Yet, another example of the NYPD's stop and frisk policy at work. On February 23, 2012 we passed 2 men being stopped and frisked outside of their car in Harlem. It turned out that the police stopped them because of the vehicles tinted windows. During the stop the driver had trouble finding his drivers license. Both men were told to get out of the car and had their bodies frisked. After their bodies were frisked the NYPD proceeded to search the vehicle.

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SAVE THE DATE:
February 29, 2012
Second Circuit Argument in Lynne's Case
Second Circuit oral arguments in Lynne's case will take place on February 29, 2012, at the U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan, 500 Pearl Street. Lynne will not be there but hopes for a massive turnout! More information coming soon!

Who is Lynne Stewart?

Lynne Stewart received a 28-month sentence in October 2006. Her lawyers appealed, and she was out on bail until November 17, 2009, when her bail was revoked after the Second Circuit ruled on her and the government’s appeals.

Radical human rights attorney Lynne Stewart has been falsely accused of helping terrorists. On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, she was arrested and agents searched her Manhattan office for documents. She was arraigned before Manhattan federal Judge John Koeltl. This is an obvious attempt by the U.S. government to silence dissent, curtail vigorous defense lawyers, and install fear in those who would fight against the U.S. government’s racism, seek to help Arabs and Muslims being prosecuted for free speech and defend the rights of all oppressed people.

Lynne’s bail has been revoked, and she is now being held in jail after the Second Circuit ruled on her and the government’s appeals on Tuesady, November 17, 2009. You can read the opinion and other motions to stay below.

For more information visit http://lynnestewart.org/ .

The People Power Movement held its monthly community conversation at Harlem's Metropolitan AME Church on February 23, 2012.  This discussion was entitled, "Free The Mind" and included panelists, Joseph "Jazz" Hayden, Claudia De La Cruz and Shaka Shakur.  Below are video from the panelists.

The People Power Movement holds community conversations every 4th Thursday of the month.  For more information email peoplepower@live.com.

 Shaka Shakur

Claudia De La Cruz

Joseph "Jazz" Hayden

Come out tomorrow night!

NY State Senator Bill Perkins and Assemblyman Keith Wright addressed the issue of mass incarceration at the gathering of The 41st Annual NYS Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus in Albany, New York on February 18, 2012.

 THE BRONX COUNTY CRIMINAL COURT Part B 215 East 161st Street (near Sherman & Sheridan Avenues) Take the C, D or 4 train to the Yankee Stadium/161st Street Station. or take the BX 6 or BX 13 Bus to East 161st Street & Sheridan Avenue; the BX 1 to East 161st Street & Grand Concourse

Video from last Saturday's Rally in the Bronx

Jazz Hayden and the Fight Against Stop-and-Frisk

An unlikely activist's battle with the NYPD's frisky business

By Graham Rayman, Photographs by Lyric Cabral

Photo By:Lyric Cabral - The majority of New Yorkers targeted in stop-and-frisks are young black and Hispanic males. “Harlem is turning into an open-air prison, a minimum-security prison, and the people think it’s normal,” Hayden says.

Village Voice - Hayden, a longtime Harlem community activist, films stop-and-frisks and then posts the videos to the Internet as part of his Copwatch program. Hayden plans to sue the NYPD for improper stop and arrest after he was pulled over by police in December.

The 70-year-old Hayden, whose given name is Joseph, is a longtime community activist in Harlem. In a past life, he was a street hustler who served three years in prison in the late 1950s for drugs, was falsely accused in the late 1960s in a high-profile shooting of two police officers in the politically turbulent year of 1968, was convicted of money laundering in the 1970s, and served 13 years in prison from 1986 to 2000 for manslaughter after a traffic dispute turned fatal.

Hayden has spent the past four years irritating police officers by videotaping them as they stop and frisk people in Harlem in a program he calls "Copwatch." He often posts the videos on the Internet. For most of that period, he encountered little more than annoyed cops, but recently, his activities might have caught up with him.

Last summer, Hayden filmed two plainclothes officers during an evening car stop. The exchange between Hayden and the officers was contentious, even though the two motorists who were stopped were let go without charges.

At least one officer was aware of Hayden's past, because at one point, he can be heard saying: "You done selling drugs yet or what? I know your rap sheet." And then later, the tape shows, the same officer can be heard saying: "Go sell some more drugs, sir. We know your background. I know who you are."

Then, on December 2, as Hayden drove away after a meeting at Riverside Church, the same two officers stopped him, searched him, and arrested him for possession of a penknife. "We know you," one of them said.

"These guys knew who I was," Hayden says, calling it "NYPD officers taking revenge on me. . . . It was clear retaliation."

Chris Woods, a 35-year-old security guard, happened to be walking by and witnessed the police stop Hayden. "He didn't say anything offensive or abusive to the officers, but that wasn't good enough for them," Woods says. "That he was talking with them seemed to make them more furious. The whole thing shouldn't even have been a criminal matter."

What probably should have been a minor incident became 48 hours in holding cells and a felony weapons charge against the activist. Hayden's arrest has also become something of a cause in Harlem.

Among other events, Hayden's allies organized a protest at the Manhattan Supreme Court on January 19, one of his court dates. The protest was attended by elected officials and activists. The board of the radio station WBAI, where Hayden was once a producer, passed a resolution in support of him.

In 2010, the NYPD, in a campaign touted by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as a key element in the war on crime, stopped more than 600,000 people throughout the city. From 2004 to 2009, police stopped 2.8 million people; the largest age group is males 15 to 19, following by males ages 20 to 24. Just 9 percent of the stops resulted in an arrest. And in 2011, the police were on pace for 686,000 stops—a new record.

In the 2010 Voice series "The NYPD Tapes," police supervisors in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuvesant order cops to make a quota of one or two stops per tour. Police Officer Adil Polanco, who was assigned to a Bronx precinct, said similarly that there was a stop-and-frisk quota there. If those orders are typical for most precincts—and that appears to be the case from the tapes and Polanco's statements—then quotas are a key factor in fueling the rise in stops.

Even so, Kelly has said repeatedly that the stops keep people from carrying weapons, drugs, and other illicit items on the street. He said it again most recently in a December 11 affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit: "Stops serve as a deterrent to criminal activity."

He has been backed on this by Mayor Bloomberg, the New York Post and Daily News editorial pages, and commentators including the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald, who tied the stops to the crime decline and declared that the campaign "saves minorities' lives."

And yet the campaign has spawned ongoing opposition not only from elected officials and activists but also from regular New Yorkers. Last September, police stopped and handcuffed Counciman Jumaane Williams and an associate at Brooklyn's West Indian Day Parade.

Williams raised a fuss, which led police spokesman Paul Browne to claim that someone had punched a police officer during the incident. Williams called that claim a "bald-faced lie," and Browne hasn't uttered another word about it since.

But aside from public opinion, there's a major cost to the campaign in actual dollars. Over the past couple of years, the number of lawsuits filed by New Yorkers alleging improper stop-and-frisks has continued to grow. There might be some element of lawyers seeing a new area in the always-busy police-litigation business, but the rise also indicates a frustration among New Yorkers with the practice.

In the month of January alone, more than three dozen lawsuits alleging improper stop-and-frisks were filed, based on a Voice reading of the complaints. Extrapolated, that means that the city could be sued more than 400 times this year alone just on improper stops.

Read Full Story at Village Voice

Jateik Reed, after receiving a brutal beating by Bronx NYPD, is finally released at Bronx Supreme Court after posting bail.  The community was outrages and came together to support Jateik and his family. The video of his beating was a replay of the Rodney King beating decades ago, nothing has changed.

The beginning of 2012 has been marked by the NYPD's rein of terror. First, NYPD officers brutally beat 19 year old Jateik Reed then days later they forcefully broke into the Bronx home of 18 year old Ramarley Graham where they killed him in cold blood.  Activists and community members organized to rally against the inhumane and terrorist tactics that the NYPD continuously inflict on Black and Brown communities with Stop and Frisk and unwarranted surveillance and harrassment in these communities. The People want answers and demand that the NYPD are convicted of these crimes against humanity.

Videos of Rally

NYPD is Guilty - 42nd Precinct

In Front of Jateik's Building

"An Eye for an Eye"

Pack the Courthouse in support of
Jateik and his family.

Monday - Feb. 6th - 9am
Bronx Criminal Court
265 East 161st Street, Bronx, NY

Ramarley Graham, an 18 year old boy was shot and killed by the NYPD in his Bronx home on E229th street.  Community members, Assemblyman Eric Stevenson, and retired NYPD detective, Chuck Berkely rallied in solidarity against police brutality, stop and frisk, and the NYPD terrorist tactics in the Black community.

R.I.P. Ramarley Graham

Click photo for NY1, report on the incident

The NYPD is totally out of control, they act like the military in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world -- serial killers. "Furtive movements" is a totally subjective standard used by the police to justify their unlawful behavior. How do you justify killing a young human being for possession of drugs, an inanimate object that poses no threat to anyone?  We need community control of policing, it is the only way to address this madness.

NY1 - Family members are demanding answers after police shot an killed an 18-year-old drug suspect who was apparently unarmed.  The shooting happened around 3 p.m. in a building on 229th Street in Wakefield.  Police say officers investigating street corner drug dealing approached 18-year-old Ramarley Graham who then took off on foot.  An officer chased him into his second-floor apartment where they struggled in a bathroom.  The officer fired one shot, hitting Graham in the chest.  Police say marijuana was found in the home, but no weapon was recovered.  Speaking to reporters, Graham's mother said police went too far.  "Like a regular kid, he's like you know, just like any other kid. You know you have kids who get in trouble, simple other stuff. But he wasn't that bad, he wasn't a bad kid. Not the kind of kid who carries guns around and slings no guns, he's not that type of kid," said Graham's mother, Constance Malcolm.  This is the third time in the past week that city police officers have shot and killed a suspect.

NYPD strikes again, brutally beating a Bronx Teen, Jatiek Reed, 19, last week.  The incident was caught on video and is another example of a Police department that is out of control and brutalizing our communties.  Even Police Commissioner Ray Kelly who almost never admits any wrong doing on behalf of the NYPD stated that, "the video was disturbing."  The officers in the video were also stripped of their guns for the time being and put on desk duty while NYPD investigates the incident internally.  This incident and the filming of it further empasizes the importance of citizens taking out their cameras and monitoring police activity.  If this video had not come out this would just be another everyday case of the police officers word verse the victims word.  All Things Harlem urges our viewers to please film police activity in our communities. 

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