth — at the (even then) notorious Bushwick High School. We were just standing around cracking jokes on one another, talking about girls — the usual fare of masculine adolescence. We weren’t being loud, weren’t breaking any laws. We were, well, breathing while Latino (we were all of Puerto Rican descent).

As we stood there bonding, a police officer approached us and demanded to know what we were doing. He was tall — over six feet — and towered over my then 5 feet fio-inch, 125-lb frame. I had never had any bad experiences with the police; maybe it was because I looked white. My friends would always tease me that I often got a free pass. This time, however, everyone immediately became quiet and the tension was palpable.

I informed the officer that were all going home, that we had just left school. I wasn’t being confrontational, just merely stating a fact as I would if I had commented on the weather. He then asked for ID, or our “program cards.” What I remember most was that he unnecessarily was rude and abrupt.

We all showed him our school IDs and then he looked at me and said, “Get the fuck off this platform.”

We were all taken aback since we had to be on the platform in order to catch our train home. When we didn’t react, he looked straight at me but said to everyone, “Didn’t you hear what I said you little spics. Get the FUCK off this platform.” Now, the “spic” part was uncalled for, I felt. In a nice way, I informed the officer that we were all headed home and we had to take the train. Up to that point, I wasn’t arguing with him, I was trying to reason, even though he had used profanity and a racial slur. We were standing by the stairs leading down to the street.

“If you don’t get the fuck off of this platform now you little prick, I will kick your spic ass down those stairs.”

And that’s when I became argumentative and things took a turn for the worse. I stated that we all had a right to stand on the platform and that we hadn’t done anything wrong to provoke him. I asked him by what authority could he speak to us in that manner and violate our basic rights.

I’ll never forget his response. He said, in a low, threatening growl, “If you don’t get off this station by the time I count to three, I will kick you down those stairs.”

I stood there, staring at him defiantly, determined not to move. By then, my friends all of whom were intimidated, advised me, “C’mon, Eddie, let’s go, don’t get into any trouble, man, it’s not worth it.” I said I wasn’t moving.

The police officer counted:

One…

Two…

And I don’t know why, perhaps it was the look of pure hatred on the man’s face, but I decided to move right before he counted to three. I turned around and started walking down the steps and that’s when I felt his foot slam into my back. I don’t know how I did it, maybe it was instinct, but somehow, as my body began its propulsion head first down the metal stairs, I reached out and grabbed on to the only thing available — the officer’s foot.

And in that way we tumbled down those long, cement-and-metal stairs, tangled in a ball, for I was holding on to dear life. After what seemed like an eternity, we landed and I immediately noted the unnatural position of the officer’s leg and his banshee howls of pain. I remember two elderly white ladies shouting and a crowd gathering. At that very moment, taking in everything, I realized I was fucked… and I ran.

After, my friends told me that the police officer rounded them up and tried to get them to tell him who I was. To their credit never ratted on me. For over two years, I was unable to take the train to school; I had to walk to school (a 45-minute walk each way) rain, cold, snow, or shine.

I was a 14-year-old honors student who never did anything wrong and my life could’ve have easily been destroyed by that one chance encounter.

The problem is that these chance encounters have (and continue to) destroyed lives and the fabric of mostly communities of color. Growing up, my experience wasn’t outside the norm. My close friend, Michael, had his penis almost shot off by a police officer. It was a Saturday night, one of our acquaintances was running from the police, passed by us, and when we heard gunshots, we all ran. My companion, Michael, who was not the target, was shot and the bullet passed through his thigh and through his penis. When we picked him up, we saw the blood flowing from his groin area. He was lucky, the main “dick vein” (as Michael explained it) wasn’t destroyed, and the doctors were able to stitch it all back together again. He did have the ugliest penis I ever saw. Accustomed to experiencing trauma, we used the time-worn urban coping skill of the macabre wit to kid him and called his penis Frankenstein Dick.

My friend Shadow, one of the blackest Puerto Ricans I ever met (hence the nickname), was a Golden Gloves champion with a promising boxing career. He was going to box for the Air Force after high school. He was “accidentally” shot dead in the flower of his youth by a stray police bullet. Another stray police bullet left a friend paralyzed at 17 — for life. Both incidents were termed as “mistaken shootings” or something like that. And those were only the most egregious infractions. I can’t even begin to enumerate all the little infractions, the almost daily “minor” humiliations and indignities, at the hands of the police. I can’t begin to enumerate the countless times parents, grandmothers even, were rounded up like common criminals during drug “sweeps” — periodic lockdowns of whole city blocks in which the police ran roughshod, with total disregard for all basic human rights.

This is not to say all police are brutal or even corrupt. I am, however, trying to offer the insight that the relationship between communities of color and the police are strained at best. Oftentimes, structural racism is expressed through the vehicle of law enforcement. It isn’t that there are a few bad apples; the true issue is that the barrel itself is rotten.

Today, when I hold workshops teaching children how to protect themselves from those who are supposed to protect us, I hear the same stories. Stories of young people of color being thrown against a wall, or with a boot on their neck. I continue to hear stories of young men literally being undressed in broad daylight. I still hear about the humiliations and of a police force that resembles more of an occupying force than a beneficent social institution. So, whenever I hear justifications for racial profiling, such as the ones in use in major urban areas such as New York and Los Angeles, I am not surprised, for I know the drill. However, it doesn’t mean that I am not outraged.

You should be too.

Racial profiling leads to very real and harmful consequences, one of which includes police brutality and the curtailing of basic American freedoms. Yet, you will hear high-level officials defend it in the same manner one acquaintance put it to me:

Police deployment these days is determined almost strictly by rates of relative violence/crime in each police district. The rate of violence is not some subjective quotient created by a racist cop, but is determined by counting citizens reporting that they were shot, stabbed, beat up and otherwise assaulted, this is combined with citizen reports of burglary, robbery, theft, etc. You see, your racist conspiracy theory is illogical when you know that police resources are deployed based on crime as reported by citizens and not some racist plot to destroy minorities. That is logical.

The problem with this line of thinking, aside from its moral bankruptcy, is that it is not based on fact nor reason. Racial conservatives — both black and white — maintain that racial profiling isn’t racist. They argue, like the individual above, that racial profiling is justified since we all know blacks and Latino/as are criminally predisposed! As Heather MacDonald of the conservative think tank, the Manhattan Institute, puts it, “Judging by arrest rates, minorities are overly represented among drug traffickers” (MacDonald, 2001) . Black conservative, Randall Kennedy agrees. He goes so far as to say that arrest rates present a “sad reality” and justifies racial profiling on those grounds (Kennedy, 1999). Well, if this is true, scientific examinations of racial profiling should yield results that back up the claims of racial conservatives.

They don’t…

For example, a New York Attorney General’s study of stops and frisks in New York City, issued in 1999, recorded 175,000 encounters between officers and citizens over fifteen months. The study tracked hit rates by analyzing the percentage of stops and frisks that ended in an arrest. The data is damning. The study found that police arrested 12.6 percent of the whites they stopped, only 11.5 percent of the Latino/as, and only 10.5 percent of the blacks (Spitzer, 1999). This is exactly the opposite of what defenders of racial profiling would predict. When New York City police officers utilized racial profiling intensively, they found what they wanted less often on blacks and Latino/as than they did on whites.

From a personal perspective, I have a sneaking suspicion that those who champion racial profiling don’t do so because they actually believe it’s statistically “sound policing.” I submit they support such practices because they want to justify racist practices. They are comfortable with such practices because, for the most part, it doesn’t affect them. They are not the ones being dragged handcuffed from their homes, or suffering humiliation while driving or even walking down a city street. They think it’s acceptable to commit such acts on certain Americans because they just don’t give a good goddamn — until it happens to them…

There’s a price we all pay for racial profiling, the least of which it makes all of us less safe, as police are more determined to bust low-level black drug dealers in the streets while the big drug game is taking place somewhere in a sleepy suburban enclave or high roller penthouse loft.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Update: Recently, our local station NY1, aired a piece on our efforts (click here). If you look real close and don’t blink, you’ll see yours truly for a hot second around the 54-second mark LOL.

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