NEW YORK, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Princeton University
Professor Cornel West, one of a group of protestors arrested
last fall while rallying against the New York City Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" policy, refused an offer of a
conditional dismissal from prosecutors Thursday.
Instead, West and two dozen other protesters will take their
cases to trial in an effort to draw attention to the
controversial policy, which critics say is a heavy-handed abuse
of police authority that disproportionally targets minority
communities.
"The city knows that there's an increase in consciousness of
stop-and-frisk issues, and we get a chance now to dramatize it
in a much more intense manner, and that's beautiful," West said
following a court appearance in New York City Criminal Court in
Manhattan. West is a professor in the Center for African
American Studies at Princeton.
Prosecutors had offered more than 30 protesters an
adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, or an ACD, which
allows the charges to be dropped if the defendant is not
arrested for six months.
The protesters, who were arrested outside the NYPD's 28th
Precinct in October, were charged with disorderly conduct, a
misdemeanor. While a handful of protesters accepted ACDs,the
majority vowed to go to trial.
"Nobody is interested in ACDs," said Jose LaSalle, one of
the protest's organizers, who said they had planned on being
arrested when they rallied at the police station. "We're trying
to make a point."
A consolidated trial for the protesters will begin April 30.
STOP-AND-FRISK
Earlier this week, the New York Civil Liberties Union
reported that NYPD street stops have grown more than 600 percent
since 2002.
According to the NYCLU's analysis of NYPD stop-and-frisk
data, four of the five precincts with the most stops were
predominantly black and Latino. Nine out of 10 people stopped
were not arrested or given a summons, the NYCLU reported.
But police say the strategy of "hot-spots policing," in
which the department focuses its resources in high-crime areas,
is a success.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said this week that the murder
rate has been cut by more than half in the decade since the
strategy was implemented, a decline "attributable to proactive
policing strategies that included stops."
The stop-and-frisk policy is the subject of a pending
federal lawsuit in Manhattan, Floyd v. City of New York, that
claims one-third of the stops are unconstitutional.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Jessica
Dye)
Follow us on Twitter: @ReutersLegal