Clergy Will Speak Out on Stop & Frisk on Jan. 23rd

Members of the faith community in the city will speak out on the issue of stop and frisk, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at the forum The Conscience of the City, sponsored by PROP (Police Reform Organizing Project), at The New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street, on Wednesday, January 23^rd from 6:30pm-8:30pm. The forum is open to the public at no charge.

Conscience of the City

The panelists speaking will be:

Rev. Pat Bumgardner - Senior Pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of New York

Imam Al Hajj Talib Abdur Rashid - Pres. of the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York

Rev. Ruben Austria - Bronx Clergy Coaltion: Founder and Exec. Director of Community Connections for Youth

Derrick Boykin - Associate Pastor Walker Memorial Baptist Church

Rabbi Jill Jacobs - Exec. Director Rabbis for Human Rights North America

"The Church must be reminded that is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never it's tool." - Martin Luther King

Here is a link to the official invitation:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/n7prjca815faj9p/23OtatBO-8#f:The-Conscience-of-the-City-front.jpg

Judge Scheindlin ordered on Tuesday, January 8th the New York City Police Department to cease from continuing the practice of doing trespass stops, outside the Bronx buildings participating “Operation Clean Halls,” a longstanding NYPD practice that has come under scrutiny, as many residents of these buildings are being issued trespass summones, while just in the process of entering or leaving their homes.

Another resultant and compounding factor of this practice, that if one of these wrongfully issued trespass summones goes unanswered, an arrest warrant is automatically issued on these individuals, and should they be stopped again, they will be arrested and end up with an arrest record.

The actual NYPD practice of stop and frisk which affects the entire city as a whole, has not been disbanded and continues.