Stop and Frisk – RI Future

February 1, 2016February 1, 2016

#NoNewRoads: How Bernie Sanders Should Preempt Michael Bloomberg

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Rumors have been floating that former Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, might run for president. Bloomberg has presented his potential run as a middle-ground between rightwing candidates like Donald Trump and progressive leaders like Bernie Sanders. Whatever critiques there might be of Bloomberg, the fact is that he’s led on some issues. Bernie Sanders should work hard to undermine Bloomberg’s base of support on a key issue where the Bloomberg administration led: transportation.

Michael Bloomberg was a big proponent of stop-and-frisk policies, which should be a concern for any progressive voter. Stop-and-frisk did recover caches of weapons, perhaps preventing some crimes, but only by harassing large numbers of people of color with an indiscriminate dragnet. The vast majority of people stopped-and-frisked were found to have committed no crime whatsoever, and federal courts found that the policy systematically violated the rights of people of color. Bloomberg’s candidacy would certainly be considerably better than any of the Republican candidates, but in an election year when voters have the ability to choose a candidate like Bernie Sanders, it shouldn’t be hard for progressives to make the choice: Sanders has led on issues of mass-imprisonment, ending the drug war, and restoring respect for people of color in a way that few American candidates, and no mainstream American candidate, ever has. Alongside Bloomberg’s iffy positions on civil rights stand some genuine achievements in transportation and land use. Bloomberg’s New York became a leader on environmental issues related to transportation, and the Sanders’ campaign needs to sharpen its messaging on this subject in order to undermine that leg of support.

A signature advantage for Bloomberg is that his administration smartly approached transportation policy to augment environmental and social benefits for New Yorkers. This Streetfilms video shows the almost magical transformation of many New York intersections under the tutelage of Janette Sadik-Kahn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Even for someone like me who “Feels the Bern”, and who doesn’t fully trust Michael Bloomberg on a range of other issues, it’s hard to not be impressed:

Sanders’ campaign has called for infrastructure investment as a major plank of his get-people-back-to-work message. I have disagreements with Sanders’ approach. I think that transportation funding should come from user fees. None of the candidates–Sanders included–has taken this position. But even as Sanders approaches the funding mechanisms differently than most urbanist voters would like, he can still draw from his past experience and speak to the need to economize on what the country spends on out of that funding.

The United States spends more money on expansion of its road system than on maintenance, and despite some hopeful examples to the contrary, has often maintained design mistakes like urban highways into their second lifecycle, often at the behest of corporate giants like Microsoft and against the wishes of local voters and small businesses. Sanders, who was a four-term mayor of a leading urbanist place, Burlington Vermont, doesn’t need to stretch himself into any pretzels to speak eloquently to why this is a mistake. But at present, Sanders is not doing enough through his campaign to explain how America’s infrastructure crisis is one of overspending. His campaign needs to say clearly: #NoNewRoads.

As a mayor, Bernie Sanders ‘out-Republicaned Republicans‘. He did so by introducing radical concepts like competitive bidding, by successfully lowering property taxes, and by successfully guiding the city towards new development while also protecting the rights of poor people in public housing. Sanders inspires people like me not just with his social-democratic approach to some issues, but his genuine understanding of when free markets work well. Transportation is an opportunity for Sanders to bring that cost-saving approach into focus.

Sanders wants a new single-payer healthcare system, but has also spoken eloquently to the fact that Americans spend more on healthcare than any other industrialized nation. Just as we waste money on healthcare procedures that bring poor results, we also are wasting precious resources on transportation boondoggles that do not add up to longterm economic growth. It’s time for the Sanders campaign to speak more forthrightly on this. In the second Democratic debate, Sanders again stuck to this spending issue:

…[W]hy do we remain the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right? Why do we continue to get ripped off by the drug companies who can charge us any prices they want? Why is it that we are spending per capita far, far more than Canada, which is 100 miles away from my door, that guarantees health care to all people?

It will not happen tomorrow. But when millions of people stand up and are prepared to take on the insurance companies and the drug companies, it will happen, and I will lead that effort.

Medicare for all, single-payer system is the way we should go.

On imprisonment, the focus on fiscal conservatism has been mixed into Sanders boldly progressive message. From the second Democratic debate:

We’re spending $80 billion locking people up disproportionately, Latino and African American. We need very clearly major, major reform in a broken criminal justice system from top to bottom. And that means when police officers out in a community do illegal activity, kill people who are unarmed, who should not be killed, they must be held accountable. It means that we end minimum sentencing for those people (UNINTEL). And it means that we take marijuana out of the federal law as a crime and give space for freedom to go forward with legalizing marijuana.

Sanders has even brought his hawk-eyed approach to spending to military waste. From the second debate, again:

This nation is the most powerful military in the world. We’re spending over $600 billion a year on the military. And yet significantly less than 10% of that money is used to be fighting international terrorism.

We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars (UNINTEL), 5,000 nuclear weapons. I think we need major reform in the military making it more cost effective but also focusing on the real crisis that faces us. The Cold War is over and our focus has got to be on intelligence, increased manpower, fighting international terrorism.

A “no new roads” approach, sometimes called a “fix-it first” approach, would also be surprisingly within the mainstream. In a recent interview, Urban Cincy blog author Randy Simes points out that even fairly conservative and car-oriented DOTs like Ohio’s ODOT are looking to “fix it first” for financial reasons. Part of what worries transportation advocates about Bernie Sanders’ messaging on transportation funding is that this fix-it-first way of doing things might evaporate at the state level if more money became available. Sanders should make it clear to the transportation community that his focus on transportation funding does not mean a return to business-as-usual for road expansions, and that DOTs still need to start prioritizing and limiting their spending to bring the U.S. back on track.

Talking about the true roots of America’s transportation crisis–overspending on bad projects–should hone close to an attitude about public finance that Bernie Sanders has already embraced his entire life. It will clearly energize existing, young, liberal voters, while also reaching out to moderates who are concerned about costs. It takes away the false choice of progressive vs. practical, and puts them in one candidate together. Supporting the #NoNewRoads campaign will also bring Sanders close to a group of people the Clinton campaign has been attempting to separate him from: Obama lovers. Sanders has supported many of the positive achievements of the Obama era while also criticizing the president from the left, but on this issue he would be in line with our current president: President Obama invited Strong Towns, the organization that coined #NoNewRoads, to the White House to speak on rural development issues. Sanders can demonstrate that he’s able to work with fiscal conservatives, champion climate change action, and shore up support from supporters of President Obama, all at once. Win-win-win.

Donald Trump may think that we can slap a billion dollars on anything and make it better, but Bernie Sanders has shown on a range of issues that he’s much smarter. Sanders is a “man of the people” says one article: he walks to work and takes the middle seat on planes. The Sanders campaign should speak smartly on transportation so as to draw on the approach he’s taken in the past. Let’s #FeelTheBern for #NoNewRoads.

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May 7, 2015May 7, 2015

Bill would limit police searches of pedestrians, minors

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The House Judiciary Committee heard testimony on the Comprehensive Community Police Relations Act, (CCPRA) H5819, a bill that seeks to combat racial profiling by requiring “all police departments to submit to the Office of Highway Safety an annual report indicating what action has been taken to address any racial disparities in traffic stops and/or searches.”

The act would also prohibit police officers from asking juveniles and adult pedestrians if they will consent to be searched. Right now, a police officer who lacks probable cause to conduct a search is allowed to ask permission to search pockets and backpacks. Preventing police officers from asking for permission to conduct searches of citizens who present no probable cause protects juveniles from being intimidated into giving assent.

The bill under consideration is the culmination of at least 12 years of effort on behalf of community organizations and members of law enforcement. Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Paré helped craft the bill in a way that would satisfy a wide range of concerns. The meetings were held in an open and forthright manner and anyone was welcome to join in.

Why then does Attorney General Peter Kilmartin‘s office oppose the bill?

Special Assistant Attorney General Joee Lindbeck testified that the AG’s office opposes the bill because it would require police officers to ask permission to search juveniles. She also said that the Attorney General’s office was not privy to the meetings between law enforcement and community group’s where the bill was put together.

Under questioning from Representative Edie Ajello, Lindbeck admitted that under current law, a police officer without probable cause cannot ask for consent to search your automobile, but is allowed to ask for consent to search an adult pedestrian or juvenile. Doesn’t this, asked Ajello, protect the privacy of automobile drivers more than the privacy of adult pedestrians and juveniles?

“That is a position you could take, I believe,” replied Lindbeck.

Michael Évora, director of the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights, took issue with the Attorney General’s position on the bill. The bill does not prohibit a police officer from searching an adult pedestrian or juvenile if there is probable cause. It only prevents a police officer from asking for permission if there is not probable cause. This does not amount to a public safety issue, as Lindbeck asserted, said Évora.

Évora also took issue with the idea that the Attorney General’s office was somehow unaware of or not able to attend the meetings between community organizations and law enforcement officials where the bill was painstakingly crafted. “The meetings were always open,” said Évora. Further, Évora maintains that Commissioner Paré and Attorney General Kilmartin met weekly on a variety of issues, and that Kilmartin was surely informed about the content of the bill. “It is disingenuous at best,” said Évora, “to say the Attorney General was not aware.”

Speaker after speaker addressed the necessity and immediacy of the CCPRA.

Jim Vincent of the RI NAACP spoke of the importance of this legislation in building some sense of trust between communities of color and the police. “There is no need for a Rhode Island name,” said Vincent, “to be added to the long list of young men and women who have needlessly lost their lives due to police violence.”

“If we have hopefully learned anything from the outbreaks in Ferguson, Cleveland, Staten Island and of course the recent unrest in Baltimore,” said Jordan Seaberry, chairman of the Univocal Legislative Minority Advisory Commission, “it is that we cannot afford to avoid the question of race in our society.”

Seaberry went on to say that the legislators in the General Assembly “are tasked with creating the conditions for Rhode Islanders to prosper.”

“As long as racial profiling exists, we in fact are dooming families, neighborhoods [and] communities to [the] fringes. We cannot have prosperity without equity.”

Ray Watson, director of the Mt. Hope Community Center was offended that the Attorney General’s office would suggest that the process of developing the bill was not open and inclusive. He was doubly offended that the rights of juveniles were held to a lower standard than the rights of automobile owners.

Prompted by Rep. Edie Ajello, Watson spoke about being stopped and searched by the police, and the effect police harrassment has on young people of color. “It gets to a point that when you’re a youth and you’re out in the community, I mean, there’s only so much your parents can do to protect you. So you get to a point where you’re like, ‘you know what, as long as I didn’t get arrested or I didn’t hurt it’s fine’ but it definitely breeds resentment towards law enforcement.”

In compelling testimony, Ann DeCosta spoke of her concern for her 23 year old son, a recent graduate of the University of Rhode Island. The problems of raising a child are multiplied when raising a young man of color in this society, says DeCosta, “From a young age I taught my child, if you get separated from me, if you are hurt, if you need assistance, look for that badge… that’s the person you need to trust.”

But, when her son got older, and went to URI, her son told her that, “he gets stopped, 3 or 4 times a month in North Kingstown and Narragansett… I find this very upsetting… Everyone in the car is asked for ID, sometimes they’re pulled out of the car and searched for reasons such as having an air freshener hanging from the mirror…”

When Eugene Montero sent his son to the store for some milk in Coventry, his son was stopped by a police officer and told to turn out his pockets because he “fit the description” of someone selling drugs. When Montero called the police station to complain about his son’s treatment, the police had no record of the incident. “What I’m sad to say,” said Montero, “is that my kids have had several incidents since moving back to Rhode Island. My two boys who are now grown, have moved. They live in Florida.”

When Mike Araujo was 14 years old, he was beaten “very badly” by a police officer. “I had my skull split. I had my eye orbit broken. I had my jaw broken. My fingers broken. He broke my ankle. I remember that he stepped on my knees to prevent me from standing up.”

When Araujo became an adult, he tried to look into the beating he had endured. “When I looked into the record, I found it was really hard to find my own name. I finally found it, it was ‘African American male, approximately 18,’ (I was 14), ‘resisted arrest on Westminster St.'”

As these stories show, presently there is little to know accountability. Without the police keeping accurate records of all stops and searches, there is no way to introduce policies to curb abuses and racism. The Comprehensive Community Police Relations Act would be a great start in the right direction.

January 30, 2014January 30, 2014

Brown alumni say school handled Ray Kelly protest poorly

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A group of Brown graduates have sent a letter to the university expressing their disappointment with the way the school reacted to students and community members protesting NYC top cop Ray Kelly in October. The architect of New York City’s controversial stop and frisk policy, Kelly was shouted down at a Brown presentation in October and the University reacted by admonishing the protesters.

“We are impressed and inspired by the actions of the students who protested Commissioner Kelly’s speech,” says the letter. “We agree that the university must promote open discourse, but we also believe that peaceful protest and, yes, even disruptive protest, are bedrock expressions of free speech. We urge you not to limit the protections of speech to polite discourse.”

The Ray Kelly protest not only divided the Brown community, but also the progressive left in Rhode Island. For example, Bob Walsh head of the state’s most influential teachers’ union castigated the protest on Facebook calling it an ineffective tactic, while Aaron Regunberg, head of the state’s most influential student union, defended the direct action saying such a tactic was the only way to get the community’s attention.

Andrew Tillit-Saks wrote this compelling op/ed about the reaction to the protest.

Here’s the letter the alumni group sent to their school:

Dear President Paxson and Professor Anthony Bogues:

We, the undersigned alumni of Brown University, write to you to express our serious concern about the manner in which the University is addressing the events surrounding New York Police Department (“NYPD”) Commissioner Ray Kelly’s speech. We have reviewed the video footage of the event, as well as ensuing news coverage, and we believe that the students who protested Commissioner Kelly – both inside of and outside of the event – behaved admirably in denouncing Commissioner Kelly’s actions and in calling out injustice.

Brown University has a long and proud history of student protests. During the Vietnam War, students walked out on a lecture by General Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while others protested by shouting at General Wheeler. When the University invited Henry Kissinger to speak during Commencement in 1969 and awarded him an honorary degree, students stood up during Kissinger’s speech and turned their backs on him. In 1981, students picketed a speech by William Casey, director of the Central Intelligence Agency; during Casey’s lecture, numerous students stood up and disrupted Casey’s speech by reciting Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky. In these and countless other moments, Brown students have used peaceful protest and direct action to challenge injustice. We are proud to be a part of an institution that has such a strong and inspiring history of student protest.

In President Paxson’s November 6, 2013 letter to the Brown community, she wrote: “Brown’s core value of promoting the free and open exchange of ideas is bedrock to our capacity to fulfill our mission as a university. This value applies not only when ideas are agreeable and aligned with our own. Protecting the right to free expression and promoting open discourse is even more essential when ideas are divergent, abhorrent or even hurtful.”

We agree that the university must promote open discourse, but we also believe that peaceful protest and, yes, even disruptive protest, are bedrock expressions of free speech. We urge you not to limit the protections of speech to polite discourse. Rather, we urge Professor Bogues, as well as the other members of the disciplinary committee that has been convened, to understand that the freedom of expression encompasses a much broader range of speech: heated discussion, chants and protests, intemperate remarks, and speech that makes many of us uncomfortable.

Protecting the freedom of expression is a messy endeavor, but we hope that you and the disciplinary committee do not undermine the role of protest and direct action in Brown’s intellectual community.

We are impressed and inspired by the actions of the students who protested Commissioner Kelly’s speech. The Taubman Center had invited Kelly to deliver the Noah Krieger ’93 Memorial Lecture. We note that, in inviting Kelly to give a named lecture at a preeminent university, the Taubman Center lent Kelly legitimacy, prestige, and the opportunity to burnish his troubled public image. Kelly presided over countless violations of civil rights during his tenure as NYPD Commissioner – including the stop-and-frisk program, the unlawful detention of protestors at the 2004 Republican National Convention, the surveillance of mosques and Muslim citizens, among others.

We support the students’ actions and we hope that the Committee will not discipline them for their use of peaceful protest to challenge injustice. Instead, we urge you to support students who take a stand against institutional racism and structural violence.

Sincerely,

Cristina Gallo ‘02
Molly Thomas-Jensen ‘02
Sharif Corinaldi ‘00
Keren Wheeler ‘00
Peter Asen ‘04
Martha Oatis ‘03
Damali Campbell ‘01
Annabelle Heckler ‘08
Amber Knighten ‘02
Seth Leibson ‘05
Sara Nolan ‘01
Riana Good ‘03
Abena Asare ‘02
Melissa Sontag Broudo ‘01.5
Kaizar Campwala ‘02
Anne Lessy ‘13
Rocket Caleshu ‘06
Ida Moen Johnson ‘05
Sam Musher ‘01
Molly Geidel ‘03
Rebecca Rast ‘13.5
Martha Patten ‘02
Alexa Engelman ‘03.5
Alisa Gallo ‘93
Karen Pittelman ‘97
Marisa Hernández-Stern ‘05
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández ‘02
Maria Walker ‘02
Matthew Palevsky ‘07
Emma Clippinger ‘09
Ariel Werner ‘09
Rachel Judge ‘07
Robert Smith III ‘09
Nicholas Chung ‘09
Sheila Thomas ‘70
Chloe Holzman ‘02
Bruktaweit Addis ‘11
Janet Santos ‘02, ‘07 M.A.
Nicholas Werle ‘10
Jonathan Allmaier ‘02
Michael Enriquez ‘11
Darshan Patel ‘09
Caroline Young ‘05.5
Alison Klayman ‘06
Amy Joyce ‘01.5
Alex Werth ‘09

November 6, 2013November 6, 2013

Brown, Paxson create ‘Committee on the Events of Oct. 29’

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The shout down at Brown has led to the creation of the “Committee on the Events of October 29,” said Brown President Christine Paxson today.

The committee will “identify issues that may have contributed to the disruption” and “address the broader issues of campus climate, free expression, and dialogue across difference,” she wrote.

Paxson authored a critical letter on the night of the incident. In this one she writes, “Making an exception to the principle of open expression jeopardizes the right of every person on this campus to speak freely and engage in open discussion. We must develop and adhere to norms of behavior that recognize the value of protest and acknowledge the imperative of the free exchange of ideas within a university.”

Conversely, Martha Yager of the the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that promotes “peace with justice … through active nonviolence” wrote an impassioned defense of the activists who shouted down Ray Kelly last week in today’s print edition of the Providence Journal (online version here).

“The students and members of the Providence community refused to be devalued. They refused to accept business as usual,” she wrote. “That act of refusal has forced conversation within Brown, and indeed in the larger community, that has the potential of being life changing and profoundly educational for the community.”

Andrew Tillett-Saks writes that social change only happens when civil discourse and civil disobedience work in tandem.

“The implication that masterful debate is the engine of social progress could not be more historically unfounded,” he writes in this post. “The free flow of ideas and dialogue, by itself, has rarely been enough to generate social progress. It is not that ideas entirely lack social power, but they have never been sufficient in winning concessions from those in power to the oppressed. The eight-hour workday is not a product of an incisive question-and-answer session with American robber barons.”

November 3, 2013

Wingmen: When is civil disobedience worthwhile?

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It’s well worth noting that I, for one, was really looking forward to hearing Ray “Stop and Frisk” Kelly defend his deplorable practice of what he calls “proactive policing” earlier this week and I didn’t get to because of the widely-reviled Shoutdown at Brown.

But I don’t believe it is the only thing worth noting about the incident.

Another is there is a fairly large, very ad hoc and relatively politically-powerless coalition of activists in Rhode Island that are extremely fed up with institutionalized racism, or what has been called the new Jim Crow. Public policies like the war on drugs, proactive policing, high stakes testing and voter ID that on their face address social problems and in the process disproportionately target poor and minority populations.

I had the great but thankless honor of defending the agitators/organizers who shouted down Ray Kelly this week on NBC10 News Conference.

Watch the online-only Wingmen segment here, in which me, Bill Rappleye and my made-for-TV-arch nemesis Justin Katz debate the efficacy of such political tactics:

News, Weather and Classifieds for Southern New England

October 30, 2013October 30, 2013

DARE on Ray ‘Stop and Frisk’ Kelly shout down

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The ad hoc coalition of college and urban activists who prevented Ray “Stop and Frisk” Kelly from speaking at Brown University on Tuesday have been largely denounced across the political spectrum today. Dan Yorke of WPRO even went so far as to suggest that they be retroactively arrested!

But one person who isn’t (besides Steve Ahlquist and surely Bruce Reilly, who previewed the protest on RI Future) is Fred Ordonez, executive director of Direct Action for Rights and Equality, a Providence group that works with the most disenfranchised members of the community.

Here’s what he said to me in an email:

CONGRATULATIONS! to the Brown students and community members who demonstrated what people power looks like to lost institutions like Brown University, the NYPD and Rhode Island’s policing community. The students showed courage and local community people who are the affected by oppressive police tactics are just plain fed up. Even if it makes some uncomfortable, know that oppressed peoples will continue to resist in any which way they can.

Much of the conversation now seems to be focused on this man’s rights and the rights of those who wanted to participate in legitimizing (though this LECTURE) the oppression his policies cause. It’s no surprise these institutions will continue to try and marginalize the will of the people who were outraged by his invitation, who by no coincidence are mostly people of color.

Free speech and the First Amendment that is supposed to protect it are about public spaces – street corners, parks and the like. For more info, see the recent federal court decision that busted Providence police for violating it, Reilly v Providence. Brown, as a private institution, has never been about free speech. Like most private institutions, they pick and choose very carefully who gets the mic, even more so when they pay a speaker $10,000 to wield that mic as they did in the case of NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. Kelly doesn’t have “right” to speak at Brown any more than I have a “right” to be published in HuffPo.

Brown does have a responsibility to be thoughtful and constructive in how it chooses to hire out its forum, and in this regard the university utterly failed its students, the Providence community, and the people of New York who have been terrorized by Ray Kelly’s policies and practices over the past eleven years. Students, some of whom have been victimized by police practices similar to the NYPD’s racial profiling, tried valiantly to engage Marion Orr, director of Brown’s Taubman Center, in constructive alternatives to this travesty. But they were rebuffed. Community members who have battled the racial profiling rampant among Providence police were insulted and angered that instead of showing an interest in the civil rights struggles of the surrounding community, Brown saw fit to surround Kelly with local police officials. The University is apparently ignorant of (or unconcerned by?) the danger faced by our local sons, daughters, neighbors and selves of legitimizing the unconstitutional and racist practices of the NYPD.

Blatantly violating the constitution over an extended period of time, despite repeated warnings of the court, doesn’t give you a right to speak anywhere you want. If the University wants students to sit with their hands folded and mouths shut while Ray Kelly promotes policing strategies that are clear violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, perhaps they should just dump massive amounts of Xanax in their drinking water supply, and stop any pretense of telling students to think critically. And even better, they could just acknowledge to the surrounding community that our struggles are merely an inconvenience they would prefer to ignore. If it’s more important to the University to spend a lot of money providing a forum for a hatemonger, than to respect people from Providence to New York and beyond who have suffered the disgrace and humiliation of unconstitutional stops and racial profiling than maybe they need to just be honest and simply embrace the institution’s roots in the slave trade.

In Struggle and Resistance

October 30, 2013

Why we shouldn’t listen to Ray Kelly

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Yesterday’s action against New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly by Brown University students and local activists has sparked the usual outrage from both liberals and conservatives about the loss of civil discourse.

Rod Carri, commenting on ProJo.com, said,

These spoiled brats would be the first to holler about their First Amendment rights being violated. Yet, they feel they can deny Ray Kelly his right to free speech. So typical of hypocritical libs.

Even some of those who agree with the main point of the protesters, that the policies Commissioner Kelly champions are unconstitutional violations of human rights, have decried the protesters. Words like “uncouth” and “intolerant” are being bandied about with no sense of irony, given the years of violations suffered by the mostly minority victims of Kelly’s policies. There are calls for protesters to adopt the mythic patient suffering of MLK and Gandhi, who apparently never interrupted anyone to make their points.

First off, the idea that the protests somehow interfered with Kelly’s “free speech” rights is absurd. The First Amendment applies only to actions on the part of the government to silence speech. This was an action of people exercising their own free speech rights. Kelly’s views are easily and readily available; he has stood before a microphone more often than not during any given waking hour.

The views of Kelly’s opponents, however, are less likely to be given national press and airtime. By being uncouth and civilly disobedient, Kelly’s opponents got their message out: We don’t tolerate racism in Rhode Island.

Had the protesters been polite and well-mannered, the story would have been buried deep inside the ProJo, under the headline, “Commissioner Kelly defends stop-and-frisk at Brown.”

Secondly, India wasn’t freed because Gandhi waited for the Q&A period at the end of a British diplomat’s talk to make his points, and MLK did not politely request an end to centuries of racism. These great civil rights leaders demanded their rights.

Both MLK and Gandhi spent time in prison for upsetting the status quo, doing things those in power thought were jailable offenses at worst and “uncouth” at best. Pinning our cultural opponents in socially constructed systems and then criticizing them for thinking and acting outside the box is a classic way of giving the appearance of an open society while simultaneously denying the right to dissent.

October 30, 2013October 30, 2013

Rhode Island doesn’t listen to Ray Kelly

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By preventing New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly from speaking at Brown University yesterday, local activists and students sent a strong message: “racism is not for debate,” members of the crowd yelled over Kelly, who eventually abandoned the podium.

“A grim-faced Kelly left the List Arts Center via a side door after university officials gave up their attempts to bring order to the auditorium and closed the program 27 minutes after its scheduled start,” reports the Providence Journal. Kelly is infamous for his stop-and-frisk policy of searching random citizens without cause. A judge has ruled the tactic, known also as “proactive policing,” is unconstitutional.

When Kelly began speaking last night, civil rights activists stood up and and drowned out his message with their own. “We want to make this community safer, yet you are making an entire population feel unsafe to believe in our hopes,” one young man said. “Our rights are violated all the time and yet you want us to respect your rights?” said another.

Brown was not happy it had to cancel the event. University President Christine Paxson said in a quickly-released letter: “This is a sad day for the Brown community. I appreciate that some members of our community objected to the views of our invited speaker. However, our University is – above all else – about the free exchange of ideas. Nothing is more antithetical to that value than preventing someone from speaking and other members of the community from hearing that speech and challenging it vigorously in a robust yet civil manner.”

The Brown Daily Herald had excellent coverage as the events unfolded. Read the student newspaper’s coverage here. And check out their great live tweets from the event, such as this one:

VP Marisa Quinn: “I have never seen in my 15 yrs at Brown the inability to have a dialogue.” Quinn immediately interrupted by audience.

— Brown Daily Herald (@the_herald) October 29, 2013

At the end of this great video, a student offers a reply to Quinn.

WPRO’s Steve Klamkin shared this video:

October 28, 2013October 28, 2013

NYPD comish at Brown after losing ‘stop/frisk’ suit

In a sign of either Brown University’s ignorance of reality, or their support for oppressive practices, (or love of causing a stir), they will host the controversial Commissioner Ray Kelly tomorrow at 4pm, at List Art Building. Naturally, Kelly will explain that in order to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. In this case, he will proclaim that making New York City safe for “us” is the primary concern. The eggs in this case apply to people who are Black, Latino, and/or Muslim. These groups have been subjected to heightened surveillance and harassment programs that violate the 4th Amendment, as well as a rash of recent high-profile killings by NYPD officers.

Kelly has proudly supported his “Stop and Frisk” policy over the years- even in the face of massive disapproval. I studied this issue intensely and created a series on Unprison that uses statistics to denounce the claims of Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg. A summary of the series is also available in The Guardian. Tomorrow, oral arguments are being heard after Kelly’s NYPD lost the class action lawsuit Floyd v. New York. They are seeking a stay of execution in the Second Circuit. A complete overview of the case can be found here. Indeed, Kelly’s NYPD has prompted many millions of dollars in litigation.

Who should properly be credited when something doesn’t happen? There has been no repeat of the 9-11 attack in New York City… nor in any other American city. Commissioner Kelly claims it is the vigilance of his 35,000 troops that stands between civilization and mass destruction. Perhaps Mayor Angel Taveras, Dean Esserman, Hugh Clements and others should be receiving annual awards in Providence? Others might thank foreign security forces, American troops, Navy Seal Team Six, their chosen deity, a collapsed economy, border and TSA agents, or even the disinterest of would-be terrorists. But Ray Kelly wants you to thank him, and to forget about the constitution in the process.

I’m personally very curious how this stop on the Ray Kelly Victory Tour goes down at Brown. Someone please report in.

March 22, 2013March 22, 2013

NYPD Faces Scrutiny On Stop And Frisk Tactic

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This article originally appeared in The Guardian, here. Bruce Reilly’s five-part series of articles on Floyd and stop-and-frisk appears this week on Unprison.

The New York Police Department is on trial in Floyd v City of New York, and the public is watching.

It is ironic that the policy of recording “stops, questions, and frisks” originated with the 1999 police shooting of Amadou Diallo (and subsequent acquittals), and the 1997 torture of Abner Louima in a Brooklyn police station. The US Civil Rights Commission intervened, and data have since been collected on the UF-250 forms. Over a decade later, vigils and protests in response to the police shootings of RaMarley Graham, 18, last year, and, just last week, Kimani Gray, 16, pose tough questions about whether progress is being made in police-community relations.

Three 2012 cases, regarding the Open Container law, marijuana arrests, and suspicion based on a “hunch”, indicate that the NYPD‘s approach to the fourth amendment is coming under close scrutiny. Justice Shira Scheindin has also hinted in Floyd pre-trial proceedings that “high crime area” and “furtive movements” could be coming under fire: these key phrases have become vague standards for police to justify “probable cause” to search.

The scale of the “stop-and-frisk” problem

Class action civil rights cases allow us to look at data on a systemic level. A class action suit is the affordable option for NYC taxpayers and the court. If each plaintiff were to bring a harassment lawsuit against the NYPD under civil rights provisions of Section 1983, it would crash the system.

Over the past decade, NYC has arraigned roughly 300,000 stop-and-frisk cases per year (pdf). If individual cases were to begin flooding the court calendar, the calendar would triple in size overnight. In 2011, the NYPD self-reported 119,163 “uses of force” where there was neither arrest nor summons issued; furthermore, they frisked 324,700 people and issued no form of citation.

Some young females have complained that their frisks amount to groping. Whether minor or severe, the “frisking” cases exceed the number of misdemeanors in the courts.

Speaking Monday, as Floyd got underway, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the NYPD and the stop-and-frisk policy:

“This past week, with a city of 8.4 million people, we had one murder. I can’t imagine any rational person saying that the techniques are not working and that we should stop them. We believe we do it consistent with the law in terms of having reasonable cause … We don’t look at anybody’s ethnicity. We go where the crimes are.”

But murder rates – though a commonly used indicator of overall crime – are also a salacious, inaccurate, and often misleading metric. Homicides represent less than 1% of crimes. With such a small sample, a murder rate can fluctuate with every single incident.

Murders are misleadingly used as a leading indicator of public safety. But any study on “safety” would always have an element of subjectivity. What is “safe”? It is a feeling, not a fact. It is relative, and highly impacted by the media’s reporting of crimes, both near and far. In New York City, the numbers and the rhetoric don’t always match up.

Data are manipulated: criminologist and former NYPD Captain John Eterno has explained how this manipulation is systemic. The New York Times made a study of 2,000 former police officials and found the same. Perhaps a sign of the manipulation is that some felonies (drugs, sex crimes, stolen property) have gone down, while their misdemeanor counterparts have risen.

When looking at all the NYPD data, in the round, there are many indicators showing crime has risen in NYC.

Safer with stop-and-risk? How precincts match up

And what about the mayor’s claim that “we don’t look at anybody’s ethnicity”? When comparing the ten New York police precincts with the lowest percentage of black and Latino residents with the ten precincts with the highest percentage of black and Latino residents, the numbers are startling. Residents in largely white neighborhoods are being stopped on average at a rate of 4%, and crime in those precincts is falling by 42%. In communities of color, the frequency of stops is at 16%; while crime is dropping 22%. In other words, four times the hassle, for half the results.

But the true picture is worse than that. Thousands of residents in the financial district and Tribeca, for example, hardly represent the millions of people subjected to possible stops in that district. If police actually stopped 5% of all the people who travel through the tip of Manhattan, it would outnumber the residents of that precinct. Meanwhile, residents in districts like Hunts Point in the Bronx bear the entire brunt of the police activity, since tourists and workers aren’t flooding the precinct.

The fiscal cost of stop-and-frisk

A number of sources have shared their recordings of stops, including copwatch organizations such as All Things Harlem. It is clear that there is a wide chasm between the real stops and the NYPD’s textbook example. Even on the most conservative estimates, we can see the level of resources expended to continue this policy, which is directed primarily at black and Latino young men and boys.

The annual 685,724 stops require over 80,000 hours to complete. This works out at over 229 hours per day spent stopping, questioning, and frisking the city’s residents. Officers earn over $22 per hour after six months, and so taxpayers dole out well over $11 per stop, the vast majority of which will not yield a summons or arrest and are rarely connected to looking for a particular suspect.

This $7.5m conservative estimate is nothing, though, when compared to the $135m the NYPD has cost the taxpayers (pdf) in litigation costs relating to stop-and-frisk lawsuits. This amount will likely continue to spiral upwards, considering just the recent highly publicized cases. In the case of Kimani Gray, it has been reported that the two police officers involved in the shooting of the Brooklyn teenager have racked up $215,000 in litigation settlements over civil rights violations. The spike in civil rights and police action claims in recent years suggests a deteriorating relationship with their communities.

Creating safe communities or fostering suspicion and division?

Even if we set racial targeting and constitutional protections aside, the ultimate social questions are whether it is acceptable for nine innocent people to be harassed for every one person caught engaging in some form of misconduct; further, whether it is acceptable for 20 innocent people to be harassed for every one person caught doing something reasonably serious; and finally, is it acceptable for 90 innocent people to be harassed for every one person caught doing something actually dangerous?

The answer to these questions may be “yes” for some people. But it is an answer that should apply to one’s own community, and not be imposed on others’. For example, would supporters of stop-and-frisk feel the same way if college dorms were targeted … especially if the “hit rate” for criminality were higher? The current state of affairs appears to many as a massive campaign designed to erode stability in communities of color: distrust, despair, and hate then compound the dilemma of labeling young men with criminal records. Families lose income, children lose parents, and low-income New Yorkers lose the right to live in public housing. One person’s plight provides little insight; we need to look at the policy’s collective impact upon millions.

The Floyd case has allowed some long-excluded voices to finally be heard, but are the police listening? Considering one of the shooters of Amadou Diallo has been working with a badge but no gun ever since, earning over $1m from the NYPD, it is challenging for urban residents to feel protected and served. To know you are a “suspect” for simply walking down the street, the feeling is closer to being under occupation.