The New York State legislature has presented a bill to Governor David Paterson that would place limits on a police practice that has spread too wide. He should sign it.
The bill would keep the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from saving the information of individuals who are stopped but neither arrested nor fined for a violation that is non criminal. State Senator Eric Adams, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, says he responding to the abuse of stop, question and frisk, violations of privacy rights and to complaints falling on deaf ears of Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
The NYPD argues that it is a mistake to believe that a person who is not arrested is innocent. In some of these cases, stops can interrupt a crime. The saving of information has been valuable as an investigative tool, the Department says, citing recent bias crime cases. In other words, the information kept may prove useful later.
Police officers should be able to protect public safety. But in a society that values public safety, civil rights and civil liberties, a boundary has to be set to prevent the abuse of police tactics. The pre-emptive approach of the NYPD crosses this boundary.
Saving the data of individuals who have not committed crimes but who police think might commit a crime is a dangerous slope. It makes the largely black and Latino youth who are stopped all suspects. This was not the impression that the NYPD gave to the public—that it was storing your data not because you committed a crime but for when you committed a future crime.
We should also be concerned about the mistrust this breeds between communities and police.In this digital information age and with ever advancing police science, cops can turn to a range of investigative tactics to solve crimes. But officers and the public also have to depend on the state of police-community relations for crime fighting. These are undermined when a line is drawn out too far on policing.
In the case of young African Americans and Latinos, it is statistically proven that they get stopped the most. Their seemingly “furtive” movements may not reflect guilt but instead the anxiety and tension that come with being stopped again and again. We believe those young people deserve the Constitutional right of presumption of innocence—as a practice—and to not have their information saved.
The New York State legislature has presented a bill to Governor David Paterson that would place limits on a police practice that has spread too wide. He should sign it.
The bill would keep the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from saving the information of individuals who are stopped but neither arrested nor fined for a violation that is non criminal. State Senator Eric Adams, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, says he responding to the abuse of stop, question and frisk, violations of privacy rights and to complaints falling on deaf ears of Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
The NYPD argues that it is a mistake to believe that a person who is not arrested is innocent. In some of these cases, stops can interrupt a crime. The saving of information has been valuable as an investigative tool, the Department says, citing recent bias crime cases. In other words, the information kept may prove useful later.
Police officers should be able to protect public safety. But in a society that values public safety, civil rights and civil liberties, a boundary has to be set to prevent the abuse of police tactics. The pre-emptive approach of the NYPD crosses this boundary.
Saving the data of individuals who have not committed crimes but who police think might commit a crime is a dangerous slope. It makes the largely black and Latino youth who are stopped all suspects. This was not the impression that the NYPD gave to the public—that it was storing your data not because you committed a crime but for when you committed a future crime.
We should also be concerned about the mistrust this breeds between communities and police.In this digital information age and with ever advancing police science, cops can turn to a range of investigative tactics to solve crimes. But officers and the public also have to depend on the state of police-community relations for crime fighting. These are undermined when a line is drawn out too far on policing.
