Stop and Frisk Is the New Racial Profiling

By: The Rev. Al Sharpton | Posted: June 8, 2012 at 12:09 AM

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In a piece for the Huffington Post, the Rev. Al Sharpton says that the controversial policy must -- and will -- see its last days.

On June 17th, Father's Day, National Action Network (NAN) will be joined by the NAACP, the SEIU and 115 other organizations in a historic march down 5th Avenue in Manhattan as we demand an end to 'stop-and-frisk.' Bringing attention to the continued pattern by the NYPD of routinely stopping and searching people of color -- especially young black and Latino men (often times without probable cause) -- we call on Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to implement reform at once. Creating databases of folks that have been 'stopped and frisked,' the NYPD has criminalized an entire generation of racial minorities in this city.

In 2011 alone, the NYPD stopped 685,724 people, out of which nearly 87 percent were black or Latino. That is no small coincidence; it's racial profiling in its most basic and blatant form. And contrary to the department's insistence that these tactics somehow prevent crime, out of the hundreds of thousands stopped, 88 percent were found to be innocent according to the NYCLU. Those are some staggering and sobering figures. When a majority of those targeted by police are young men of color and when the bulk of them are innocent, what else are we to conclude other than the fact that the NYPD has been implementing a policy of racial profiling and discrimination?

Read the Rev. Al Sharpton's entire piece at the Huffington Post.

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