Y'know I've heard a lot of people jump to conclusions and make an unfair assumption about someone being biased or bigoted on some way - and sometimes there's at least a little bit of reasonable meat behind making the assumption if not enough to fully justify the charge.
The problem is that genuine racist who what they're doing is wrong and legally actionable so they hide and deny it - therefore people have to act based on clues and hints very often since had and fast evidence is rarely clear and available.
And then there are times when the evidence is clearly available and rather than admit and address that evidence - the person or group accused whips around and accuses the accusers of exactly what they've been shown guilty off.
We've seen this with former Tea Party Express spokesman who had the chutzpah (or full on derangement) to try and do a bad satire and sarcasm laced letter accusing the NAACP of being "Racist", not to mention the fact he made the same claim on CNN, because they objected to the false characterization of Shirley Sherrod's statements.
Now we have New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg accusing the New York Times and the NYCLU of being "Racist" for opposing his Stop-and-Frisk policy because he says they didn't do something - that they actually did do.
http://www.rawstory.com/...
Bloomberg went on to compare his critics to the National Rifle Association, insinuating that the NYCLU and the Times do not really care if a young, black man is killed by gunfire in New York.
“I loathe that a 17-year-old can be senselessly murdered in The Bronx, and the media doesn’t cover it,” he said. “Do you think if a white 17-year-old prep student from Manhattan was murdered, the Times would have ignored it? I think not.”
“Make no mistake, this is a dangerous piece of legislation and anyone who supports it is courting disaster,” Bloomberg added. “If you end street stops looking for guns, there will be more guns on the streets, and more people will be killed. It’s that simple.”
The first problem with Bloomberg's claim is the the point of the NYCLU is to focus on issues of
Civil Liberties - which means situations in which the government impedes the freedom of individuals. What Liberties are impeded by a tragic criminal shooting of an innocent person, unless the police and authorities are
failing to respond to it? The second problem is that the New York Times
DID COVER THAT SHOOTING.
A Bronx teenager was fatally shot while hanging out with friends Monday evening. Alphonza Bryant, 17, was standing with friends in the borough’s Foxhurst area when two young men reportedly walked past and fired nine shots into the group. Bryant was set to graduate high school this spring.
And third - the NYPD is only finding weapons is 0.2% - Zero Point Two Percent - of their Stops. So what are the other 99.8% of the Stops for?
I have to admit to small bias as I write this. I grew up in South Central LA during the years that gangs and gang violence first began to rise up - yet the only person in my entire life who ever pointed a gun at me - Was a COP!.
And I hadn't done anything wrong. Fortunately I knew that I was far less afraid of him than he was of me. I sat down in the middle of the street and talked him down, and eventually he left without citing me for anything. Or apologizing. I'm alive today because of my gift of gab.
But I digress.
Bloomberg claims that Stop and Frisk has lowered crime, except that the majority of the stops do not find any weapon or crime in process. More weapons are found Whites who are stopped than among Latinos and Blacks, yet they continue to target people who are more innocent statistically than those whom they are ignoring.
The Percentage of Stops that actually accomplished their stated goal and found weapons was less than half for young Black suspects (1.8%) as it was for young White suspects (3.8%) in NYC. So exactly why are Black and Latino Men the recipients of more than 87% of the overall stops in the city?
These stops are no mere inconvenience. They are often abusive as a tape recording of a young man, who had been
an Explorer who wanted to become a Police Officer himself until this experience, being verbally abused and threatened by Police Officers during a Stop and Frisk.
Say the wrong thing or make the wrong move and you could end up dead during a stop such as this. Just as Patrick Dorismond, Amadou Diallo, and National Guardsman Noel Polanco were all shot down dead while unarmed, and doing nothing wrong.
Perhaps though, Bloomberg is desperate to deflect and redirect the Racism charge against the NYCLU become of reports they have produced such as this.
http://www.nyclu.org/...
Comparing police stops to violent crime suspects is bad math. Only 11 percent of stops in 2011 were based on a description of a violent crime suspect. On the other hand, from 2002 to 2011, black and Latino residents made up close to 90 percent of people stopped, and about 88 percent of stops – more than 3.8 million – were of innocent New Yorkers. Even in neighborhoods that are predominantly white, black and Latino New Yorkers face the disproportionate brunt. For example, in 2011, Black and Latino New Yorkers made up 24 percent of the population in Park Slope, but 79 percent of stops. This, on its face, is discriminatory.
Just listen to a former NYPD Chief try to justify the practice,
even when they have NO EVIDENCE of any wrong doing taking place.
By us stopping someone [whose looking into a car] based on reasonable suspicion (even though they don't make an arrest because they lack probably cause) Now he doesn't commit that crime. How many crimes have we prevented with the Stop and Frisk program? It's just impossible to determine.
...
How many times do we make that criminal, perhaps - if it is a criminal - think twice and go "I can't steal this car tonight - I'm going to go home and go to sleep".
Well, if you basically assume that
all young black and brown men are criminals, then sure it's impossible to determine because
that simply isn't the case. They're stopping
phantom crimes that have never occurred and probably never would have occurred and using that to justify a grossly bigoted policy.
Here's a better question: How many times have they stopped people who had no intention of stealing a car or doing anything else illegal and cause them to feel like they can't trust the judgement or fairness of the police? How many of them feel that they are effectively under siege by a hostile occupying force in their own city? How many of them are afraid to leave their home and walk on the streets freely, not because their afraid of crimes and crimes, but because they're afraid of the police?. According to the stats in 88% of their Stops, the Latter is far more likely the case.
Bloomberg and the NYPD continue to claim that Stop and Frisk is responsible for their declining crime rate, yet most cities are enjoying a similar drop in crime without using such tactics. Via NYCLU.
No research has ever proven the effectiveness of New York City’s stop-and-frisk regime, and the small number of arrests, summonses, and guns recovered demonstrates that the practice is ineffective. Crime data also do not support the claim that New York City is safer because of the practice. While violent crimes fell 29 percent in New York City from 2001 to 2010, other large cities experienced larger violent crime declines without relying on stop and frisk abuses: 59 percent in Los Angeles, 56 percent in New Orleans, 49 percent in Dallas, and 37 percent in Baltimore.
Violent Crime in LA fell almost
twice as much as New York, which doesn't implement a policy anything like this. If anything, because of the DOJ Consent Decree in the wake of the Rampart Case, the LAPD has gone the exact opposite direction. And still - their crime rate is down
more than New York's.
There is no genuine rational, reasonable justification for this policy, and when people the NYCLU point that out - Bloomberg turns to character assassination and charges of bigotry against them and the New York Times.
I appreciate many of Bloomberg's efforts to prevent gun violence, but this is just simply despicable.
What they've done here - deliberately - is create a climate of Fear and Intimidation. It's not about protecting the public from actual criminals, it's become about forcing people to live in a constant state of terror and fear because they are assumed guilty until proven innocent. It's a violation of the public trust and have turned the community and the police into adversaries, not partners.
That's not what America Is. That's not what Freedom is. And then trying to cover it up by trumping up bogus accusations of Racism against those that criticize you is something far far worse.
And I don't use this term lightly.
It's Fascism.
Vyan