[VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]
The man who was until last month the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the NYPD claimed in court on Wednesday, during the federal trial of the city’s stop-and-frisk policing tactic, that city residents had never complained to him that they were stopped because of their race.
“I don’t get a complaint from a civilian,” former Chief of Department Joseph Esposito said. “I’ve heard it from Al Sharpton’s group.”
It was the second day of testimony for Esposito, who retired last month. After he became chief of department in 2000, the NYPD’s stops rose 600 percent, leading community groups to claim that young black and Latino men were being targeted because of their race. Those stops are supposed to happen only when cops have reasonable suspicion, but a massive increase in the use of the tactic fueled the civil lawsuit, called Floyd v. New York.
According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 make up 4.7 percent of the city’s population but accounted for 41 percent of its stops in 2011.
Asked bluntly by a city lawyer whether stop and frisk was a form of racial profiling, however, Esposito replied “of course not.”
Esposito’s testimony offered a rare glimpse into the department’s internal operations: why police make stops, how they report them, and how they are supervised. He was at the front lines in making many of those decisions.
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