Stop and Frisk

An NYPD policy:

An undercover man ran up from behind and tackled me. Next, he decked me. He said someone had been robbed and I “fit the description.”  It soon became clear what “description” he was talking about.  He and other cops had also stopped a 40-something year old who was 5’6″ with a full beard.  I was only 13 years old, no facial hair yet, and six feet tall.  The only thing we had in common was our Black skin and our stylish trench coats (which, again, everybody was wearing).

That was 1961. Things haven’t changed. “This is the reality of what goes on in New York City alone with the New York Police Department’s policy of ‘Stop & Frisk.’  More than 83 percent of those stopped are Black or Latino, many are as young as 11 or 12, and more than 90 percent of them were doing nothing wrong when the police stopped, humiliated, brutalized them or worse.”

Today Carl Dix is “joining arms with Cornel West and others to voluntarily land myself in the custody of the police. We are conducting non-violent civil disobedience at the 28th Police Precinct in Harlem, New York to put a stop to the NYPD policy of ‘Stop & Frisk.'”

End the policy.