Rev. Al Sharpton will take up the fight against New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy with a Father’s Day march down a major Manhattan street.
On Tuesday, Sharpton announced plans for the march in a press conference with elected officials and other community activists, the New York Daily News reports.
“We are not against fighting crime, but it is a crime when 85% of the people stopped in a city are of color,” Sharpton said. “It’s a crime when you are targeted by race.”
Stop and Frisk gives New York Police Officers the legal ability to stop and pat down ‘suspicious’ suspects without evidence of a crime. The NYPD made a record 685,724 stops last year.
A recent New York Civil Liberties Union report found that 42% of those stopped were black or Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24, a group that makes up 5% of the city’s population.
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous also spoke at the Tuesday press conference and drove home the idea that ‘stop-and-frisk’ is city-sanctioned racial profiling. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has repeatedly denied that allegation, and last month called the practice a “life-saving tactic.”
