In a city in which it is not a crime to shoot Sean Bell fifty times or Amadou Diallo 41 times, where black and Hispanic young men are stopped and frisked vastly in excess of their proportion of the population, it should not be a surprise that blacks & Hispanics are arrested for marijuana possession vastly more than whites (even though marijuana use is equal across ethnic groups). The surprise, as I see it, is that decent people don’t spit at Mayor Bloomberg and his police Commissioner. How often will NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Public Misinformation, Paul Browne, say things like the NYPD doesn’t engage in racial profiling without his nose growing from Police Plaza to City Hall? (I hate it when Mayor Bloomberg’s race policies make me write as though I were Al Sharpton.)

Rocco Parascandola of Newsday reports on a study released by the New York Civil Liberties Union:

The NYPD arrested more than 350,000 people for misdemeanor marijuana possession over the past decade -- a tenfold increase achieved by systematically targeting young black and Hispanic men and stopping them without cause, a report released Tuesday charges NYCLU,

The NYCLU press release, is here  read more »

NYPD, it turns out, is not color blind. Sunday’s New York Daily News I-Team has wonderfully researched, well written article by Tina Moore, Benjamin Lesser and Greg B. Smith in which they show (definitively, in my opinion) that NYPD’s practice of Stop & Frisk on NYC subways is aimed at Hispanics and Blacks and unrelated to law enforcement purposes.

Because NYPD practices here are so outrageous, Mayor Bloomberg and his Police Commissioner must be held accountable for their vastly disproportionate racial impacts. As you may recall, NYPD has made every effort to hide the racial data generated by their stop and frisk program. Some of it has leaked out, (See, my earlier report with links here if you want further background).  read more »

The subject of this post is simple and incredibly complex at the same time. Is it the standard practice of NYPD to stop, frisk and/or search blacks in NYC much more frequently than they do whites? The simple answer is yes. The complex answer is no. The complex answer was produced by the Rand Corporation under contract with an NYPD-entity ( The NYC Police Foundation.) Do you believe the Rand Corporation? I have a bridge in Brooklyn for you.
(Some background materials with links have been added long after the jump)

NYPD officers stop New Yorkers all the time; we’re pulled over for broken tail lights, for riding a bike without a bell, as we stand on the street. How those police stops break out racially is not the subject of this post – even though I personally suspect that were those stops ever studied, there might well be a disparate racial impact noted.

However, sometimes the way in which Police stop New Yorkers is more intrusive than others.  read more »

Sometimes it seems to me that the real reason that Mayor Bloomberg and his Police Commissioner have gotten into their unending multi-million dollar war with Critical Mass bicycle riders is that they hate being sassed by scruffy radicals. Other times it seems to me that the fault really belongs to two former officials of Mayor Koch's era, Stanley Brezenoff and Nat Leventhal who restructured how NYC evaluates agency productivity. Those two developed and polished the Mayor's Management Report (To see the current draft of the MMR for the Police Dept. click here.

As I read the data there, there are fewer arrests in many categories of offenses. How can the police show they are busy? Well, issuing 49 summonses and arresting three Critical Mass riders certainly gives their numbers a boost -- but so does narcotics enforcement. Misdemeanor narcotics arrests -- read pot -- are up very sharply. Is this the result of a pot wave or a need to boost productivity numbers? You may want to read Paul Armentano's article on Alternet a few days ago where he points out that marijuana arrests are vastly and disproportionately of people of color. NYC arrested more than 32,000 for pot in 2006, overwhelmingly minorities.  read more »

I am proud and pleased to announce that my cyclists group, The Five Borough Bicycle Club went to Federal Court in Manhattan today and sued NYC's Police Department to halt the implementation of rules which effectively require cyclists to get impossible-to-get parade permits for otherwise lawful group bicycle rides.

Update: The case has been assigned to District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan and a hearing has been scheduled for Thursday, March 28, 2:30 PM, at United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl St, Room 12D, New York, NY. The argument on Plaintiffs' Motion for a Preliminary Injunction was heard today before the Honorable Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York. Judge Kaplan stated that he did not have sufficient time to review the parties' submissions in order to decide Plaintiffs' motion by Friday March 30, as Plaintiffs had requested. The Court ruled that it would hear additional evidence next week and then decide in the near future (and not later than April 27 when the next Critical Mass ride in Manhattan is expected to take place) whether or not to preliminarily enjoin the enforcement of the City's parade rules.

As a result, NYPD was free to enforce its new rule on Friday during the Critical Mass Ride. 40 got tickets and 3 were arrested. As an uneven enforcement note, permit-less groups of riders far in excess of 50 rode all over Manhattan on Saturday. Only the critical-mass group was the subject of enforcement pressure.

5BBC, represented by litigation powerhouse Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP, seeks to restrain the NYPD from enforcement of those rules while their action is pending. The new rules are aimed at the Critical Mass bike ride, a leaderless group ride which continues to face massive NYPD enforcement action. Critical Mass riders were subject to some of the harsher enforcement at the Republican National Convention. Did NYPD undercover infiltrate the 5BBC? Stay tuned.

Because those enforcement actions have routinely led to mass arrests followed by mass acquittals, Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly decided to try to change rules. Those changes will effectively prohibit recreational group rides like the one from City Hall to the Bronx Zoo last week.
Review the 5BBC press release here which has hot links to the legal documents and to much more about this. In any case, Spring has sprung, come ride your bike without a permit.  read more »