“By the end of Mayor Bloomberg's administration, the number of blacks and latinos stopped by the NYPD will exceed the population of black and latino people living in NYC. The number of stops involving young black men in 2011 (168,124) exceed the city’s population of young black men (158,406). 90% of them were innocent (were not arrested or given a summons) yet accounted for 41.6% of the stops despite making up only 4.7 of NYC. Since Bloomberg took office, stop and frisks increased 600%. This March the NYPD CONDUCTED THEIR 5 MILLIONTH STOP AND FRISK. The number is truly staggering when you consider that the population of NYC is 8.3 million. In comparison, the population of Los Angeles, America's second largest city, is only 3.8 million. Out of those 5,000,000 stop and frisk encounters, 4.4 million or 88% were innocent (were not arrested or given a summons) and 86% were Latino or Black. In Brownsville, Brooklyn, where over 96% of the residents are black or latino, 93 out of 100 residents were stopped by the NYPD. Probably the most enraging fact about the stop and frisk method is that it has revealed that WHITES ARE MORE THAN TWICE AS LIKELY TO BE FOUND WITH A WEAPON THAN BLACKS/LATINO'S. Only 1.9 percent of frisks in 2011 turned up weapons and interestingly, according to the NYCLU, "a weapon was found in only 1.8 percent of blacks and Latinos frisked, as compared to a weapon being found in 3.8 percent of whites frisked.”
—The most enraging facts about Bloomberg’s/NYPD’s Stop And Frisk method.
Mayor Bloomberg and other push for more gun control in the wake of this tragedy, but they ignore the real ways in which the tragedy could have actually been minimized:
• A 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, Miss., was halted by the school’s vice principal after he retrieved the Colt .45 he kept in his truck.
• A 1998 middle school shooting ended when a man living next door heard gunfire and apprehended the shooter with his shotgun.
• A 2002 terrorist attack at an Israeli school was quickly stopped by an armed teacher and a school guard.
• A 2002 law school shooting in Grundy, Va., came to an abrupt conclusion when students carrying firearms confronted the shooter.
• A 2007 mall shooting in Ogden, Utah, ended when an armed off-duty police officer intervened.
• A 2009 workplace shooting in Houston, Texas, was halted by two coworkers who carried concealed handguns.
• A 2012 church shooting in Aurora, Colo., was stopped by a member of the congregation carrying a gun.
• At the recent mall shooting in Portland, Ore., the gunman took his own life minutes after being confronted by a shopper carrying a concealed weapon.
Read more at: http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/halt-the-massacre-of-innocent-children-by-ending-prohibition-on-self-defense-in-/
Support the victims of this senseless, preventable tragedy at: https://newtown.uwwesternct.org/