When the Occupy Wall Street movement ignited last fall, there was no shortage of disturbing press reports about NYPD misconduct toward the demonstrators. We've all read stories about the NYPD’s abuses—the eviction of hundreds of protesters from Zuccotti Park, the mass arrest of 700 people on the Brooklyn Bridge, the pepper-spraying of peaceful protesters.
The pressure on the New York Police Department to reform its stop-and-frisk program is mounting, led by the New York Civil Liberties Union and other advocates and now the New York Times.
New York City’s leaders, most notably its billionaire mayor, are bent on supporting a stop-and-frisk policy that according to the police department’s own numbers overwhelmingly target minorities.
The New York Civil Liberties Union is giving smart phones a social conscience. This week, we unveiled Stop and Frisk Watch – a new smart phone app that will empower New Yorkers to hold the NYPD accountable for unlawful, abusive street stops and other misconduct.
Stop and Frisk Watch – available in English and Spanish for Android phones – allows bystanders to document stop-and-frisk encounters and alert community members when a street stop is in progress. Easy to use, it has three main functions:
By Mike German, ACLU, Washington Legislative Office at 12:51pm
Like a villain in a horror movie, the widely debunked concept of terrorist "radicalization" is once again raised from the grave by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in its 2013 report, "American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat." CRS is an influential legislative branch agency charged with providing objective policy analysis for members of Congress, which makes its continued reliance on the "radicalization" model promoted in a now-discredited 2007 New York Police Department report, "Radicalization in the West," particularly troublesome.
