New York And 'Jim Crow Policing'
If even half of you contact your legislative leaders, we can shut down the NYPD's stop-and-frisk databank. Forward this email to every New Yorker you know. We can win this one - we just need your help.
Last year the NYPD stopped and interrogated enough completely innocent people to fill Yankee Stadium nine times over.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called the Police Department's stop-and-frisk practices "Jim Crow policing" because the targets of this abuse are almost always people of color, and they are almost always stopped without cause.
Making matters worse, hundreds of thousands of these innocent people are subjected to the added injustice of having their personal information stored indefinitely in a sprawling NYPD database. With this vast database, the NYPD has turned more than 1 million innocent black and Latino New Yorkers into criminal suspects.
But the push back has begun. Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Eric Adams have introduced a bill that would protect New Yorkers’ privacy and due process rights by barring police departments from keeping computer databases of innocent people who are stopped, questioned or frisked by police officers.
We need to act now. Time is running out before the end of the legislative session!
Tell Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Majority Leader John Sampson and your local representatives to stand up and support the Stop-and-Frisk Database Bill.
We are so close to ending this invasion of privacy.
Thank you for all that you do,
The New York Civil Liberties Union
