Organizers of an ongoing campaign to "Stop Stop and Frisk" tell us that 20 people were arrested today (Saturday, Nov. 19) outside the 103d police precinct in Queens.
The site was chosen for the nonviolent protest because it is near where Sean Bell, unarmed, was shot dead by police three years ago this month. Bell was to have been married later that day and many New Yorkers say Bell likely would be alive today if he had been white.
Today's demonstrators were trying to pressure the city into stopping the policy of detaining hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino men a year, the vast majority of them innocent of any crime.
The policy is known as Stop and Frisk, and opponents say it is ruining the lives of countless young Black and Latino men around the city. Though they are innocent and released by police, their names are entered into databases.
What's more, sometimes police, having to meeting precinct quotas in certain neighborhoods, will cite the young men for violations such as spitting or drinking beer from an opening bottle.
If a person so cited by a police officer misses the court date to pay the fine, then a warrant is issued for the person's arrest.
The Stop and Frisk police is thereforce creating an underclass of young men who feeling powerless to do anything about the treatment.
With this as a backdrop, the demonstrators are calling themselves the New Freedom Riders, a reference to the '50s and '60s when civil rights activsist went to southern states to challenge the discrimination -- and often the violence -- to which Blacks were subjected.
The protesters arrested today were charged with obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct, according to a spokesman for the demonstrators, Nick Malinowski.
Led by a committed core of activists, the protesters have been going by the name "Stop Mass Incarceration" and they have vowed to take their campaign all around the city. Here are a couple of photos they sent this evening from today's happening.
(They said, by the way, that those arrested today likely would not be released by police until Sunday.)
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