Chief among activists’ concerns is the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” policy, which empowers officers to proactively detain people on the street at will. They are then encouraged to cite any number of vague pretexts—with “furtive movements” being a popular choice—as justification for a stop. The NYPD is projected to make 700,000 detentions city-wide in 2011. In 2002, only 73,000 were recorded. This spring, a WNYC investigation revealed that a large portion of stops were yielding arrests for petty marijuana possession, in violation of New York State law. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was compelled to issue a directive, ordering that officers cease apprehending people who commit no infraction other than producing the drug after police instruct them to empty their pockets. In some neighborhoods designated as “high crime”—which excludes Wall Street—“stop-and-frisk” has become the NYPD’s primary policing tactic. Consequentially, attitudes toward law enforcement are almost universally disdainful. And system-wide police strategy becomes indistinguishable from individual misconduct. “My question is,” Councilman Jumaane Williams of Brooklyn said to me, invoking the popular cliched defense of police wrongdoing, “how many ‘bad apples’ does it take to make a bushel?”

(Source: thecurvature, via thetart)