In a packed courtroom a long awaited stop and frisk trial begins.
In their opening statements, Darius Charney, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that 85 percent of those stopped were black and Latino, while the citywide population for those groups is just 50 percent. Nine of 10 stops resulted in no charges. There has been a “deliberately indifferent failure” by the NYPD to stop “unconstitutional behavior.”
The city’s lawyers, meanwhile, spent quite a bit of time attacking academic research underpinning the allegation that there is a racial bias in the stops. That research was done by Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Fagan. “The results are biased and unreliable,” a city attorney told the court.
Outside court, during the lunch break, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said the city is rationalizing a racially biased program he likened to banks’ historic practice of red-lining–that is, refusing to loan in low income, high minority areas. “This is a national crisis,” he says. “They are trying to justify, not deny, but it’s it’s unfair, and we want an even playing field.”