Simpleton Mayor does not believe that the 4th Amendment applies to Blacks & Latinos. Similar to the restrictions in Arizona, Bloomberg wants to stop or detain all non-white people because they are non-white. The 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, although only one sentence long, protects people against unjustified detentions by the government. It reads: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Stop & Frisk is Unconstitutional and factually unsupportable. According to the department's own data:
- The NYPD stopped and questioned 685,724 people in 2011 - a 600 percent increase since Mayor Bloomberg took office.
- Of the 685,724 stops, only 1.9 percent resulted in the recovery of a weapon.
- Nine out of 10 people stopped were not charged with any crime or infraction.
- 87 percent of people stopped were Black or Hispanic.
- And while Blacks and Latinos were far more likely to be stopped, whites were almost twice as likely to be found carrying a weapon. [MORE] and [MORE]
From [HERE] A teenager who was caught with a gun during a stop and frisk in the Bronx in 2010 had his conviction overturned by an appeals court, infuriating the Bloomberg administration. Darryl Craig, 14, had been sentenced to 18 months’ probation, but yesterday the appeals court ruled that the cop had no legal grounds for the search. It just so happens that three months after that arrest, Craig allegedly used another gun to shoot a gang rival in Queens. Now NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and his house organ the NY Post are up in arms, as is Mayor Bloomberg, who was asked about the appeals court decision at the McCarren Park Pool ribbon-cutting today.
"It was a loaded gun," Bloomberg incredulously told reporters in response to a question about the appeal. "Are you supposed to give the kid a flower and send him on his way? I don't know what these judges were thinking." Today the Post has two articles on the decision, which is being framed as some sort of emblematic lesson about the virtues of stop and frisk and the recklessness of those who criticize the policy.
The decision by the Appellate Division to dismiss the case against a teenager in possession of a loaded semiautomatic gun may be as dangerous as the weapon itself. In the court’s opinion, the situation did not support the officer’s actions. Yet he rightly observed and questioned a youth who actually had a gun, and it was recovered. Loaded...
There were 5,430 murders in New York City in the last decade, compared to 11,058 the decade before. That’s 5,628 lives saved. Police recovered 8,263 weapons in stops in 2011, but some say that isn’t sufficient. If fewer people are carrying guns because of police stops, we’ll take it. Through necessary enforcement — of which stops are one element — we are doing everything we can to ensure that more citizens don’t face the barrel of a gun, as the officers shot this year have had to do.
It's worth pointing out that the declining murder rate in NYC over the past decade and beyond corresponds to a widespread drop in violent crime nationwide. And there's no proof that the dramatic increase in stop-and-frisk during the Bloomberg administration has anything to do with it. Kelly and Bloomberg consistently frame the stop-and-frisk debate in stark terms: either the NYPD violates the civil rights with this racist policy, or NYC returns to the "bad old days."