Quotas To Go On Trial

Via a class-action lawsuit with a potentially enormous pool of plaintiffs:

Under the ruling by Manhattan federal judge Robert Sweet, those eligible to join the suit include everyone whose summonses were dismissed “upon a judicial finding of facial insufficiency and who were ticketed without probable cause” since May 25, 2007.

With any luck, this will happen just in time for, ugh, Ray Kelly’s mayoral run.

But Maybe We’ll Get Lucky And Al Qaeda Will Start Robbing Liquor Stores . . .

Between raping women, assisting citizens in distress and spying on Muslims, there’s just so little time left for anything else:

The owner of a Harlem liquor store broken into twice in a week says police took too long to respond, and failed to look at surveillance footage which showed the thieves until after they’d struck a second time.

Commissioner Clinton Kelly Will School You On What Not To Wear

Muted colors please, and something that doesn’t hide that cute butt of yours:

Men of color said cops don’t bother them as long as they are dressed in a suit or in work clothes.

“It matters what you wear, just don’t look like a hoodlum,” said [. . .] a 23-year-old black man, explaining that a cop stopped him on S. Ninth St. after a nearby shooting asking what he knew about it.

[The man], then a Pathmark cashier in full uniform, said a second officer let him go.

“He said, ‘Leave him alone. He’s going to work,'” Kinard said. “Maybe if we dress nicer, they will leave us alone.”

. . .

“I had a bright pink shirt on that day,” [another man who had been frisked] said. “I was an easy target.”

New Orleans In April (Read: Jazz Fest!!!!!)

Eventually we’ll find out that they’re surveilling nearly everybody, and then we won’t have to worry that they’re being discriminatory:

In April 2008, an undercover NYPD officer traveled to New Orleans to attend the People’s Summit, a gathering of liberal groups organized around their shared opposition to U.S. economic policy and the effect of trade agreements between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

When the undercover effort was summarized for supervisors, it identified groups opposed to U.S. immigration policy, labor laws and racial profiling. Two activists — Jordan Flaherty, a journalist, and Marisa Franco, a labor organizer for housekeepers and nannies — were mentioned by name in one of the police intelligence reports obtained by the AP.

“One workshop was led by Jordan Flaherty, former member of the International Solidarity Movement Chapter in New York City,” officers wrote in an April 25, 2008, memo to David Cohen, the NYPD’s top intelligence officer. “Mr. Flaherty is an editor and journalist of the Left Turn Magazine and was one of the main organizers of the conference. Mr. Flaherty held a discussion calling for the increase of the divestment campaign of Israel and mentioned two events related to Palestine.”

. . .

Flaherty, who also writes for The Huffington Post, said he was not an organizer of the summit, as police wrote in the NYPD report. He said the event described by police actually was a film festival in New Orleans that same week, suggesting that the undercover officer’s duties were more widespread than described in the report.

Flaherty said he recalls introducing a film about Palestinians but spoke only briefly and does not understand why that landed him a reference in police files.

“The only threat was the threat of ideas,” he said. “I think this idea of secret police following you around is terrifying. It really has an effect of spreading fear and squashing dissent.”

Trust Is Easy To Build, Provided You Don’t Shoot Anyone

Maybe Ray Kelly is right about stop and frisk — these people sure seem like they’re OK with it:

[A] Fresh Direct driver [. . .] said he gets stopped by cops often when he visits relatives in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“It’s standard . . . ‘Spread your legs, feet apart.’ I know the procedure. I just stand still” said [the man], 24, who lives in Williamsburg. “I don’t care if I’m stopped. I have nothing to hide. Just don’t shoot me.”