NYPD quotas for arrests and stop-and-frisks.

Quotas are an abomination

An NYPD whistleblower testified Tuesday that he taped supervisors at a South Bronx stationhouse agreeing on quotas for arrests and stop-and-frisks.

“They called it productivity,” Adhyl Polanco testified in Manhattan Federal Court on the second day of a trial in a class-action lawsuit against the controversial stop-and-frisk tactic.

Polanco testified that supervisors at the 41st Precinct stationhouse in 2009 wanted “20 and 1” — 20 summonses a month and one arrest. He said the bosses also wanted five stop-and-frisks a month.

Officers who failed to meet quotas would lose overtime hours and have their shifts changed, he said.

“It was not negotiable,” he said. “It was either that or you’re going to become a Pizza Hut deliveryman.”

Polanco, who became a cop in 2005, was suspended with pay in 2009 but has since been reinstated.

Earlier Tuesday, a Bronx man wept on the witness stand as he recounted how he was stopped, searched and handcuffed by cops on his way to buy milk for his family.

Nicholas Peart, 24, who began caring for his three siblings after their mother died of cancer two years ago, said his 2011 run-in with the NYPD on E. 144th St. at 11 p.m. made him feel “degraded.”

Peart said one cop took his keys and entered his apartment building, while the other removed his sneakers, asking if he was carrying any marijuana. He had no drugs and no weapon.

“I felt criminalized,” said Peart, who is black. “I felt degraded .... I was going to the bodega. It was very upsetting.”

Peart is a member of the class action initially brought by four black New Yorkers that could affect how the city is policed.

City lawyers said the NYPD is targeting crime — not people who belong to minority groups.

The lawsuit, filed in 2008, seeks to have stop-and-frisks declared unconstitutional and requests that cops be required to fill out paperwork every time they stop and frisk a New Yorker.

It also asks that the court appoint a monitor to keep watch on how the police make stops.

The trial is expected to last more than a month and will draw testimony from cops, lawmakers and constitutional experts, in addition to 12 people of color, including one woman, who say they were wrongly treated.

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here