21 Percent Rise in Stop-and-Frisks for Second Quarter over Last Year; 88 Percent of Those Stopped Black and Hispanic

Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued
the statement below in response to a summary of stop-and-frisk
statistics for April, May, and June 2010 made available to the press.
CCR receives the complete raw data on all NYPD stop-and-frisks by court
order through our case, Floyd v. City of New York.

Last year was the worst year for stop-and-frisks on record, with
more than half a million New Yorkers stopped by police, and now we see
an even sharper increase for this spring. For many children, getting
stopped by the police while walking home from school has become a normal
afterschool activity, and that is tragic. The public has demanded
constructive change and an end to racially-biased policing by the NYPD,
and the department has responded by stepping up the practice instead of
retiring it.

CCR has found significant racial disparities for stop-and-frisks
over the last decade based on NYPD data turned over by court order. CCR,
which represents victims of the NYPD's racially discriminatory
stop-and-frisk policies in a class action lawsuit, will receive more
comprehensive data than the summary numbers released to the City Council
yesterday and will provide those results as soon as they are available.

Meanwhile, the preliminary numbers reported indicate a 21 percent
rise in the number of New Yorkers being stopped by the police over the
same period last year, with 88 percent of the New Yorkers stopped being
Black and Hispanic. By contrast, from 2005 to 2008, approximately 80
percent of total stops made were of Blacks and Latinos, who comprise
approximately 25 percent and 28 percent of New York City's total
population, respectively.

The City often claims the racial disparity in stops is accounted for
by the racial breakdown of crime suspects, but the data to date reveal
that "fits relevant description" is the reason for actual stops only
percent of the time. Far and away the most often cited reason for a stop
by the police is the vague and undefined, "furtive movements" (nearly
50 percent of all stops) and "casing a victim or location" (nearly 30
percent of all stops). Also listed are "inappropriate attire for
season," "wearing clothes commonly used in a crime," and "suspicious
bulge," among other boxes an officer can check off on the form. Though
these statistics do not include the most recent quarter, we are
confident the numbers will not have changed radically given their
consistency over the past 10 years.

Only 1.3 percent of last year's stops resulted in the discovery of a
weapon, and only 6 percent of the stops resulted in arrests. The number
of arrests rose by one percent in this recent period.

This kind of heavy-handed policing promotes mistrust, doubt, and
fear of police officers in communities of color, and only serves to make
the police's job more difficult.

Police stops and frisks without reasonable suspicion violate the
Fourth Amendment, and racial profiling is a violation of fundamental
rights and protections of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights
Act of 1964.

On January 31, 2008, CCR and the law firms of Beldock, Levine &
Hoffman and Covington & Burling filed a class action lawsuit
charging the NYPD with engaging in racial profiling and suspicion-less
stop-and-frisks of New Yorkers.

Earlier data and other documents are available at www.ccrjustice/stopandfrisk.
A ruling by U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin required the NYPD to
make public all raw stop-and-frisk data from1998 through the present in
relation to the case, Floyd v. City of New York.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and
protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys
who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit
legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law
as a positive force for social change. Visit www.ccrjustice.org.