"Am I Being Detained Or Am I Free To Leave?"

A few weekends ago I donated some time to raise awareness in my neighborhood about the status of the stop and frisk policies of the NYPD.  As we transition to warmer weather when we're all outdoors more, I felt it necessary to write this post to inform readers about how to handle situations where you may be stopped by the police and the current status of NYPD's stop and frisk policy that U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled to be unconstitutional.

First, one should carry a current photo ID at all times while in public.  By the age of 13, young people (especially males)should not be without ID on their person.  Parents and care providers need to take them to DMV to make sure they have proper state ID if they're not issued one by their school.  Stay mindful that people often misjudge the actual age of black youth.  Cops will judge a child who says he's 12 or 13 years  old to be 16.  There's an assumption that black youth are street smart and more mature and consequently they're adultified in a situation when they should be treated as a child. 

If police officers stop you, they may say something about you fitting a profile and request to see your ID.  Be sure to to tell them you're taking it out of your front hip pocket or wherever it may be.  If you're being asked a number of questions and it seems like they want to go into your pockets or check your car, you should ask "Am I being detained or am I free to go?"  Once you've asked this question, they need to state why you're being detained and they need to offer a just cause why you are in fact being detained or you should be let go and free to leave.  If they decide to arrest you, by all means don't become belligerent with cursing and yelling.  Just stay calm and go through the process.  I realize it's easier said than done in the situation but you'll make it easier for yourself and your lawyer when your case goes before the juddge.  It's shocking when you read a criminal complaint and see what someone is quoted as saying to the officer, and do know that judges and district attorneys will consider anything you've been quoted to say, even though it isn't proven and is still just an accusation. You should never sign anything and if you can finesse it with your phone, try to record any interaction with the police.  Any documentation to support your claim will matter later.

If you are a youth and you're arrested, when your parent or careprovider comes to the precinct they should ask to speak with the "youth officer". Most precincts have one and it can make a difference.  Also, precincts issue Desk Appearance Tickets (DAT's) to arrestees so that they don't have to spend the night in jail.  They get finger printed at the precinct, then are issued a DAT with a date for them to appear in court.  It's a courtesy they can do for low-level arrestees and extend to celebrities, ie. smoking marijuana in public and Alec Baldwin. 

Please make sure you have NO open warrants.  I've seen trivial summonses people received for being in the park after hours, walking from subway car to subway car while the train is in motion, or drinking alcohol in public lead to arrests because the summons was discarded and subsequently turned into a bench warrant.  Now when the police stop a person (often without a just reason), they can do a quick check and see they have an outstanding warrant and now arrest them for something they could've paid a $20 fine for months (sometimes years) earlier.  Understand this---once a person is arrested and fingerprinted they receive a NYSID number, that's a NYS ID number which tracks you through the state's criminal justice system.  So using aliases for each arrest will always lead them right back to you because they have your unique one-of-a-kind fingerprint. So effectively, once you're fingerprinted you are now in the system and that's the aim of much of the stop and frisk policy--to ensure that black and Latino males are in the system and can be tracked easily by law enforcement.  They know and are fully aware that most of the arrests will not result in any conviction and most of these "crimes" end up being for marijuana possession.  This unfair policy is also a tool of social control so that men of color become accustomed to being harrassed by police at will.  One of it's goals is to normalize police abuse. 

 

As for our current Mayor Bill DiBlasio who ran a campagin to end stop and frisk, his actions appear to be more likely called "bait and switch" as I like to refer to his policies with only a few months in office.  Mayor DiBlasio recruited the architect of stop and frisk, Bill Bratton from the early years of the Giuliani administration, to become the new police commissioner.  One has to seriously question his committment and desire for dismantling a police tactic that entangles many of our youth into a system that they're never meant to get out of. While the number of arrests have dropped somewhat, the arrests for quality of life crimes have risen.  So here in Harlem people are being ticketed for jaywalking in a city where jaywalking is the norm across the 5 boroughs.  Disorderly conduct summonses are issued to the homeless.  The stop and frisk arrests decrease while NYPD has increased their attention on jaywalkers and the homeless to keep their numbers up. 

In a city that is ever evolving and growing vertically, I view this hyper-focus by the police on our black and latino youth as a systemic consequence of the aggressive gentrification that is raging a silent war in black and Latino neighborhoods. The re-taking of America's cities is what is driving this over-aggressive posture by law enforcement to control the coveted land that our inner cities have now become.  NYC, as fly as it is can only accomodate so many bodies and the world is here vying for a piece of all this flyness.  So while there's only so much land for all of us to live and thrive on, the land that was once forgotten and disparaged by sociologists with terms like "slums" and  "inner city" four decades ago, strategies were being created to re-invigorate these communities that are centrally located and replace its inhabitants. Those same old slums get re-named and called "Gotham North" and "metropolis" to cater to a new resident that'd prefer a more trendy hipster name for "their" new nieghborhood.  The near 9 million residents are competing for land, services and resources across the five boroughs in a city with a gross shortage of available, affordable housing everywhere. So arresting and making sure all the possible little chain snatchers and turnstile jumpers stay in their place while the long abandoned lot next door gets turned into condominiums seems to function as our police department's plan to "serve and protect".

The former three-term Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, made sure that shelters were more restrictive and ignored the needs of NYC's poor and working class. Now neighborhoods that have been neglected for decades are viewed as prime real estate. During a time when crime rates have been comparatively low, these neighborhoods have been over-policed while stop and frisk policies continue in spite of a recent state court ruling to strike it down.  This court ruling that he fought forcefully against, even willing to finance the fight against it even after his term in office ended.  Our former mayor became a rabid zealot during his last few months in office to maintain a stop and frisk policy that obviously promotes blanket racial profiling because it is so central to creating the vanilla latte city that was his vision for the future of NY.

In the end, we all need to be aware of the policing that goes on in our community daily and be vigilant about educating our youth of how to interact with police on the streets, especially during the summer as contact with law enforcement increases.