Stop and Frisk People's University

Earlier this month, "Stop and Frisk,” the New York City Police Department policy which allowed officers to stop and search ordinary people on the street, was declared unconstitutional.  The NYPD and New York City government claim that stop and frisk has cut down on crime and that they only stop people that they have "reasonable suspicion" of having committed a crime. Many people and neighborhoods who have been targeted by stop and frisk practices, however, disagree that there's any reasonable suspicion involved and feel profiled because of their race or other parts of their appearance.Stop and Frisk was the subject of a People's University in New York last year, and we wanted to share a testimony shared during our discussion by Maxine King, the guest speaker and founder of Families Against Stop and Frisk.ATD Fourth World People's Universities provide a forum for people from different backgrounds to meet and learn from one another. They highlight the participation of everyone in the struggle against poverty, with an emphasis on the participation of people with an experience of poverty and exclusion.Maxine King:“685,000 blacks and Latinos were stopped and frisked last year alone. That is just the ones that were reported and documented. A black boy born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime. A Latino boy has a 1 in 6 chance of the same fate. 1 in 9 black and 1 in 20 Hispanic, 1 in 57 white children have an incarcerated parent. There are more adult African Americans under correctional control, today, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the civil war. In 2011, our state and federal prison population exceeded that of all the European nations combined.“These numbers are scary. We are the free world, right? However, our communities are under siege. I've lived in my neighborhood for thirty one years. For most of those years, I thought that I was in a pretty safe community. I kept telling my children, you know, if you get in trouble, always look for a police officer. However, that started changing when my children turned into teenagers. This issue of stop and frisk affects [young people] in a most traumatic way. I am the mother of seven children, five of which are male. I worry about my children on a daily basis when they go outside.“December of last year, I was coming home and I saw my neighbor's kid up against the wall. This is a practice that I see quite often. I see kids who as soon as they see the police they throw their hands up against the wall because they've internalized that this is what is going to happen. Well, my neighbor's kid was against the wall and I stopped and I asked the officer, why is he up against the wall? Why are you searching him? And he said, Mind your business. And I said, He is my business. And he said, Step away. And I said, No, I'm concerned. This is my son...“The officer proceeded to go through his book bag and I informed the officer that stop and frisk was illegal. And no sooner had I said that, and I was thrown to the ground and someone had a knee in my neck and another person had my arms twisted behind my back and my face was touching the ground and they handcuffed me. It was just devastating. I ultimately went to court in a hospital gown. I didn't start off in a hospital gown. I started off in a mink coat and I was dressed. I'm still going back and forth to court. I was in court today. I'm prepared to go to trial.“What that did for me was it sparked something inside of me. If that happened to me, it's happening every day in my community. It's happening to young people and poor people that don't have resources to fight. So, I started a group called Families Against Stop and Frisk and we support families whose young people are going through court. It makes a difference when a kid is going through arraignment and an attorney meets him because someone from our group called and said this person needs some support. For us, as organizers and supporters and family members, silence is violence. We need to speak up. We have to take our communities back. And we have to say to the police, you guys are here to protect and serve, right? Protect and serve the people. Not protect and serve certain people. And terrorize others just by the color of your skin. I say no more. “