Michael Bloomberg's role in expanding stop-and-frisk when he was New York’s mayor is under fresh scrutiny. We spoke with Darius Charney, an attorney who sued NYC over the racist policy.
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00:00The whole experience is humiliating, it's embarrassing and really you know it
00:06doesn't matter what kind of person you are, how tough you are, whatever, it's a
00:10scary thing because you don't know what is going to happen with your life, you
00:15don't know what's going to happen with your freedom.
00:19The term refers to a law enforcement tactic where a police officer, if they
00:30reasonably suspect that somebody is engaged in criminal activity, has the
00:35authority to briefly detain them, to briefly stop them, ask them questions and
00:41in certain situations even pat down their clothing to look for weapons.
00:49This policing tactic which police officers use from time to time and
01:08everywhere in the United States was really kind of put on steroids. They were
01:14using it in a kind of broad and really racialized way where they said, well
01:19look, we know where all the crime happens, we know and you know or that we we know
01:24we assume that most of the crime is being committed by young black and
01:28Latino men and so we're gonna go out and we're gonna mess with them basically and
01:32maybe we'll find something. It's just very hard for a young person to
01:36understand why does this keep happening to me, you know, why am I being viewed as
01:39a criminal.
01:48We did bring the murder rate down but it got out of hand and I didn't stop it
01:53fast enough and I apologize for it.
01:5795% of your murders and murderers and murder victims fit in one amount. You can just take the description of Xerox and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 15 to 25. That's true in New York, that's true in virtually every city in the country.
02:22Originally the the police department marketed it as, you know, this is a way
02:28to recover illegal weapons. Problem they soon realized is that they were finding
02:34virtually no guns. The data was showing over the course of, you know, ten years
02:39that they found weapons in about 0.15% of the stops.
02:52We were also able to prove that it was racially discriminatory and therefore
03:06violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and as a result of
03:11that the judge put the NYPD under a federal monitorship, which they are still
03:16under, and ordered them to fix and make some pretty drastic changes to their
03:21stop-and-frisk program.
03:27In the years since Mayor Bloomberg left office under Mayor de Blasio, the number
03:32of recorded stops has gone down more than 95%. You have a right, if you are
03:37stopped, to ask the officer for their name and badge number. They have to
03:42give it to you. You have a right to ask them to explain why they have stopped
03:46you. And you also have a right at the end of the encounter to ask for
03:51information which would allow you to request a copy of the stop report that
03:55the officer fills out where they will have to explain the reasons. And you have
03:59a right to request a copy of the body camera video.