I only see thugs or thug wanna-bes being stopped randomly so I can't complain. I'm not white so this isn't about race or being racist. Fact of the matter is that you generally don't see people in business suits or normal casual dress on the street corner, robbing purses or stealing cars. We can all pretend like we do not notice the "uniform" that these types wear, hoodies, pants down to the ankles, caps 5 sizes too big turned sideways, etc etc. But the fact of the matter is that if a person is dressed that way then they are sending out a signal that they represent a culture that idolizes criminals, even if they are not one. Many people almost have a dual-identity like a comic-book character. A professional person dressed normally by day and a thug-looking person by night. In these cases, it is not like a cop can know that a person dressed up in a hoodie and hanging with his "crew" in an area known for criminal activity is actually a person who does the right thing during the day.

As far as the other guy goes, it seems to be more about them not liking him due to his investigations than actual random profiling. Still wrong, but I think it qualifies more as police harassment than truly random profiling.

I give NYPD credit only because whatever they're doing, it works. Neighborhood like Harlem, the LES, etc used to be off-limits and now even a tourist can get by just fine.

First of all, let me start by saying that immediately after I write this I'm going to the NCLU website and making a donation. Than GOD for their hard work.

I wrote a lengthy response to the original article about these "Stop & Frisk" operations, which echoes the sentiments in this video, and I hope no one minds if I repost it, hopefully it will give a clearer understanding of this issue.

"As a latino, college graduate and native New Yorker I can say that I am more scared of the NYPD than I am of criminals, and that's the truth. The problem here is the aggression that I have encountered when dealing with most (not all) police officers. My fear is not of being stopped and frisked because I don't carry any contraband that can lead to an arrest but that I can endure the dehumanizing, embarrassing, degrading experience without giving the officer any motive to arrest me for "disorderly conduct", a charge which if anyone looks at the numbers they will see that it's abused much too often and is usually tossed out by the judge. I've found far too many cops to be abrasive and arrogant in these situations and there really is no need and this disrespect can easily lead to words exchanged that will undoubtedly lead to your arrest and although they know that the charges will be dropped they win because you will spend a day, maybe two, in jail before the judge tosses it out. Knowing this every time I've encountered these situations (even in front of my young son) I play their game and address them with utmost respect, "yes sir, no ma'am", etc. yet they still manage to talk down to me as if I was a second class citizen and I simply have to bite my tongue and swallow my pride and continue to kill them with kindness. Officers' attitudes during these stop and frisks create more animosity towards the police, and authority in general, than they deter crime, especially in teenagers. This is especially troublesome to our youth. During our teen years when we are beginning to develop our sense of self worth and personality and when you have a hostile force constantly degrading or harassing you, it's hard not to develop contempt for them and the system they represent. I think if officers were more respectful and acknowledge that if anyone should feel violated in the situation it should be the person they are stopping and frisking. Through their own personal experience they should know that most of the people being stopped and frisked are in fact innocent yet they treat them as criminals who must prove their innocence. I dream of the day that an officer comes up to me and says "I'm sorry sir put due to the high level crime in this area we are conducting stop and frisk operations and unfortunately I will have to search you because ..... (and give reason for the search here) but it should only take 5 minutes and you'll be on your way" instead of the usually screaming cop, sometimes with his gun in his hand, yelling "get up against the wall!" Don't these officers have empathy or are trained to understand these situations? Under these circumstances its a normal reaction to question "What happened? What did I do?" yet they take it as a form of disrespect and their attitude is "just do as I say or how dare you question me" and this attitude leads to unnecessary conflicts.

I also think that a majority of these "stop and frisks" are unconstitutional and the numbers in this article seem to prove it. If takes violating 575,000 citizens' rights to get 762 guns off the street, then that is a number that I'm not comfortable with, not in America. I'm sure that if the NYPD began raiding homes in the hopes of finding contraband they'd undoubtedly find some, but what about the homes where there's no contraband? How can you justify violating their right to privacy and illegal search and seizure to catch a handful of "criminals"?

My biggest concern regarding these "Stop and Frisk" operations is when they are used against minority teenagers. I find this to be a form of genocide against our youth. These officers have quotas to fill and that means that they must arrest at least some of these people, regardless of how minimal the charges may be. While the majority of arrests from these "stop and frisks" end up being for minor infractions such as loitering, trespassing, possession of marijuana, etc. it nonetheless ruins their future prospects by staining them with a criminal record for the rest of their lives. It seems that minority teenagers are being systematically targeted and given a Scarlet Letter that they must live with for the rest of his/her life. What happens when these young men and women decide they want to become a member of law enforcement? Will they be allowed despite having a conviction for a bag of marijuana in their youth? For example, the rate of marijuana use among teens in NYC is pretty consistent throughout all races but it is a fact that the chances of a minority teenager being arrested or having a criminal record because of it is much higher than non-minority teenagers in NYC. I know many will find the word genocide too strong for this argument but the definition of genocide is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide ) " and I think it fits here because these "stop and frisk" operations are systematically destroying the city's minority teenagers' futures and I believe that outweighs the benefits."

At best these "Stop & Frisk" operations are a violation of human rights and unconstitutional and at best the are a waste of police resources that produces very little results. I don't understand how anyone can justify a database of innocent people in America.

There must have been a lot of crime for them to stop and frisk so many people. was there a crime wave in every precinct of the city?

There were statistics in the last year or two of stop & frisk vs identified suspects of crimes, and it was pretty close to matching the percentages. Those stats actually showed that whites are stopped more often than they're identified as suspects, and blacks are stopped less often as they're identified as suspects.

If the suspected is identified as a m/b, you're not going to stop asians, or whites, or hispanics. That just doesn't make sense. Of course you'd rather the police not stop anyone, because you're under the false impression that they're nothing but a bunch of racist idiots, rather than people just trying to do their job with the tools and restrictions that they have.

First where did you hear anything about those bogus percentages you mentioned? You made those up I'm sure, why, because you're talking about suspects. Do you even know what stop and frisk is or means? I doubt it, so I'll help you out.

Its basically a justification the nypd uses to randomly search and harass minorities without provocation, probable cause, or any reason whatsoever which boils down to violation of civil rights which basically equals the Arizona law ×2........... so where do you come up with mentioning suspects?

BTW isn't probable cause the required legal level for an arrest? So if the police had probable cause, they wouldn't stop & question the person, they would arrest them.

its not even worth putting time, or effort into a response. You have your obvious bias.

hear hear.

The NYPD has devolved into a thug organization that is COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL. The sad thing is that this lawsuit will change nothing.

Correct, the problem and concern should the stop and frisk in itself. It needs to go, but we have a racist billionaire mayor who supports and encourages these violations of rights, and then contradicts himself by opposing the Arizona law which is pretty much the same, infact, not as bad as the stop and frisk.

The mayor's a hypocrite.

Amen.

Thank you NYCLU!