Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance dropped all criminal charges against Noche Diaz in a victory for him and his supporters after 18 months of hearings, protests, legal motions, and petitions. Diaz plead guilty to a single violation of Disorderly Conduct in a courtroom packed with 38 supporters, and dozens of defendants with whom Noche's statement to the judge resonated:
"October 21, 2011 and March 27, 2012 were not your average days in Harlem, where the NYPD carries out some part of it's 1,900 daily stop and frisks, 85-90% of which are of Black or Latino people, over 90% of whom are doing nothing wrong and given no legal or legitimate reason for being stopped, and routinely put up against walls and searched, have their basic rights violated, and often worse.
October 21 was a day where hundreds came together in Harlem in peaceful protest to demand an end to this NYPD policy, which was followed by waves of protest. Now we see the policy being challenged in a lawsuit that has further revealed the illegality and illegitimacy of the NYPD's Stop and Frisk practice.
On March 27, a number of high school students spoke up about what they know and feel, knowing through their experience with NYPD's Stop and Frisk (and including on that day where a 14 year old student was thrown through a bank window for allegedly having his hands in his pocket) what it is to be viewed as a generation of suspects, and saw themselves when they looked at how Trayvon Martin was murdered by a vigilante who saw Trayvon as suspicious and probably up to no good, for nothing other than being a young black man. I stood with the students as they chanted “We are all Trayvon Martin” and “We want Justice”.
I later gathered with more than two other people near where police officers were placing someone under arrest, and when the officers directed me to leave, I did not immediately leave. [I knowingly and verbally refused the order from the officer, and knowingly risked creating public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm."
"October 21, 2011 and March 27, 2012 were not your average days in Harlem, where the NYPD carries out some part of it's 1,900 daily stop and frisks, 85-90% of which are of Black or Latino people, over 90% of whom are doing nothing wrong and given no legal or legitimate reason for being stopped, and routinely put up against walls and searched, have their basic rights violated, and often worse.
October 21 was a day where hundreds came together in Harlem in peaceful protest to demand an end to this NYPD policy, which was followed by waves of protest. Now we see the policy being challenged in a lawsuit that has further revealed the illegality and illegitimacy of the NYPD's Stop and Frisk practice.
On March 27, a number of high school students spoke up about what they know and feel, knowing through their experience with NYPD's Stop and Frisk (and including on that day where a 14 year old student was thrown through a bank window for allegedly having his hands in his pocket) what it is to be viewed as a generation of suspects, and saw themselves when they looked at how Trayvon Martin was murdered by a vigilante who saw Trayvon as suspicious and probably up to no good, for nothing other than being a young black man. I stood with the students as they chanted “We are all Trayvon Martin” and “We want Justice”.
I later gathered with more than two other people near where police officers were placing someone under arrest, and when the officers directed me to leave, I did not immediately leave. [I knowingly and verbally refused the order from the officer, and knowingly risked creating public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm."
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