Top 10 spots where cops have stopped, questioned, and frisked: New report
New York Civil Liberties Union analyzes NYPD data
By Simone Weichselbaum / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, March 19, 2012, 6:44 PM
Michael Appleton/New York Daily News
An NYPD officer on 135th Street in Harlem.
Handout
Fresh Direct driver Joey Cruz, 24,
Cops flooded high-crime city neighborhoods last year in Brooklyn and uptown, stopping and questioning hundreds of thousands of people - but gentrifying communities were also hammered with the controversial policing practice.
The New York Civil Liberties Union gave The News an early look into its upcoming report analyzing NYPD’s stop and frisk program - boiling down the department’s 2011 684,000 stops to the top ten precincts where the policy is used the most.
“The public needs to completely understand what is happening on the streets,” said NYCLU associate legal director Christopher Dunn.
"We don't object to stop and frisk so long as it is targeted at people genuinely suspected of criminal activity. But in New York City it just seems to be targeted at everybody in certain neighborhoods."
The 75th precinct in East New York topped the list, counting the most people stopped - 31,100 - followed by the 73rd precinct in Brownsville with 25,167. The two Brooklyn neighborhoods are saturated with violent drug and gun crimes.
“Stops reduce crime and save lives,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
But the top ten list also included some surprises.
The 115th precinct, covering East Elmhurt and Jackson Heights, ranked third counting 18,156 people stopped. The 40th in the South Bronx was fourth with 17,690.
The 90th precinct, home to Hasidic Jews, hipsters, and Latinos in Williamsburg, was fifth on the list counting 17,566 stops.
Next was the 23rd precinct in East Harlem where 17,498 people were stopped - the only Manhattan precinct on the NYCLU’s top ten.
“My community doesn’t have one of the highest rates of crime,” said Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito (D- East Harlem. “We don’t believe the argument that the NYPD is saying, that it’s to reduce crime is valid.”
Reasons for a stop, according to NYPD documents, include “carrying a suspicious object” or “casing a victim or location.”
A frisk can also occur because of “inappropriate attire off season” or “furtive movements.”
Still, the NYCLU’s analysis showed that only 3 percent of stops in East New York led to an arrest. In East Harlem, it was 5 percent. Citywide, 6 percent of stops led to arrest.
“An arrest requires the higher level of probable cause; stops only reasonable suspicion. Arrests don't measure the success of stops. Crime prevention does,” Browne said.
Mark-Viverito confronted Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly during a heated City Council hearing last week, charging minorities felt “under siege” by the policing practice.
“I asked you for a solution to the problem of violence in these communities of color,” Kelly said at the Council hearing. “I haven't heard it.”
Fresh Direct driver Joey Cruz, said he gets stopped by cops often when he visits relatives in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“It’s standard...‘Spread your legs, feet apart.’ I know the procedure. I just stand still” said Cruz, 24, who lives in Williamsburg. “I don’t care if I’m stopped. I have nothing to hide. Just don’t shoot me.”