Stopped and frisked in the Five-O

Wilson Lopez, 16, said that as recently as a month ago, police stopped him near the basketball courts on the Bailey Avenue playground at West 234th Street.

When he asked why he was being stopped, he said police became aggressive, grabbing him and putting his hands behind his back. 

“They didn’t tell me why they stopped me … They searched me but didn’t find anything and just said OK, you can go,” he said. 

Edward Colon, 27, said he was last stopped about five months ago, at around 8 p.m. on Albany Crescent.  

“They grabbed me at my neck and slammed me on the floor, and when I asked them why they had stopped me they just said it was because I looked crazy.” 

He said that over eight months, he was stopped frequently and that young men are often stopped by officers in the area. 

“I didn’t believe that this was really going on and then it happened to me. And it happens to a lot of people around here,” he said.

The city’s stop and frisk policy allows police to stop and search a person if they have reasonable suspicion that he or she may be armed and dangerous or is involved in a crime. It has been widely criticized as a policy that promotes racial profiling. 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has repeatedly denounced two recent court rulings challenging the policy, saying “the practice needs to be mended, not ended, to ensure that stops are conducted appropriately, with as much courtesy as possible.”

But that goal is far from what some local men say they have experienced recently. 

“You’ll just be walking in the streets and the cops come out of nowhere. There’s no reason for that,” Wilson said.  

According to the latest statistics from 2011,  Kingsbridge Heights and a stretch of West Kingsbridge Road that runs northwest into Marble Hill had the highest concentration of stops in Community Board 8. The same was true in 2009.  

Since 2009, the concentration of stops has decreased in the Marble Hill area while it has continuously increased in Kingsbridge Heights.

Stop-and-frisk hot spots now include the area bordered by Bailey Avenue, Fort Independence Street and Summit Place with 137 stops; the area bordered by Marble Hill Avenue, Broadway and West 228^th Street, with 62 stops; the area bordered by Exterior Street and the Major Deegan Expressway, with 72 stops; and the area bordered by West 231^st Street, Broadway and the Major Deegan Expressway, also with 72 stops. 

In 2009, every stop on the No. 1 train line from 225th to 242nd streets were hot spots for stop and frisks. Police made 104 stops at West 225th Street, 48 stops at West 231st Street, 46 stops at West 238th Street and 343 stops at West 242nd Street. 

Of those stopped in Community Board 8 in 2009, 217 were black and 112 were Hispanic. Ten were white, two were Asian and two others’ races were unknown. The demographics of people stopped in 2011 have not yet been released. 

The stop-and-frisk policy has raised serious concerns about racial profiling, illegal stops and privacy rights citywide. An analysis by the NYCLU revealed that New Yorkers have been the target of stop-and-frisk tactics more than 4 million times since 2002 and nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been innocent, according to the NYPD’s own reports. 

In 2011, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 685,724 times, an increase of 14 percent from 2010. Of those, 350,743 were black and 223,740 were Latino. A total of 574,483 people of color were stopped. Blacks and Latinos accounted for 4.7 percent of the city’s population but for 41.6 percent of stops. In 70 out of 76 precincts, blacks and Latinos accounted for more than 50 percent of stops, and in 33 precincts, they accounted for more than 90 percent. 

In six out of the 10 precincts with the lowest black and Latino populations, blacks and Latinos accounted for more than 70 percent of stops. Ninety percent of black and Latino men who were stopped were not charged with any crime. Blacks and Latinos were more likely to be frisked than whites and, among those frisked, were less likely to be found with a weapon.

More than 55 percent of those stopped were frisked. Although frisks are to be conducted only when an officer reasonably believes the person has a weapon, of those frisked, a weapon was found only 1.9 percent of the time.

“What it is, is discrimination. The statistics speak for themselves,” said Timothy Jones, a 53-year-old African-American veteran, who served for eight years.  Mr. Jones, a Marble Hill resident, said he was stopped one day in Manhattan about 13 years ago. He said he resisted the search and when the officers became aggressive, Mr. Jones fought back. He said he was arrested and jailed for 24 hours. The judge’s verdict left him with only a fine.  But he said he lost his job.

 “I shouldn’t have been charged because they didn’t find anything … They try to tell you that you have rights but you don’t have any rights in the streets,” he said. 

The most recent police data shows that the NYPD’s use of the controversial tactic has decreased 34 percent between the first and second quarters of this year. Between April 1 and June 30, police conducted 133,934 stops, compared to 203,500 stops in the first three months of the year.

 “…We can expect that NYPD officers subjected at least 1,000 innocent New Yorkers a day to humiliating and unjustified street stops. That is nothing to brag about,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement. “This reduction is a good start, but much more needs to be done to rebuild community trust and protect New Yorkers from illegal and racially biased street stops.”

The NYPD declined repeated requests for comment.