Blacks and Latinos make up about 80% stopped and questioned by NYPD, study finds

BY CHRISTINA BOYLE and TINA MOORE DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Friday, January 16th 2009, 10:38 AM
Kyte/Getty/Getty Images
As the stats come in for 2008, the NYPD is on pace to have stopped and frisked 500,000 people - 80% of them black or Latino.
The NYPD is on pace to stop and question a record half a million citizens this year - about 80% of them black or Latino, a new report says.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, citing NYPD data obtained in a suit, said the vast majority of those stopped and questioned in 2005 through June 2008 weren't charged with any crime.
In 2007, for instance, the last complete year of data, cops arrested only 5.8% of the 472,096 people they stopped (27,632).
"The New York City Police Department continues to prey on African-American and Latino communities in New York City," Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said.
The center obtained half of the 2008 data but projected that 543,982 people will be stopped in the entire year if the NYPD maintained its pace.
Cops made fewer than 400,000 stops in 2005.
"The problem actually is getting worse," CCR lawyer Darius Charney said.
Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD's chief spokesman, said the number of minorities who were singled out under the policy is consistent with overall descriptions by race provided by victims and surviving witnesses of crime.
He pointed to a RAND Corp. study that found no racial profiling in its examination, "and warned against the kind of simplistic comparisons made by the center."
"Their assertions do not constitute a study of the data, but a restatement of accusations in its lawsuit," he added.
St. John's University student David Ourlicht, 21, sees it differently. He was stopped on the street three times by cops - once at gunpoint - and never charged with a crime.
The Manhattanite, who is half black and half white, was among 1 million people snagged in the NYPD's stop-and-frisk net since 2005, data released Thursday show.
"It's something that I have to deal with every day," Ourlicht said. "I can't trust the people that are supposed to protect me and that's scary." With Benjamin Lesser
tmoore@nydailynews.

Limbaugh: 'Segregationist' Sen. Reid Barred Burris

Tuesday, January 6, 2009 6:37 PMBy: David A. Patten
Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday compared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to infamous Southern segregationists Lester Maddox and George Wallace, because he is blocking the appointment of former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to the U.S. Senate.
Bristling over how the media has covered the Senate’s refusal to seat Burris, Limbaugh blamed “a few extremist liberal racists and others” for questioning whether President-elect Barack Obama and Burris are “authentically black enough.”
Conservatives, he said, do not think in such terms.
“You’ve got a guy who’s legit, he’s qualified, and according to the Chicago Tribune today he’s ‘authentically black,’” Limbaugh told listeners. “And a bunch of white people would not let him in the door, would not let him use the restroom or the drinking water. Now what are we to make of this?”
Had Republicans refused to seat a legally qualified African-American appointee, Limbaugh said, the media coverage would have been much different.
“If Harry Reid were a Republican … he would have been stoned and pilloried, they would have demanded his ouster for his lack of sensitivity,” Limbaugh charged.

Limbaugh continued his broadside against progressive hypocrisy on matters of race: “They are compassionate and feeling, and they love minorities and they want minorities to excel -- except, except when the minorities get too uppity. And then it’s time to revert to Bull Connor, or, in this case, Lester Maddox.
“What’s the difference in dingy Harry and Lester Maddox? George Wallace? Remember, all these great segregationists of the past are Democrats. It’s in the blood, and it’s showing up on the steps of the United States Senate,” Limbaugh said.
Lester Maddox is the late Georgia governor who defended states’ rights and was considered an advocate for segregation during the Civil Rights era. Bull Connor was the public safety commissioner of Birmingham, Ala., who used fire hoses to attack civil-rights marchers. Wallace, a former governor of Alabama, was an opponent of desegregation who ran for the presidency on four occasions.
Limbaugh said that Democrats, by their treatment of Burris, are “in the process of delegitimizing themselves.”
Embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed Burris to fill the seat vacated by Obama. Limbaugh warned Democrats are on “thin Constitutional ice” in their refusal to accept Burris as a member of the Senate. From Newsmax.com

BAD CHOICE FOR CHANGE

By Melvin Redman

OBAMA CHOICE FOR


SECRETARY OF HOUSING UNDERMINES CHANGE

President elect Obama selected Shaun Donovan for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He is a disciple of Harvard Professor Howard Husock who wrote, America’s Trillion Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of America’s Housing Policy. Once Mayor Bloomberg, who is no friend of the poor, appointed him Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner, he sabotaged affordable housing in New York and masqueraded as its friend. Shaun Donovan’s history of destroying affordable homes, bodes ill for the majority of Americans.

As Mayor Bloomberg’s Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development he destroyed affordable housing. He acted as an ice breaker to open “frozen” poor and lower middle class communities in New York City. Provincial politicians created economic undeveloped frozen zones nationwide. They built public housing, or vertical slums, to isolate, not house the poor. Their decisions stifled development and cooled neighborhoods. He and other bureaucrats blamed the poor for destroying neighborhoods and conspired to remove them.

He also cooperated with deceptive landlords and managers to illegally remove tenants. Instead of using his agency to protect the weak, he closed help that centers other H P D commissioners opened to defend tenant rights. An honest cooperative under his department’s supervision is rarer than hens’ teeth. HUD officials exposed corruption at Lenox Terrace, Coop City, and other developments that they investigated before Alfonso Jackson and other corrupt reactionaries took over the agency.

New York State Attorney General Cuomo, Manhattan District Attorney Morgenthau, The Department of Investigation, The Department of Housing and Community Renewal, and black politicians refuse to protect tenants. They sell out their constituents for a trifle. Harlem residents re-elected Charles Rangel eighteen times but he did nothing to protect residents from avaricious landlords.

New York City Housing Court judges also abandoned housing residents during the Bloomberg years. The landlords/tenants court has become completely one sided under the jurisdiction of Administrative Judge Fern Fisher. She refused to post a Bill of Rights in courts. She rationalized that posting it took sides in landlord-tenant cases and denied the posting of any information to help tenants.

I appeared before housing court Judge Marcia Sikowitz after I implored Commissioner Donovan to adhere to the law. She never listened to my case, illegally charged me lawyer fees, and allowed the management at Franklin Plaza to steal my late father’s apartment which could have been prevented if Commissioner Donovan, or Attorney General Cuomo properly protected the public’s interest. Instead, they conspired to rid New York of undesirables and exposed thousands of tenants to intolerant judges.

As the Secretary of HUD, Donovan will push the poor into the streets throughout America in order to build shining cities on hills and create decaying slums in hidden valleys.



mlvnrdmn@yahoo.com

Sen. Malcolm Smith makes Albany history

Sen. Malcolm Smith makes Albany history
BY KENNETH LOVETT and GLENN BLAIN DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU
Wednesday, January 7th 2009, 2:42 AM
ALBANY - After two months of political bickering, Queens Sen. Malcolm Smith is set Wednesday to become the state's first black Senate majority leader.
Three dissident Democrats who held back their support for Smith since Election Day agreed Tuesday to a deal that makes them committee chairmen in exchange for backing Smith.
"We went through a difficult process," Smith said after a closed-door meeting with most of his members.
"This was not easy. Everybody was very passionate about their concerns."
Dissidents Pedro Espada Jr. (D-Bronx), Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) and Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) said they were satisified.
Diaz wouldn't say if he got a commitment he sought that legislation to legalize gay marriage would not be brought to the floor this year for a vote.
"This clearly is a historic day for all of us," said Smith, who'll be the first Senate Democratic majority leader in 43 years.
As for the dissidents, Kruger will head the Finance Committee and Diaz will head the Aging Committee.
Espada Jr. will be vice president of urban policy for the Senate and head of the Housing Committee, among other things.
New Sen. Hiram Monserrate, the Queens Democrat facing a felony assault charge, was named head of the Consumer Protection Committee, though Smith said he will make a decision on his role within a day or two.
klovett@nydailynews.com