Jeffries Blasts NYPD Stop-And-Frisk Record

According to recently released numbers, the NYPD stopped and interrogated six times the number of people on the street last year – with 87 percent being black or Latino – as compared to 2002.

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries called the rise in stop-and-frisks “an abuse of power that perpetuates distrust between the NYPD and the communities it serves.”

"It is unacceptable that hundreds of thousands of individuals, who have done nothing wrong, are being targeted and dehumanized on the streets on New York," said Jeffries. "The disproportionate number of blacks and Latinos stopped and frisked has increased year after year - indicating fundamental flaws in the execution of the stop-and-frisk policy.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union released the report this week, showing that the NYPD stopped and interrogated people 684,330 times in 2011, the highest total in the practice's recorded history. That's a 14 percent increase from 2010, and a 603 percent since 2002. While about 87 percent of those stopped were black or Latino, only 9 percent were white.

In July 2010, Jeffries and State Senator Eric Adams sponsored a bill that would make it illegal for police officers to add to an electronic database the names and addresses of every person they stop, question and frisk. Then-Governor Paterson signed it into law that month, but there is currently no law that prohibits stop-and-frisks all together.

The NYPD has defended the stop-and-frisk policy by arguing that it has helped take about 800 guns off the street.