EthnicMajority

(Atlantic Wire) Sure, it's an informal survey, but a New York Times reporter's finding that eight black college students he spoke to have been stopped by police a collective 92 times is still a disturbing reminder of how the NYPD wields its stop-and-frisk tactics too heavily against the city's minorities. In The Times article on New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's aboutface on the efficacy of stop-and-frisk, Michael Powell talked to group of eight black men currently attending the Borough of Manhattan Community College. "Cumulatively, they said they had been stopped 92 times."

That 11.5 friskings per-person, on average, is shocking, although it's anecdotal evidence, but it's the stories of these these kids being frisked for seemingly doing nothing other than driving or riding the subway while black that are alarming.

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(The Guardian) The New York City police department is facing a federal class action lawsuit over the expansion of its controversial stop-and-frisk program into residential buildings largely populated by African Americans and Latinos.

On Wednesday the New York Civil Liberties Union, LatinoJustice PRLDEF and The Bronx Defenders set their sights on Operation Clean Halls, an element of the department's stop-and-frisk program that allows police officers to conduct patrols inside thousands of residential buildings throughout the city.

Filed on behalf of 13 black and Latino New Yorkers and a class of similarly situated individuals, the suit accuses the NYPD of systematically violating the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. The suit is the third major legal challenge to the department's stop-and-frisk program in the last five years.

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