Bronx prosector testifies AGAINST NYPD's "Stop & Frisk" policy

[Fpqxz]

From the New York Times:

As a federal court hearing began on Monday in a critical challenge to New York City’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, a Bronx prosecutor testified that she believed the police were wrongly stopping and arresting innocent people for trespassing.

The testimony of the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Jeannette M. Rucker, came as the hearing opened in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the first court proceeding in which a federal judge is expected to rule whether the Police Department has engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional stops under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration.

***

She said she later received an anonymous letter from a person claiming to have been arrested on trespassing charges while leaving a building with a friend who lived there. She forwarded it to other senior prosecutors in the Bronx, adding her own note.

“I said, ‘Enough is enough, we have to stop this,’ ” Ms. Rucker recounted.

Ms. Rucker explained that in one instance an assistant district attorney, David Grigoryan, went to the building where a trespass arrest occurred, where he spoke with a guard and learned that the defendant “lived in the building with his sister.”

That case, Ms. Rucker testified, “really pushed me over the edge.” In July, she sent a brief letter to numerous police officials outlining her concerns and announcing this change in policy: From then on her office would prosecute trespass arrests only after interviewing the arresting officer. Previously, prosecutors went forward with a case simply on the basis of the paperwork the officer filled out.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Of the three proposed class-action lawsuits before Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin, the Bronx case is the narrowest. All three challenge the NYPD's stop-and-frisk tactics.

Mark Zuckerman, a city attorney, urged Scheindlin on Monday not to grant a preliminary injunction in the Bronx against aspects of "Operation Clean Halls," a citywide police patrol program inside and around private, mostly low-income housing buildings that opt to enroll.
***
Christopher Dunn, an attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the new training programs were just a sign the police "understand that this is real."

"Stops on the street can be a humiliating experience," he said. "But here it's even more than that. We're talking about people who are walking in and out of their own homes. These stops are an assault on the sanctity of one's own home."

The NYCLU argues that last year, 1,137 of 1,857 stops in the Bronx of people suspected of criminal trespass outdoors of a Clean Halls property were made without reasonable suspicion and were potentially unlawful.

Given, the lawsuit deals only with one program conducted under stop & frisk, but the fact that NYC's own prosecutors are getting fed up with it says a lot about the efficacy and legality of it.

[RavynousHunter]

And the average amount of grey matter amongst its proponents.

[Fpqxz]

And the average amount of grey matter amongst its proponents.

It's not a matter of stupidity so much as deviousness.

Michael Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, don't really care about anyone's constitutional rights--they care about cutting back on crime, because it's bad for business.  And unconstitutional stops are the only way they can think of to accomplish this end.

EDIT:  grammar

[RavynousHunter]

They're still morons if they think this would actually work.  They're treating cancer with a popsicle stick.

[largeham]

This is fucking great.

They're still morons if they think this would actually work.  They're treating cancer with a popsicle stick.

I don't think so. Most people don't have a very good understanding of the law, most of our knowledge of it comes from pop culture. IMO most people would have just let this slide with some variant of "The police know what they are doing, they must have had some reason to stop that person." It seems that this only really was challenged when the state's prosecutors had had enough.