The New York City Council has finally decided to look into the police department's policy of saving personal information gathered during a stop-and-frisk, the Daily News reports. The department had been storing information from people who were stopped but not charged or accused of any wrongdoing in a database that could be searched by law enforcement officials.
(Christine) Quinn and (Peter) Vallone, who is chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee and whose father is former Speaker Peter Vallone, asked Kelly to explain when cops are allowed to search the database. They also asked for specific examples of when information from the database was helpful in cracking a case.
"They make some interesting points that Commissioner Kelly is considering," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said in an e-mail.
Saving the information only assumes it will be useful in future investigations, which assumes a level of criminality among people who've done nothing suspicious. That's particularly heinous given that 87 percent of those stopped in 2009 were black and Hispanic. And stops and frisks themselves already involve an initial assumption of criminality; it's a crime-prevention technique. Whom the police stop shows who they assume might be concealing something criminal. When they start stopping and frisking teenagers in Riverdale or the Upper East Side, then we can call it fair.
-- Monica Potts
