Stop-and-Frisk Campaign: About the Issue and Activists on Trial for Arrests During NYPD Protest

The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices raise serious concerns over racial profiling, illegal stops and privacy rights. The Department’s own reports on its stop-and-frisk activity confirm what many people in communities of color across the city have long known: The police are stopping hundreds of thousands of law abiding New Yorkers every year, and the vast majority are black and Latino.

An analysis by the NYCLU revealed that more than 4 million innocent New Yorkers were subjected to police stops and street interrogations from 2004 through 2011, and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the NYPD’s own reports

Nearly two dozen demonstrators arrested last year while protesting the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy have gone on trial.

Some 22 people arrested in October outside a Harlem police station appeared in court Monday. Two accepted offers to get their cases dismissed by staying out of trouble for six months.

The demonstrators, who include ministers, local activists and Princeton University scholar and civil rights advocate Cornel West, lined three rows of courtroom seats in one of the biggest group trials of protesters in the city in recent years. Supporters waited in line for spots.