Kelly: >> no, absolutely, we are sensitive to this. nobody wants to be stopped. at the very least, you're giving up your time. but we need some balance here. the stark reality is that violence is happening disproportionately in minority communities, and that, unfortunately, is in big cities throughout america. we have record low numbers of murders in new york city, record low numbers of shootings. we're doing something right to save lives. last year, as i said, we had a record low in murders. this year we're running 30% below that. let me give you another figure. in the last 11 years, 11 full years of the bloomberg administration, there were 7,363 fewer murders in new york city than there were in the preceding 11 years. now, if history is any guide, those lives saved are largely the lives of young men of color. so, we're doing something --
Gregory: >> so, if you lose stop and frisk --
Kelly: >> but i understand the sensitivity of it. and people -- and i've dealt with this in many community meetings. it's something that is very important in the african-american community. i would also submit, though, that the trayvon martin case is a little bit different. these are two civilians.
No, you really don't understand the sensitivity of it - or else you'd really that murders are down
nationwide, not just in New York and not just because of the "Stop and Frisk" policy. If you understood that, you'd change the policy because 106% of the Black and Latino Community are not, and should not be habitually treated as though they were all potential Criminals.
So how does Kelly answer the fact that 88% of the stops result in no arrest, no citation, no guns and no drugs?
Gregory: >> let me go back to those numbers that you referenced and put it up on the screen for our audience and go through some of those numbers and where some of the criticism is. 4.4 million stops. 6% arrests. 6% summons. 88% no further law enforcement action. and then look at who is getting targeted. 52% black, 31% hispanic, 10% white. i first want to focus on that 88% number of people not doing anything wrong. does that not say to you as the commissioner of the police, we're doing too much of this?
Kelly: >> no. it doesn't mean that people are not doing anything wrong. if you look at the statute, it says reasonable suspicion that individuals may be about to commit, are committing or have committed a crime. one of the classic examples that we use is somebody going down the street trying door handles, or a group of young men that the bodega owner fears going to strongarm rob them when they leave their store. so, there's a preventive aspect to this. and people say innocent. that's not the appropriate word. what we use here --
Gregory : >> further law enforcement action.
Kelly : >> well, what we use here is a standard of reasonable suspicion. if you have probable cause, then you have enough to effect an arrest or issue a summons. this, by the way, is the standard law enforcement practice throughout america, certainly not just going forward in new york. and as far as your second set of numbers are concerned, we think reasonable criteria is a criteria that was developed or presented to us by the rand corporation, an institution that's been in existence for 100 years, that says that to take a look at racial profiling and determine if it happens, you should first look at the universe of people who are identified by the victims of a crime. the perpetrators identified by victims of violent crime. what does that universe look like? and in new york, that universe certainly comports to the racial makeup of the people who are being stopped.
>> so, let me understand what you're saying. basically, there are more african-americans and hispanics who are committing crimes in new york city. therefore, it justifies a higher percentage of those being stopped on the suspicion that they might do something wrong that they might commit a criminal act, because the judge says that's faulty reasoning. she's saying you can't take an innocent population and say that that's the same as a criminal population.
So to Kelly the lack of a crime is proof of a crime that couldn't been, not in a
Stop that shouldn't have been. He says quite literally that "Innocent" people, aren't really innocent in his eyes, or the eyes of the law. That's horrifying.
Kelly goes on to say that NYPD has one of the most diverse departments in the nation, but they also have a problem of repeated cases of White Cops shooting their fellow officers when they happen to be Black.
After a white officer shot and killed an undercover detective, William Capers, in 1972, the department drew up guidelines intended to prevent fraternal fire and undercover officers began wearing their badges on strings around their necks.
In 1994, after a white officer fired shots into the back of a black undercover transit officer, Desmond Robinson, the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, acknowledged what seemed painfully obvious to black undercover officers — the department needed to appoint a panel to examine the racial assumptions of their white colleagues.
“It’s a reality,” Mr. Bratton said. “Minority officers are at risk.”
...
In Officer Edwards’s case, the young, off-duty officer apparently had drawn his weapon and was chasing a man who had tried to break into his car when he encountered his on-duty colleagues, who according to their initial testimony saw his gun, shouted “Police!” and fired when he turned to face them. Such actions might have been in violation of departmental protocols.
...
“There was a time if you were a cop you could grab your gun and go into the streets and count on a stereotype to protect you,” said Eugene J. O’Donnell, professor of law and police studies at John Jay and a former officer. “Now the cops look like everybody, and everybody looks like a cop.
“So stereotypes,” he said, “offer no protection at all.”
For decades the
presumption is that a Black Face is automatically a threat, even when that face happens to be a fellow police officer. How much does this fact impact how the general public, when they too are black or brown, should view the police? Shouldn't they expect that anytime they have to deal with a police officer, they're under
threat, they're at risk innocent or not? Isn't that what Ray Kelly just explained?
How safe and protected is the Black populace of New York supposed to feel when the Black Cops Aren't Safe!?
How are they supposed to feel when the Highest Ranking Black Officer at the Department was Improperly STOPPED and Harassed at Gun Point?
At least one cop has been disciplined for ordering the NYPD's highest-ranking uniformed black officer out of his auto while the three-star chief was off-duty and parked in Queens, the Daily News has learned.
"How you can not know or recognize a chief in a department SUV with ID around his neck, I don't know," a police source said.
In his briefing to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Zeigler said the two cops, who are white, had no legitimate reason to approach his SUV, ranking sources said.
After they ordered him to get out, one officer did not believe the NYPD identification Zeigler gave him.
The cops gave a different account:
When one officer spotted Zeigler's service weapon through the rolled-down window, he yelled "Gun!" according to sources who have spoken with the officers.
Both cops raised their weapons and ordered the driver out of the car, sources said.
Instead of saying he was an armed member of the NYPD, Zeigler shouted, "Don't you know who I am?" the sources said.
When one cop reached over to check the identification badge around Zeigler's neck, the chief pushed him away, sources said.
Only then did Zeigler tell the two officers his name and rank, those sources said.
Zeigler, in his discussions with Kelly, said the officers never yelled "Gun!" sources said.
One cop got into a heated argument with the chief even after seeing the ID, sources said.
So we have a Deputy Chief, in a
Department Vehicle and
With Department ID who two white cops see and
assume is a crook, pull their guns on him and order him out of the vehicle, then one continues to
Argue with him after seeing his ID?.
That's massively fucked up. You can see with a situation like this how some Black Cops end up Dead, shot by White Cops. But Kelly still doesn't think his force has a problem with Black People?
And what does Sybrina Fulton have to say about all this?
>>> i want to welcome to the program now the mother of trayvon martin, sybrina fulton, and her attorney, benjamin crump. also joining me in the studio is president and ceo of the naacp, ben jealous. thank you for all of you joining me this morning. ben, let me start with you. i underlined commissioner kelly saying the stark reality is that violence is happening disproportionately in minority communities. with stop and frisk, lives are saved in those communities.
Ben Jealous: >> so, this is the problem. we just heard a man who aspires to be the head of the department of homeland security say that his officers had to violate the u.s. constitution to make us safer. that should send chills down the spine of everyone in this country.
Gregory: >> he would take issue that there's any violation going on, that's why they're appealing the decision, right?
Jealous: >> that's what a federal judge just found, and that, in our country, it's the federal judge, not the chief, who gets to decide what the u.s. constitution says. now, the problem is that the fall in homicides happened prior to 2002, and the increase in stop and frisk happened after 2002. so, there's no relationship between these two. we are now at a point where you have more stop and frisks of young black men in new york city than there are young black men in new york city, and that's why charles blow said, and while the judge quoted him in saying, it's like burning down the house to rid it of mice. just because there are more murders in our community doesn't mean that you can treat all of us like we are guilty. and furthermore, you should pay our communities the respect of actually listening to people when they say this is driving a wedge, this is making us less safe, it's making our kids not just fear the robbers but fear the cops. and so, they're afraid to go and talk to you when they need to go and talk to you. he's just way off base. this is the largest racial profiling-- and this last point. he said this is not a program. it is a program. stop, question and frisk was introduced by mayor giuliani right after the terry versus ohio decision as a specific program in the city. under giuliani, we saw about 80,000 per year, stop and frisks, this racial profiling program. under bloomberg, in 2011, we have about 680,000, 90% innocent, 90% people of color, and get this, 99.9% don't have a gun. about 700 guns seized.
Gregory: >> the wider point, sybrina fulton, i welcome you to the program. just your reaction as a mother who's lost her son so tragically and as now someone who's trying to create something positive out of that searing loss by talking about stand your ground laws. you've heard the commissioner of new york say, look, what happened to trayvon martin, even though it was referenced in the judge's ruling, is quite different. that was civilian on civilian. this is about civilians interacting with the police department. do you see that distinction or not?
Fulton: >> i think it's all about laws, and i think you have to give not only civilians, but you have to give the police officers the right direction. you can't give people the authority, police officers the right to stop somebody because of the color of their skin.
Gregory: >> let me get benjamin crump in here as well. how do you react to the commissioner saying there's not a distinction when particularly judge sheindlin is raising the specter of trayvon martin, that idea of universal suspicion that charles blow wrote about in saying this is what's wrong with the policy?
Crump: >> yes. we're here in phoenix, arizona, and the latino community deals with sb- 1070 and new york is stop and frisk. no matter what you want to call it, essentially, it's racial profiling, and we know trayvon martin was profiled for something that night on february 26th, 2012, and he had broken no law. he was just walking home. and that's the problem. when you start this racial profiling, it's a slippery slope, and it's so bad for so many in the community. where does it stop? how do we protect our children once you give police or neighborhood watch authority to just profile us?
Gregory: >> sybrina fulton, i want to come back to you. as you are going around the country, you're in arizona, you talked about the stand your ground laws, trying to get them amended. the idea that there is a trayvon martin voter. can you describe what this period of time has been like for you, how you're trying to turn this pain into some real activism to get some change?
Fulton: >> well, you know, the death of my son was so negative that we felt that we needed to do something positive to not only help us heal but to help other families of senseless gun violence. and that's why we started the trayvon martin foundation. that's why we're going all over the country to the 21 states that have the stand your ground law to try to make some type of change. we understand it is not going to be done overnight, that it's going to take time to do this, but we're in it for the long haul. we're in it. this is a part of my life now.
Gregory: >> ben jealous, final point to you. we're in a debate in this country about, in the quest for public safety, whether it's surveillance laws and the nsa, whether it's our policing tactics, how far is too far in the name of public safety. what changes the focus of this debate? what wins this debate to your side of the argument, do you think?
Jealous: >> we've got to go back to the founding principles of this country. when our founders were courageous enough to say we deserve to be both free and safe. and those who would give up freedom in the name of safety don't deserve either. and that's why it's so important that trayvon's family has stood up, that's why it's so important that so many will be standing up at the march in washington next saturday. that's why it's critical that we all come together and realize at the end daytime, this is not about race. this is about freedom. this is about people in this country being able to walk out the door and not fear the cops when they're not doing anything wrong.
Gregory: >> benjamin crump has an article about the effect of trayvon martin, an op ed piece in the " washington post" today. benjamin crump, thank you very much. sybrina fulton, we really appreciate your time this morning. and ben jealous, thank you, as always, as well.
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While you're pondering that Join Color of Change Campaign to Repeal Stand Your Ground Laws and get your asses Registered to Vote [Share the QR below], check out the Dreamdefenders.org and BlackYouthProject.com because at a certain point we have to start seriously thinking and acting on what happens #AfterTrayvon