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PTH member's letter to the New York Times, on NYPD harassment
Submitted by admin on Thu, 03/11/2010 - 22:47.
Many Picture the Homeless members appreciated Bob Herbert's recent columns in the New York Times, focused on the NYPD's "Jim Crow Policing" and practices of "Watching Certain People."
Below, a PTH member's letter to the editor...
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To the Editor:
Bob Herbert's column about reckless and discriminatory NYPD stops-and-frisks ("Watching Certain People," Mar. 2) is right on. From my youth in segregated South Carolina to recent decades in New York City, I know too well what Herbert has named as the endurance of "Jim Crow policing."
We at Picture the Homeless can confirm that these patterns of harassment target certain overlapping sectors--including Blacks and Latinos, homeless as well as non-homeless. We are bringing attention to this through our Civil Rights Campaign on NYPD abuse of Disorderly Conduct, taking on ticketing for unspecified violations and unconstitutional arrests under this statute. We recently held a summit at Center for Constitutional Rights, and are currently in touch with the State Attorney General's civil rights division to address these urgent community grievances.
Long after the Fourteenth Amendment promised equal protection, and recent civil rights victories, we still see the police treating black and brown people as though they have "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," in the words of the slavery-era Dred Scott decision. Even the boundaries set forth over the twentieth century, in the precedent-setting Adams, Defore, Mapp, and Terry cases, protecting us against police encounters motivated by a whim, seem to have little impact. Our own suit with the NYCLU in Picture the Homeless v. City of New York against selective enforcement (a victory), and the previous State Attorney General's admonition of the NYPD to document the initial cause of each police encounter (ignored), leave more work and struggle ahead.
We need community pressure from below asserting our human rights and demanding that our civil rights be respected, and we need action from our representatives at City Hall and in Albany. When the mayor and police commissioner place some above the law and "certain people" below it, it renders all New Yorkers less free.
We at Picture the Homeless can confirm that these patterns of harassment target certain overlapping sectors--including Blacks and Latinos, homeless as well as non-homeless. We are bringing attention to this through our Civil Rights Campaign on NYPD abuse of Disorderly Conduct, taking on ticketing for unspecified violations and unconstitutional arrests under this statute. We recently held a summit at Center for Constitutional Rights, and are currently in touch with the State Attorney General's civil rights division to address these urgent community grievances.
Long after the Fourteenth Amendment promised equal protection, and recent civil rights victories, we still see the police treating black and brown people as though they have "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," in the words of the slavery-era Dred Scott decision. Even the boundaries set forth over the twentieth century, in the precedent-setting Adams, Defore, Mapp, and Terry cases, protecting us against police encounters motivated by a whim, seem to have little impact. Our own suit with the NYCLU in Picture the Homeless v. City of New York against selective enforcement (a victory), and the previous State Attorney General's admonition of the NYPD to document the initial cause of each police encounter (ignored), leave more work and struggle ahead.
We need community pressure from below asserting our human rights and demanding that our civil rights be respected, and we need action from our representatives at City Hall and in Albany. When the mayor and police commissioner place some above the law and "certain people" below it, it renders all New Yorkers less free.
Jean Rice, Picture the Homeless
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