by James Vrettos
There are a series of relatively unpublicized trials presently going on this month in New York City that seem to represent attempts to settle civil disobedience efforts and nonviolent protests that challenged the New York Police Department’s increasingly unpopular stop-and-frisk policies and the way a whole generation of young people of color is being condemned to lives of criminalization, marginalization, brutality and the spirit-crushing, human-wasting confinement of the largest prison system in the world.
These trials involve Carl Dix who, along with Union Theological Seminary professor Cornel West, was the co-initiator of the “Stop Stop-and-Frisk” protests. He and several other activists in the movement are facing charges of disorderly conduct and obstruction of governmental administration which could result in two to four-plus years of jail time for them.
Stop and frisk practices have been increasingly put on the defensive by academic research which has shown the racist nature of the policy—85 percent of those stopped and frisked are Black and Hispanic and police are significantly more likely to use force when they stop them than when they stop whites. Most academic scholars concerned with the issue have conclusively argued that the proportion of gun seizures to stops has fallen sharply and the policy read more
There are a series of relatively unpublicized trials presently going on this month in New York City that seem to represent attempts to settle civil disobedience efforts and nonviolent protests that challenged the New York Police Department’s increasingly unpopular stop-and-frisk policies and the way a whole generation of young people of color is being condemned to lives of criminalization, marginalization, brutality and the spirit-crushing, human-wasting confinement of the largest prison system in the world.
These trials involve Carl Dix who, along with Union Theological Seminary professor Cornel West, was the co-initiator of the “Stop Stop-and-Frisk” protests. He and several other activists in the movement are facing charges of disorderly conduct and obstruction of governmental administration which could result in two to four-plus years of jail time for them.
Stop and frisk practices have been increasingly put on the defensive by academic research which has shown the racist nature of the policy—85 percent of those stopped and frisked are Black and Hispanic and police are significantly more likely to use force when they stop them than when they stop whites. Most academic scholars concerned with the issue have conclusively argued that the proportion of gun seizures to stops has fallen sharply and the policy read more
RSS Feed