letter to assistant attorney general thomas e. perez

8/3/2019 Letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez

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October 19, 2011

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, Esq.

United States Department of JusticeCivil Rights Division

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20530-0001

Dear Assistant Attorney General Perez:

We write to you today to urge the U.S. Department of Justice to begin a formal investigation into the New

York City Police Departments stop, question, and frisk policy.

We applaud the Justice Department for charging Police Officer Michael Daragjati with falsely arresting a

black man on Staten Island because of his race. But the problems with the NYPDs stop and frisk

practice as currently constituted go far beyond just a few bad apples. What we have is a failure of the

City to acknowledge that the NYPDs stop and frisk policy violates the constitutional rights of the people

of New York, particularly the rights of Black and Hispanic New Yorkers.

This failure cannot be fixed by lawsuits against individual officers alone. Federal intervention is needed

and it is needed now.

In 2011, the NYPD is on pace to make more than 700,000 stops or about one person every 90 seconds,

365 days a year. And yet in 93% of all stops, police could find no reason to make an arrest.

The most common reason cited by NYPD officers for making a stop is furtive movement by an

individual on the street. The one-size-fits-all explanation as a justification for stops is unacceptable and

unconstitutional and allows police to target black and Hispanic New Yorkers under the guise of having

reasonable suspicion. Fully 85% of people stopped in New York are black or Hispanic. Those people are

arrested at the same rateas whites, just under 7%.Earlier this year, the city of Philadelphia entered a federal consent decree eliminating furtive movement

as a ground for street stops. New York should be no different.

Concerns about the constitutionality of stops and the targeting of Black and Hispanic New Yorkers are

nothing new. Indeed, problems with the NYPDs stop and frisk policy have been well known for years.

In 1999, then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer issued a report concluding that the street search tactics

unfairly singled out the Citys Black and Hispanic residents.


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Likewise, in 2000, in the aftermath of the shooting death of unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo at the

hands of the NYPD, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York as well as the U.S. Civil Rights

Commission concluded that the NYPD street stop program was fraught with racial profiling.

In response, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani asserted, There is no racial profiling in the New York City

Police Department. Over the last decade, as the number of street stop have increased more than 400%,

we have heard those words repeated time and time again by NYPD officials. Just this month, Police

Commissioner Ray Kelly, testifying before the New York City Council, insisted, We dont racially

profile.

Given the Citys unwillingness to acknowledge structural problems with its stop and frisk program, it

comes as no surprise that eleven years and millions of questionable stops later, this City is still waiting for

meaningful changefor a street stop policy that is designed to identify true threats rather than the color

of ones skin.

Last month, Judge Shira Scheindlin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New

York found that serious questions remain about racial disparities in current stop and frisk practices; about

the constitutionality of thousands of stops that do not result in arrest; and about the role quotas may play

in driving the four-fold increase in stops over the last decade. A new investigation would help to answer

these questions and chart a roadmap for reform, just as similar investigations into police practices have

done recently in Newark, Pittsburgh and New Orleans.

Given the extraordinary effect of current stop and frisk practice on the lives of millions of New Yorkers,

the refusal of the City and the NYPD to acknowledge problems with the practice, and the ever-increasing

rate of stops in the City, we believe it is both necessary and appropriate to begin a formal investigationunder the DOJs pattern and practice authority pursuant to the Violent Crime Control and Law

Enforcement Act of 1994.

We look forward to working with you in this endeavor and thank you for your careful attention to this

matter.

Sincerely,

Scott M. Stringer

Manhattan Borough President

Eric Adams

New York State Senator, 20th

District


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