Album from Silent March to End Stop and Frisk

As many diverse people that create the melting pot that is New York City were present at the historic Silent March to End Stop and Frisk, Sunday June 17th. There were thousands there and from my understanding they represented 299 organizations and countless interested individuals that wanted be a part of the resounding call to end the NYPD policy of stop and frisk. There were people there from all walks and stages of life. There was a woman marching that carried her baby in her arms, and then there was Rev.Kennedy a veteran from the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village in 1969. There were various politicos that came to the event but New York City Comptroller John C. Lui, was who I saw, with his son who gave him hugs intermittently. 

And then the march started and there was a profound silence as we marched up Fifth Avenue and the only sound I heard was the twittering of the birds in the trees. At the end of the march as we rounded by Bloomberg's residence there was a cacophony of chanting.

Stop and frisk gives the individual police officer the ability to stop anyone, question and frisk them if they so choose. The New York Civil Liberties Union revealed that based on the statistics that were obtained from the NYPD, that last year 685,724 people were stopped, a 600% increase since 2002 when 97,000 individuals were stopped, the year Bloomberg took office. Of all these individuals stopped last year 87% were black and latino, while 88% of those stopped were innocent.

Bloomberg after the march announced that he would not scrap the stop and frisk policy, but would mend it. It will have to take a lot of mending when you have a young man by the name of Tyquan Brehon who has been stopped no fewer than 60 times before his 18^th birthday, and when this past Saturday I witnessed in Newkirk Plaza four young men of color stopped by a police officer because they should not be walking their bicycles through the plaza. A young man of latino descent also with his bicycle was handcuffed and arrested,  just moments before the other four were stopped by the same police officer. I do not know the reason why he was stopped or for the arrest.

To read more about Tyquan Brehon http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/opinion/the-scars-of-stop-and-frisk.ht...