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Subscribe to RSSProminent civil rights leaders joined protesters at a Harlem rally Saturday to voice objections to a police practice that has led to hundreds of thousands of innocent people being stopped and searched by officers.
The Rev. Al Sharpton led the gathering of about 200 people inside his New York City headquarters a day ahead of a planned Father's Day march against the New York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" program. (Sharpton is the host of a show on msnbc cable TV.)
"If it were your child, Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Kelly, it would be one child too many," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said at Sharpton's National Action Network.
See the original report at NBCNewYork.com
Critics say the NYPD's practice of stopping, questioning and searching people deemed suspicious is illegal and humiliating to thousands of law-abiding blacks and Hispanics. The NYPD last year stopped more than 630,000 people, mostly black and Hispanic men. About half were frisked, and only about 10 percent were arrested.
A federal judge in May ruled that there was "overwhelming evidence" that the practice has led to thousands of illegal stops. The judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit challenging the practice.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly defend the policy, saying the stop-and-frisk program keeps guns off New York streets and helps reduce crime.
The fathers of two youths killed during confrontations that have become civil rights causes also attended Saturday's rally. Tracey Martin, whose unarmed teenage son, Trayvon Martin, was fatally shot in Florida by a neighborhood watch volunteer, said: "It's hard to imagine tomorrow without him."
App records, reports controversial police 'stop and frisk' practice
Also in Harlem was Franclot Graham, whose teenage son, Ramarley Graham, was shot and killed after police chased him into his New York home. A New York police officer has been charged with manslaughter in his son's death.
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said his 6-year-old daughter keeps asking him, "Why are you leaving?" each time news breaks of a young person who is shot or humiliated.
New York City stop-and-frisk lawsuit gets class-action status
"Let us take back Father's Day for all our children," Jealous told the rally.
Sunday's protest is billed as a "silent march" starting at 3 p.m. on Fifth Avenue and 110th Street and moving downtown to Bloomberg's town house at East 79th Street.
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What if they would come up with a way to track in a computer program every single person, in the country at all times, so they can evaluate the information; that would feed information to the computer to get more statistics, about every ones habits, and groups of people's habits, to be used to better the world we live in, some would show they never leave a ten square mile area others would show they do have a larger area of daily habits, if the right program is written it could help to plan ways to make the country a safer place to live, all the young children would be more protected, and they could track them really fast if something bad were to happen to them, if it were done right it could do a lot of good things for everyone! some of the information could be used to know where more medical supplies, food etc. were needed more, this could save money and time if used right!!!
dale you really have no problem with the govt knowing you every move and what you do? you are willing to give up your freedom to be safe? remember what ben franklin said about that!!!!!out side of that ever think of moving to noth korea?
Str8jkt82: How would a bunch of 11000110010100001 digits effect you among millions of other 01110000101010001 digits, that would provide information to different programs to evaluate different 1000101010 digits, if you did not break any laws?
the worst case scenario would be that when you needed a part for your bicycle it would be available, at a really low price!
Why so paranoid dude???
Remember one thing! Ben had 13 illegitimate children!
"What if they would come up with a way to track in a computer program every single person, in the country at all times"
It is known as a "smart phone," dale. But don't count on it being used for the benefit of the general population.
because i do not want the govt or anybody else that much in my life.if you are willing to give up your freedom go ahead i ,for one am not!!!!! by the way what does bens ' 13 illegitimate children have to do with anything? is it just a way for you to chip away at his legitamacy as a great thinker and founding father?hell i bet you are the type of person that would bend over backwards defending sick willy
Dale, be careful what you ask for. Big Brother watching you? Oops, he just caught you eating a cupcake or the fat on a steak and you get fined. You put a plastic bottle in a garbage can instead of recycling and you get fined. You support another candidate or oppose the Nanny State and you get taken to jail.
str8jkt82: example please: What freedom would I be giving up??? Did Ben pay child support?, or do you know if he broke the law by having 13 illegitimate children? does having those children make him a expert on everything? DON'T GET ME WRONG I admire Benjamin Franklin, but It does not mean he was right about everything!
rLp1949: I see you don't have any valid answers! so you exaggerate a bunch of nonsense to try and justify your paranoia!!! typical tea party thinking!!!
Dale, how about if someone developed the technology to determine where you are? And then they could use that technology to shut down your car if you were going somewhere they did not want you to go.
Ben Franklin may not have been right about everything, but he was right when he stated that a man that gives up his freedom for security deserves neither.
You want to have some bureaucrat sitting at a computer reading those reports generated by all of those 1's and 0's deciding what you can and cannot do. Heaven forbid that someone may get a couple of the 0's and 1's in the wrong sequence and they decide that you are a dangerous and wanted criminal. Can't happen! Don't bet on it!
13 illegitimate children just means that he was not married. 13 ain't even near the record for today's society!
This is just orginized vigilante justice and a bad way to deal with a law,if you don't like a new law contact the city and tell them don't take the law into your own hands and try this hippie stuff.
Sure its a bad law but this is what happens when you allow an entire generation to raise another generation without rules,laws and self respect for themselves and others.
I wonder of anyone stopped and frisked had a large soda on them or candy bars?
These laws happen when society raises your kids and you don't,less freedoms for all
the people of nyc keep voting bloomberg in you deserve what you get. stop and frisk ,laws on what you can consume when and where you can smoke etc.. i personnally would find this disturbing no matter why they are doing it i would not give up my personnal privacy and dignity just for some kind of bull$it public safety thing.and any of you that would well you will inherit the gulag
Wow is all I have to to peoples mentality in here, please everyone in here look up the definition of IGNORANT i will wait.......
Now the only comment i am going to make here is Bush did a awfully job of bullsh11ting and scaring the sh1t out of everyone and this is end result. For anyone who doesn't have a problem with this then let's make it a federal law and everyone will be safe awesome idea. Until this comes to your town and then all of a sudden your kids, friends, neighbors are getting slammed up against brick walls pavement and whatever else is around all in the name of keeping drugs bla bla off the street. If the cops were doing there job in the first place then this wouldn't be needed.
And the nice pretty list that someone put up there, you have no idea of the cost, manpower that is required to maintain this war that here is a fact people, the war on drugs is the longest costliest and will never end (to keep the DEA in business among other things) and still I can go out and find any drug from A to Z along with my nephew and most underage kids. You give me proof on paper that they are making any sort of dent in the supply chain and then we can have a debate
See I find real data instead of talking out of my ass like a lot of armchair experts in here.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-impact-years-trillion-war-drugs-failed-meet-goals/
When it comes to a crime prevention program, why are the (b)lacks the first to resist? Muslims come in at a distant second.
Racist.
For the same reason that when 1 white man shoots a black boy "allegedly" because he looks like a trouble maker, they go ballistic. But when there's hundreds of black on black murders every month (maybe week) across America, there's barely a peep. It's called hipocrisy.
Stop and Frisk needs to happen to all members of the police departments children REPEATEDLY before they understand how much of a civil rights violation it is. There are reports that some children have been stopped and patted down more than six times in their short years of living. These officers must be getting sexually aroused by this practice to continue to do it so often, child sex preditors.
what bothers me is not the authorities doing this but seeing how much freedom people are willing to give up to feel safe.and all this bull$hit about they are targetting blacks muslims or whatever don't matter what matters is they are @!$%#ing doing it in the first place.amerirca needs to WAKE THE @!$%# UP BEFORE WE HAVE NO RIGHTS
if you are o.k. with police stopping and frisking without probable cause,you might as well let the police shoot to kill based on "looks guilty to me"!
Here IS a example of the reason computer chips could be a good thing, for everyone to have ! say they were 8000 terrorists, in the country who were known to be a potential danger, they could take them and install an up graded chip into them that would have enhanced features, that would go beyond the chips used in the general populace, like a way to render them unconscious if it were ever needed, say they took ten hostages, and they could put them to sleep by computer controls if they needed to to save the ten ! or prisoners, who would escape detention, they could find them within minutes, and bring them back, or child molesters, known dangerous people, etc. in the future they could have any number of enhanced chips to be able to do other things we have not thought about yet to keep the non law breakers safe!, or known drug users, when the chip detected drugs going into the system it could release counter drugs to make it impossible for them to become high and out of their right mind, thus protecting them from themselves, and others! this is just a few good examples!
i really hope there arent many people out there who think like you . no matter what arguement you try that is just too much like taking the mark
Dale, if you had a chip in you, it would be releasing some anti drug medicine right now. Youre either high as he.ll or simply short bus material.
You are a communist idiot!
How is the mark taken? do you know? what kind of mark are people taking when they live in sin and iniquity, and follow the beast? or what kind of mark is taken when they do not live in sin and iniquity, and they follow Gods law? I don't know the spiritual answer to that question! but I'm not going to live sinful, and follow sin and iniquity to find out! I will strive to obey God, [ Gods law is love, if you have love you have everything you need, I say this to make a point I'm not saying what the scripture is saying, this is my understanding! my understanding is that[ No scripture is given for private interpretation] this is the way I think about the mark!!!
It was ordained before the world began that men should live holy, not verbatim from memory!
God created the heavens and the earth, and all things therein! again not verbatim but you can read it in the bible for the exact wording!
dale you seem like the type that would have no problem living in a totalitarian state i suggest you go and come back and tell us all how great and safe you are
I must have missed something...people keep quoting a figure of 31,000 arrests. Does the article not say that 630,000 people were stopped and ONLY 10% were arrested? That makes 63,000 arrests, not 31,000. Sounds awfully high to me. BTW, Alan Michael Johnson, your math needs some work....your .38% figure is ridiculous. If you stopped all 8,000,000 New Yorkers, based on the figures in the article, there would be 800,000 arrests.
That is frighteningly high. I am not saying i am for the random searches per se, but that figure should be ALOT lower in any major U.S. city.
Bloomberg and Kelly are civil-rights-violating idiots who should be kicked to the curb and fired!!!!!
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect the people from unlawful search and seizure. Apparently the New York City Police Department hasn't been "read their rights". What a horrible nightmare it must be for innocent people to be stopped by a gang of cops, insulted, and frisked...just because they can get away with it. Fear of hoodies? No, I fear hoodlums in blue.
fiesty redhead- let the police alone, they are looking for people carrying concealed big gulps and slurpies.
@dale-763548
Dood honestly this is your solution and or line of thinking ?
Hey, if the people in these communities don't want stop and frisk, I'd say let them deal with the consequences. Murders in NYC have dropped 1500-2000 a year in the 80's 90's to their current low levels largely in part to these tactics, introduced during the Giuliani years. The sad part is the largest drops have been in places like East NY, Bushwick, South Bronx and Bed-Stuy where the population is largely minority. The communities in these areas have no control over the sitution so the police have to step in as best they can. I'm afraid NYC is headed back to those days. Sharpton and the rest should concentrate on the epidemic black-on-black crime which borders on genocide instead of blaming NYPD.
Trayvon @!$%# AGAIN? How about the BLACK doctor that killed his WHITE ex girlfriend. Wheres the outcry for the WHITE girl!!!!!Sharpton and other black leaders ARE the reason the black race will never be equal. They wont let them be, cuz if it happens, they have nothing to make $$$ off of. They have enslaved their own people with repression!!!!!
I'd like to know how many of the 200 people in his headquarters were white. I'm guessing 0. Sharpton is the biggest racist next to Jesse Jackson. They turn ANY small thing into something racist against blacks. Pathetic. Sad really.
Well Webo;
I once waited at a single railroad track 25 minutes in the dead of winter at 3am the gates were down and no train, so I went around and guess what? I got a ticket, went o court told my side and judge laughed at me
said" " know how how money we make at that place? and laughed" 75 bucks pay the ticket..welcome to America..
Sharpton is one of the most racist men in America! See what happens when you have the liberals "taking care of you"? They want to run America with their sad little "we want to help the poor people" lies!
Are their written rules about who can be stopped and searched? Such as, driving while black or looking Muslim, a bulge in the pants unless between the legs, holding a big soda pop and a bag of Big Macs.
I wonder how many of those stopped and frisked were white males between 25 and 40?
First of all, this has nothing to do with law and order, but another way by America's gestapo and their Hitler leaders to continue feeding that monster of racism that will never quit. Plain and simple, any thing else, is like looking for five legs, paws to the cat when it has only four. Even the report explains that the program has failed, and the record proves it, ergo, it's not law and order, but another Trojan horse to destroy democracy.
The same happens with alleged voter fraud from the people who are masters at stealing elections. In Texas, where else and in other states where racism is their only driving force, republicans, tea partiers, the PHDs of how to steal elections complaining about voter fraud. They stole the 2000 and 2004 elections and it was not due to voter I.D problems, but machines rigged so the super crooks, super freaks of democracy could, once more, put a nail on the coffin of real voter fraud. Yet, you would think they would require ballot paper trail? But, no, no siree, they go for voter I.D. In Texas, that morally handicap and true miserable handicap of Texas, Abbot and Costello, found, supposedly, in almost ten years of his "voter fraud" tsunami something like five documented cases and yet, he decided to break the law, by appearing to protect the law. Such arrogance is worthy of the best the Nazis had to offer. In Texas, there are more dead people voting in elections than the so called "illegals", but because "illegals" are so popular today and the new renaisance era of racism comes fitting to a tee thanks to that black illegal from Kenya being elected, they use "illegals" as their modern version fo the boogie man and by God, there are better at it than the Nazis ever could.
We all know that the NYC police department has more egos, more arrogance, more racism in one commissioner than at a Nazi convention. What I fail to see, is why will the people allow it to happen? And here, you got me. Remember Hitler and all the great dictators of the world started small and once in power, they became the worse of the worst.
This reminds me how coward and no, not "heroes" the citizens of NYC have become. It's the story that supposedly originated, where else, but with the Nazis and now that prick of Bloomberg and his cronies have divided NY as the mafia families, the cite, adage says: "When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist..
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no-one left
to speak out.
[When the Nazis Came for Me)
It always start with those at the bottom of the totem pole. First, it was black, but blacks had enough and were not as cowards as those "citizens" in NYC, ergo, they said: Enough is enough. They left the bottom and next came the "illegals" that were here even before the "Christian" pilgrims and since racism, bigotry in America is always looking for more "volunteers", lo and behold, the Muslims come like god sent and by god sent I mean the god of racism.
I don't see eye to eye with Reverend Al Sharpton, but when it's to stand for liberty for all, I'm right behind you. We need and lots of them more defenders of our freedoms, liberty and less Bloombergs, Kellies and their gestapo, racist cronies. You shall overcome, go get them, oops, I almost said boy, Al.
Finally some sort of reason, the voter fraud part is kind of up in the air with no solid proof that could run the gauntlet in the court's to prove it. But the list is dead on.
I got 2 things to say to these retarted protasters:
If your doing nothing wrong, You got nothing to worry about ..so stop breaking the law !
second, as the article says..out of 630,000 stops, ..10 percent were arrested...thats 63,000 people !! (Blacks and Hispanics)...who had drugs, weapons or warrants...Hmmmmm, maybe you people should clean up your lives, teach your children better and stop blaming everyone else !!!
The police are doing their jobs to keep you and others safe.....Give em a break !
"I got 2 things to say to these retarted protasters:"
I think you should de a spell check before calling anyone a retart(sic).
It's sad and unfortunate how 2% of our problem people can burden the 98% who just want to lead productive lives. When these 2% are caught the system should just turn them over to the crowd for punishment. Mob mentality? Maybe. Mob justice? Just might work. Public floggings and stoning were common punishments for some.
I have to agree with 'BodyDouble'. I for one, have never needed the police to protect me from anyone. Besides, their job is to 'enforce law', not protect the citizenry. When one gives over the responsibility of self preservation to another, your opinion of preservation no longer matters. In the real world if you do not defend yourself, no one else will. Sorry, but I see no satisfaction believing that the criminal will be punished AFTER I'm dead. If your freedom(s) are not worth you defending, you are undeserving of them. Keep allowing someone else to do it for you and see what happens. You will lose the right to choose. Slippery slope just keeps getting slipperier!
hey square dude,
The reason 'felons' aren't afraid of carrying firearms is because they figure you don't have one. A criminal isn't looking for a difficult crime, he wants an easy one. If he knows that personal carrying of firearms are illegal, he pretty much has an easy pool of victims. On the other hand, if there are concealed carry laws he has to really think about that. He has the same self preservation ideas as you. It's always too late, after the fact.