The courtroom "fight" officially began yesterday over whether New York City police violate the U.S. Constitution by stopping, questioning and frisking hundreds of thousands of non-white people every year without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. In photo, Southern District Judge Shira Scheindlin. [MORE] 

From [HERE] Police brass in the Bronx were not concerned with whether patrol officers were saving lives or helping people, they were focused on one thing: numbers, said a New York City police officer testifying in a federal challenge to some street stops.

Adhyl Polanco said his superiors told him that he needed 20 summonses, five street stops and one arrest per month. It didn’t matter whether the stops were done properly, he said Tuesday.

“They will never question the quality. They will question the quantity,” Polanco said.

His testimony, which will continue Wednesday, was one of three department whistleblowers expected to discuss a culture that revolved around numbers and less around actual policing — and what lawyers said is leading to tens of thousands of wrongful stops of black and Hispanic men by the police.

The class-action lawsuit in federal court challenges the constitutionality of some of the stops. There have been about 5 million stops made by police in the past decade. White City attorneys said officers operate within the law and do not target people solely because of their race. Police go where the crime is — and crime is overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods, they said.