Black and Latino lawmakers, fed up over the frequency with which New York City police officers are stopping and frisking minority men, are battling what they say is a racial divide as they push legislation to rein in the practice.
The divide, they say, is largely informed by personal experience: many who object to the practice say that they have themselves been stopped by the police for reasons they believe were related to race.
Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat, recalled several occasions when, as a high school student walking home in Flatbush, he was stopped by the police, patted down, told to empty his pockets, produce identification and divulge his destination.
Assemblyman Karim Camara, a Democrat from Brooklyn, remembers greeting a woman who was walking down a street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, when, he said, officers in plain clothes approached him and demanded to know who he was, where he was going and whether he had any guns or drugs.
And when Senator Adriano Espaillat, a Manhattan Democrat, was just 14, he said, detectives threw him against a wall and patted him down in Washington Heights, in Manhattan, when he was on his way to buy a Dominican newspaper for his father.
The lawmakers say the racial imbalance with which stop-and-frisk is applied has a corollary effect: Many white legislators have remained silent on the issue, or have supported the police, revealing a racial gap over attitudes toward the practice.
“There is an ethnic divide on who’s being stopped and frisked, and there is an ethnic divide on who’s fighting against the policy,” said State Senator Eric L. Adams, a Democrat and a retired police captain from Brooklyn.
The lawmakers’ effort to set off a debate in Albany is taking place with an increased focus on the interplay between race and public safety. It was highlighted in New York by the fatal shooting last month of Ramarley Graham, 18, by a police officer in the Bronx, and nationally by the fatal shooting last month of Trayvon Martin, 17, by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida. The young men were unarmed.
“Both illustrate the perils of racial stereotyping when individuals are empowered with the capacity to make life and death decisions,” said Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat. He said the shootings had “further emboldened legislators to continue to fight to deal with the out-of-control stop-and-frisk practices.”
The split among Albany lawmakers over the stop-and-frisk issue reflects a divide among New York City voters: according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on March 13, 59 percent of white voters approve of it, and 27 percent of black voters do.
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My uncle used to have a factory in East New York, a black neighborhood. You could hear gunshots during the day, and you took your life in your hands, if you walked around the neighborhood.He came to work one day, and found a dead man in the parking lot.
I suggest that the police know exactly what they’re doing, like it or not. Do you want another Toulouze, France massacre here?