NAACP Takes on Bloomberg on Stop and Frisk

The NAACP has called on Mayor Bloomberg to end his stop-and-frisk tyranny.

NAACP and Stop and Frisk

Yesterday, the NAACP made news by stating the need for stop-and-frisk to end immediately.

The head of the NAACP took the pulpit of a Brooklyn church on Sunday to demand that Mayor Bloomberg end the controversial stop-and-frisk program before his term ends.
“Mayor Bloomberg, I ask you, before you leave, repair the damage you have done,” pleaded NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. Addressing about 100 worshipers at Nazarene Congregational Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Jealous called for New Yorkers to “stand up” and tell the mayor, “There is no place for racial profiling.”

The Next Mayor

We will have a new Mayor in January 2014, and the NAACP is determined not to allow the next Mayor to abuse people of color the way that the current Mayor has for so many years.

As Bloomberg's third, and last, term nears its end in January, Jealous said he expects the city's new mayor to oppose stop-and-frisk tactics, along with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The Democrat announced recently that he's working to help stop the practice.
If the new mayor doesn't do that, too, Jealous vowed that "we'll do a lot more than march."

Stop and Frisk

As we discussed last week, stop-and-frisk has been the topic we've addressed with the greatest frequency and with deepest concern. It is the topic that should be at the top of the agenda for any Mayoral candidate.

Stop and Frisk Revisted

Last week, a new set of data regarding stop-and-frisk activity in NYC in 2012 emerged. While much has changed, much has not. 

Stop and Frisk History

We have repeatedly urged an end to the unconstitutional, racist, and disgusting Bloomberg stop-and-frisk Apartheid system in NYC.

Here is what we said in June 2011:

More than any other issue we have highlighted, we have focused on Mayor Bloomberg's and the NYPD's obsession with stopping innocent people of color in our city.

In March of this year, we focused on the payments that our city has made using our tax dollars to the victims of stop-and-frisk activity.

In September of last year, we expressed frustration with the quotas imposed on NYPD officers by their superiors and how those quotas drive the stop-and-frisk abuses.

In July of last year, we praised Governor Paterson for ending the NYPD practice of indefinite retention of data collected from the innocent victims of the stop-and-frisk reign of terror that the NYPD brings on a consistent basis to communities of color in our city.

In May of last year, we summarized all of our previous blogs regarding the stop-and-frisk outrage and noted, with alarm, that the often cited "fit the description" excuse for the stop-and-frisk abuses were not even the excuses that the NYPD actually lists for the horrible racism that drives their policing philosophy. The NYPD's own excuse for stopping hundreds of thousands of innocent people of color each year is that the stopped individuals were behaving suspiciously. There is no crime reported in the area and no description to fit. The act of being a person of color makes one suspicious to the NYPD, and the NYPD's race-based suspicions turn into stops.

The Mayor and the NYPD continue to increase their racist tactics and intensify their abuse of communities of color, and non-racist people must stand up and oppose these abuses. If the Mayor will not end these practices, we must demand that the Mayor resign. No police force in our country should be permitted to abuse its citizens of color with such ferocious and racist dedication. We, as residents of the greatest city on our planet, must put an end to it.

Stop and Frisk Constitutionality

In the Bronx, the Bloomberg stop-and-frisk Apartheid was determined to violate the United States Constitution, but Bloomberg was unashamed and undeterred. 

 

2012 Stop-and-Frisk Data

Now, we have learned that NYC's stop and frisk numbers declined in 2012:

* Cops made 685,724 stops in 2011, compared with 533,042 last year.
* They used stop-and-frisk to take 780 guns off city streets last year, a 5 percent drop from 2011.
* A total of 7,137 weapons were confiscated. The number of knives recovered was 4,970, a 15 percent decline from 2011.
* There were also 1,387 “other” types of weapons recovered last year — a 12 percent drop from 2011.
* Five percent of the stops last year ended with a summons being issued and 6 percent ended with an arrest, according to the new NYPD numbers. Those numbers are about the same as the 2011 figures.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, a persistent critic of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy, slammed the numbers.

“These numbers show that the NYPD continues to stop, interrogate and humiliate innocent people far too frequently and that New Yorkers of color continue to bear the brunt of this indignity,” said NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman.
Lieberman also said guns were found in only .01 percent of stops, calling the figure “an unbelievably poor yield rate for such an intrusive, wasteful and humiliating police action.”

Remembering Ed Koch

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch passed away last week; we remember him today.

New York Times Obituary

The New York Times obituary tells the full story of Ed Koch, and it is a must-read summary of an extraordinary life of an extraordinary New Yorker. We will miss Ed Koch.

Mayor Koch and the Black Community

While Ed Koch remains larger than life, even in death, he had an uncomfortable relationship with the Black Community in NYC and in the world beyond NYC.

The New York Times obituary provides insight into the tension:

The scandals and the scourges of crack cocaine, homelessness and AIDS were compounded by a widening rift between Mr. Koch and black New Yorkers. The mayor traced his contentious relationship with black leaders to his first-term decision to close Sydenham Hospital in Harlem, where, he said, the city was paying too much for inadequate care. He would regret the decision.

“It was the wrong thing to do,” Mr. Koch, who rarely second-guessed himself, said in 2009. Closing the hospital saved $9 million, he said, but “there was such a psychological attachment to Sydenham, because black doctors couldn’t get into other hospitals — it was the psychological attachment that I violated.”

      

Black leaders were also unhappy with Mr. Koch’s decision to purge antipoverty programs and comments he made that they considered insensitive. He said, for example, that busing and racial quotas had done more to divide the races than to achieve integration, and that Jews would be “crazy” to vote for the Rev. Jesse Jackson in his 1988 presidential campaign after Mr. Jackson’s 1984 reference to New York as “Hymietown” and his call for a Palestinian homeland in Israel.

      

In a city where minorities had long held grievances against a largely white police force, Mr. Koch’s 1983 appointment of Benjamin Ward as New York’s first black police commissioner hardly appeased critics, and a series of ugly episodes came to symbolize mounting racial troubles.

      

In 1984, a white officer with a shotgun killed a black woman, Eleanor Bumpurs, 66, as she was being evicted from her Bronx apartment; he was acquitted. In 1986, a gang of white teenagers assaulted three black men in Howard Beach, Queens, chasing one, Michael Griffith, to his death on a highway. And in 1989, a black youth, Yusuf K. Hawkins, 16, who went to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to see a used car, was attacked by white youths and shot dead.

      

Mr. Hawkins’s death came just a month before Mr. Koch faced Mr. Dinkins, the Manhattan borough president and the only black candidate, in the 1989 Democratic primary. By then, City Hall was lurching from crisis to crisis. The racial divisions, the corruption scandals, the failures to cope with crack and homelessness all contributed to a sense it was time for a change. Mr. Dinkins, pledging to bring the city together again in a “gorgeous mosaic,” narrowly defeated Mr. Koch in the primary and went on to beat Mr. Giuliani, who ran on the Republican and Liberal lines, by a slender margin in the general election.

      

“I was defeated because of longevity, not because Yusuf Hawkins was murdered six weeks before the election, although that was a factor,” Mr. Koch wrote in New York magazine. “People get tired of you. So they decided to throw me out. And so help me God, as the numbers were coming in, I said to myself, ‘I’m free at last.’ ”

Manhattan in the Spotlight for the 2014 Super Bowl

Though the Super Bowl in 2014 will be played in New Jersey, the focus of the events and activities associated with the Super Bowl will be Manhattan.

Super Bowl Boulevard

Last week, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled Super Bowl Boulevard, a section of Broadway from 34th Street to 44th Street that will be only be for pedestrians for the four days prior to the 2014 Super Bowl.

As stated in Crain's: 

"The ten blocks will be the site of a massive fan event called the NFL Experience, which will offer free activities such as football clinics and competitions, outdoor concerts, player appearances and possibly, according to sources, a toboggan event."

Key 2014 Super Bowl Events in Manhattan

The most important events will be held in Manhattan:

"The media center at the Sheraton New York Times Square, which will accommodate more than 5,000 credentialed members of the media and the media party, which will be held at Chelsea Piers on January 28; The Friday Night Party, known as NFL House, a hospitality center for business partners of the event, will also take place in Manhattan."

 As Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer stated in 2010, "This is gonna set New York City on fire in the best way."

New Jersey Benefits As Well

New Jersey will share in the excitement:

"New Jersey will host both teams as well as Media Day on Jan. 28 and the NFL's Tailgate party at the Meadowlands Racetrack on Feb. 2" in 2014. "The Super Bowl is not a game anymore. It's really a week of events," said Roger Goodell, National Football League commissioner. "We expect hundreds of thousands of people to come to this region for the game. Other folks are here to be entertained."

Four More Years

Today, President Obama celebrated his second inauguration.

Inauguration

As we learned that NYC's own Shaun Donovan would remain in his post as the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for another four years and listened to Republican Congressman Pete King call his Republican colleagues "disgraceful," we saw NYC's own Chuck Schumer lead the inauguration ceremony while giving it a decidedly New York flavor.

"I am using it as an opportunity to highlight the best of New York," said Schumer.

Benediction

The choice for the benediction at the inauguration changed in order to address anti-gay remarks made by the original choice for the benediction.

UPDATE:
President Obama's 2013 Inauguration Speech

The entire inauguration address is available to be read online, and it includes some striking thoughts:

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm. 

Also:

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war. Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage. Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty. The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

Gov. Cuomo Leads on Gun Control

Governor Cuomo's State of the State speech included an inspiring statement of support for reducing gun deaths. 

Cuomo Leads from the Front on Gun Control

Governor Andrew Cuomo's State of the State speech included passionate calls for new legislation to reduce gun violence. He spoke about gun deaths in Newtown, Connecticut and demanded that the state legislature “reject the extremists” and “save lives” by sending him "sensible” gun control measures to sign into law. 

Governor Cuomo's eagerness to bring the “strongest assault-weapons ban in the nation” to New York State is backed up by a desire to impose a ban on high-capacity magazines. “It’s simple -- no one hunts with an assault rifle. No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer and too many people have died already."

“End the madness now. Pass safe, reasonable gun control in the State of New York. Make this state safer. Save lives. Set an example for the rest of the nation. Let them look at New York and say this is what you can do. This is what you should do."
 

Cuomo 2016?

Some political experts are seeing Cuomo's push for gun control legislation as a move to build support from his left-of-center base in advance of his own re-election fight and perhaps a run at the Presidency in 2016. Cuomo took on unions and disappointed some Democrats by supporting (at least implicitly) the Republicans as they sought to remain in control of the state senate. 

NRA vs. Cuomo

The National Rifle Association, of course, opposes Cuomo's call for increased gun control legislation. But, the NRA is wrong about gun control and is particularly wrong on New York State's influence over the rest of the country. While the NRA says that increased gun control in New York will not influence other states, the reality is that New York is indeed a state that can drive national debate. 

We praise Governor Cuomo for demonstrating the courage to take on the NRA and for having such a clear vision for a safer New York and a safer United States. 

Bloomberg Takes Anti-NYC Stance on Sandy Relief

In a disgusting move, Mayor Bloomberg has sought to support the Republican majority in the US House for its decision to block emergency relief for victims of Sandy.

Sandy Relief Blocked

Last Tuesday night, as the fiscal cliff vote neared, the US House took the $60 billion Sandy relief bill off the list of bills to get a vote before the end of the 112th Congress. The package had already received the support of the Senate and was assured of a Presidential signature. But, because the 112th Congress didn't pass the bill, it must start over in the 113th, which will, at a minimum, cause major delays. Beyond the delays, the Republicans seem to be planning to significantly reduce size of the package. They belatedly approved less than one-sixth of the amount requested and approved by the Senate and by the relevant House committees.

While aid after Katrina was just two weeks after the tragedy began, Sandy victims are still waiting for aid more than two months after this latest natural disaster.

Bloomberg Criticizes Sandy Aid Package

From Politicker:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who previously declined to slam House Speaker John Boehner over Congress’ stalled Hurricane Sandy aid, took his argument to the next level this morning and suggested federal lawmakers are partially to blame for the delay in the vote on the package because they insert “things that are totally extraneous” into bills such as this. Although Mr. Bloomberg didn’t specify the extraneous problem items, the legislation has been criticized by Republicans like Rep. Paul Ryan for being “packed with funding for unrelated items, such as commercial fisheries in American Samoa and roof repair of museums in Washington, D.C.”

“There’s this ‘Christmas Tree effect’ where legislators put in their favorite bills and tack them onto something. The [Obama] administration does that, that’s why you have an omnibus bill–to force everybody to vote for things that would never stand up in the light of day if they were individual,” Mr. Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show with John Gambling. “I’m sympathetic. Yelling and screaming at [Mr. Boehner] is just not my style. It may be effective, it may not be. Everybody’s got to make their own decisions. I think the legislative leaders who criticize and those in the Legislature should stop and think, they do exactly the same thing in terms of ladling on things that are totally extraneous but it’s the only way they get them through.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s relatively subdued stance places him at odds with the overwhelming majority of the politicians in the New York region in recent days, with one exception in the form of Councilman Dan Halloran. But while name-checking several politicians, including Governors Andrew Cuomo and Christie Christie, as well as Congressman Pete King, who “worked hard” on the bill but have subsequently vented loudly at Mr. Boehner, Mr. Bloomberg reiterated that it’s simply not his “style.”

Bloomberg Opposed Obama Visit After Sandy

Perhaps we should not be surprised that Mayor Bloomberg is not eager to see the Sandy relief make its way to NYC. He was the only leader in the areas affected by Sandy to state that he did not want the President to visit and survey the damage.