Black and Latino Teachers Activists Racially Profiled Arrested-gctid30195

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 For Immediate Release
 
 Oona Chatterjee 347.268.1892
 
 Lurie Daniel-Favors 917.326.0615
 
 PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!
 
 Black and Latino Teachers & Activists Racially Profiled & Arrested While Attending Court Proceedings on Behalf of Their Students.
 
 What: PACK THE COURT HOUSE
 
 When: December 12th at 9am
 Where: 120 Schemerhorn St., Brooklyn Court House, 8th Floor
 
 PRESS CONFERENCE AT 12:00pm.
 
On November 30, Brian Favors, teacher and director of Sankofa Community Empowerment and member of MXGM, Nkululeko Sechaba, President of the Queens chapter of InPDUM, Jesus Gonzales, community organizer with Make the Road, NY, and Mario Cox, an honor roll student at BCHS were attending court proceedings in support of the Bushwick 32 students, when they themselves were racially profiled and placed under arrest.  The Bushwick 32 is a group of students who were racially profiled and arrested while en route to a funeral on May 21, 2007. The NYPD mistakenly identified the students as a gang and held them for 36 hours.  Though police did not find any drugs, weapons or gang paraphernalia on the young people, they did find letters from their school and parents granting them permission to attend the funeral.  Despite the widespread media attention, community support and numerous eye witness testimonies which contradict the NYPD's account of events, District Attorney Charles Hynes has refused to drop the charges.
 
Community supporters, including teachers, family members and activists rallied once again behind the Bushwick 32 on November 30.  Shocked and appalled at the sub par representation the students received in court, teacher, and long-time supporter, Brian Favors discretely urged several defense attorneys to competently represent the students. One of the defense attorneys, offended at the questioning of her paltry representation, returned to the court room and informed a Court Security Officer ("CSO"), with whom she has a personal relationship and parents a child, that she did not like the way Mr. Favors spoke to her and she wanted the "Black man with dread locks" ejected out of the court room.  The CSO mistakenly identified Mr. Sechaba as the "Black man with dread locks" in question and shouted for him to leave the court room.  Mr. Favors then stood up and informed the CSO that he had kicked out the wrong "Black man with dreadlocks." Mr. Sechaba told the CSO that he had just engaged in an act of racial profiling, and requested the CSO's badge number.  The CSO, refusing to acknowledge his public mistake, ordered fellow officers to "cuff" both Mr. Favors and Mr. Sechaba.  Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Cox were also arrested for the "crime" of informing the officers that their teacher and supporter had done nothing to warrant an arrest.  All four men were violently assaulted during the course of their arrest.
 Councilman Charles Barron stated "First the police terrorize us and arrest our youth for wanting to attend a funeral. Then the court officers terrorize us again and deny our constitutional right to enter a court room and support our youth at their trial. If this is not fascism I don't know what is. I support these brothers 100% and they should be set free."
 
The community insists that this is only the latest example of the targeting of people of color by the NYPD and the criminal justice system. Press conference organizers highlight data gathered by the New York Civil Liberties Union -- in 2006, over 94% of stop and frisks by the 83rd precinct and 90% of stop and frisks citywide resulted in no summons issuance or arrest. Several New York Times Articles detailing the controversy surrounding the Bushwick 32 case are attached.

What: PACK THE COURT HOUSE
 
 When: December 12th at 9am
 Where: 120 Schermerhorn St., Brooklyn Court House, 8th Floor
 
 PRESS CONFERENCE AT 12:00pm.

May 26, 2007
 Op-Ed Columnist
 Arrested While Grieving http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/opinion/26herbert.html
 By BOB HERBERT
No one is paying much attention, but parts of New York City are like a police state for young men, women and children who happen to be black or Hispanic. They are routinely stopped, searched, harassed, intimidated, humiliated and, in many cases, arrested for no good reason.
 Most black elected officials have joined their white colleagues and the media in turning a blind eye to this continuing outrage. And many black cops have joined their white colleagues in the systematic mistreatment.
 Last Monday in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, about three dozen grieving young people on their way to a wake for a teenage friend who had been murdered were surrounded by the police, cursed at, handcuffed and ordered into paddy wagons. They were taken to the 83rd precinct stationhouse, where several were thrown into jail.
 Leana Matia, an 18-year-old student at John Jay College, was one of those taken into custody. "We were walking toward the train station to take the L train when all these cops just swooped in on us," she said. "They cursed us out and pushed the guys. And then they handcuffed us. We kept asking, 'What are you doing?' "
 Children as young as 13 were among those swept up by the cops. Two of them, including 16-year-old Lamel Carter, were the children of police officers. Some of the youngsters were carrying notes from school saying that they were allowed to be absent to attend the wake. There is no evidence that I've been able to find — other than uncorroborated statements by the police — that the teenagers were misbehaving in any way.
 Everyone was searched, but nothing unlawful was found — no weapons, no marijuana or other drugs. Some of the kids were told at the scene that they were being seized because they had assembled unlawfully. "I didn't know what unlawful assembly was," said Kumar Singh, 18, who was among those arrested.
 According to the police, the youngsters at the scene were on a rampage, yelling and blocking traffic. That does not seem to be the truth.
 I spoke individually to several of the youngsters, to the principal of Bushwick Community High School (where a number of the kids are students), to a parent who was at the scene, and others. Nowhere was there even a hint of the chaos described by the police. Every account that I was able to find described a large group of youngsters, very sad and downcast about the loss of their friend, walking peacefully toward the station.
Kathleen Williams, whose son and two nieces were rounded up, was at the scene. She said there was no disturbance at all, and that when she tried to ask the police why the kids were being picked up, she was told to be quiet or she would be arrested, too.
 Capt. Scott Henderson of the 83rd Precinct told me that the police had developed a "plan" to deal with youngsters going to the wake because they suspected that the murder was gang-related and there had already been some retaliation. He said he had personally witnessed the youngsters in Bushwick behaving badly and gave the order to arrest them.
 Many of the kids were wearing white T-shirts with a picture of the dead teenager and the letters "R.I.P." on them. The cops cited the T-shirts as evidence of gang membership.
 Thirty-two of the youngsters were arrested. Most were charged with unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. Several were held in jail overnight.
 Police Commissioner Ray Kelly did not exactly give the arrests a ringing endorsement. He said, in a prepared statement, "A police captain who witnessed the activity made a good-faith judgment in ordering the arrests."
 A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, said, "It wouldn't be unusual for a lot of this stuff to get dismissed."
 The principal of Bushwick Community High, Tira Randall, said, "My kids come in here on a daily basis with stories about harassment by the police. They're not making these stories up."
 New York City cops stopped and, in many cases, searched individuals more than a half million times last year. Those stops are not happening on Park Avenue or Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Thounited snakesnds upon thounited snakesnds of them amount to simple harassment of young black and Hispanic males and females who have done absolutely nothing wrong, but feel helpless to object.
 It is long past time for this harassment of ethnic minorities by the police to cease. Why it has been tolerated this long, I have no idea.

May 29, 2007
 Op-Ed Columnist
 Small Incidents Are Creating a Big Problem With the N.Y.P.D. http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/opinion/29herbert.html
 By BOB HERBERT
These are small incidents, but they are accumulating by the tens of thounited snakesnds, and someday New Yorkers are going to be shocked by the power of the anger that these seemingly insignificant incidents have generated.
 The principal of Bushwick Community High School in Brooklyn told me about a student who was gratuitously insulted by a police officer at a subway station the other day. The girl had lost her MetroCard and was carrying a note on the school's letterhead asking that she be allowed to ride the train. This was fine with the token clerk, but the clerk told the girl to show the note to a cop on duty at the station.
 The cop, in front of several onlookers, told the girl she was the oldest-looking high school student he had ever seen. He demanded that she tell him the square root of 12. He loudly declared that she was stupid and refused to let her board a train.
 The girl left the station devastated and in tears. No big deal. Certainly not newsworthy. Just another case of cops being cops.
 Several students from Bushwick Community High were among the three dozen or so who were swept up by the cops last week as they were walking toward a subway station on their way to a wake for a teenage friend who had been murdered. For black and Hispanic youngsters, grieving can be a criminal offense.
 One of those arrested was 16-year-old Lamel Carter, the son of a police detective. I interviewed him after he had spent a night in jail.
 "It was pretty nasty," he said. "There were five of us in each cell. One of my friends was throwing up, and another had an asthma attack. The police said they got us for unlawful assembly."

Fifteen minutes after I interviewed Lamel, he was stopped again by two police officers. They asked him where he was going, ordered him to spread-eagle himself against a patrol car, searched him and then him let go.
 He was just another black kid (now with a brand-new arrest record) on the streets of Brooklyn. No big deal. Just one of hundreds of similar stops each day.
 One of the youngsters arrested while trying to attend the wake was Aliek Robinson, a 17-year-old who had come up from Baltimore. He had known the slain youth, Donnell McFarland, whose nickname was Freshh, since he was 6 years old. When I interviewed him, Aliek told me how one of the cops had gone out of his way to mock his dead friend.
 "After we got arrested, the cops were questioning us one by one," he said. "This one cop had a smile on his face and he said, 'Your man, Freshh, he was babbling like a little girl when he died.' And then he started giggling. I don't know why he said that. He didn't have to say that."
 Just cops being cops.
The important thing to remember here is that this behavior, in neighborhoods where the majority of the residents are black and Hispanic, is often the norm. This is not unusual police behavior. There is a huge percentage of cops on patrol whose knee-jerk approach to policing is to treat all young blacks and Hispanics as potential criminals.
 All high-ranking public officials in the city are aware of what is going on. I asked a black official, who asked not to be identified, why more minority officeholders aren't objecting publicly to the way minority youth are treated by the police. He said no one wants to be responsible for challenging the cops and then being blamed if crime statistics start to go back up.
 The two individuals most responsible for this sorry state of affairs are Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. All it would take is a directive from them to bring the ugly harassment under control.
A big gang problem has quietly developed in New York, and there are fears in the neighborhoods of a troubled summer. The response to this very serious situation should not be to treat all kids like criminals, which is both wrong and self-defeating.
 The police need the confidence and cooperation of law-abiding young people. Systematically demeaning them is hardly the way to achieve that.

June 24, 2007
 Mass Arrest of Brooklyn Youths Spotlights Tactics
 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/nyregion/24arrests.html
 By TRYMAINE LEE
The police officers hopped from their vans and cars with shouts of "Hands up," "Don't move," and "Get on the ground." Someone in the crowd of young people yelled, "Nobody run" -- and nobody did, witnesses said. The teenagers were frisked, forced up against a fence or a wall, or pushed to the asphalt.
 Those watching said the mood was almost subdued as the handcuffs went on, the loudest sound the whir of a television news helicopter hovering above. "None of us understood what was going on," said Dana Hollis, whose teenage daughter was arrested. "Everything just happened so fast."
 Thirty-two young people, the youngest 13, were arrested the afternoon of May 21 in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They had been walking as a group to the subway, which they planned to take to Coney Island for the wake of Donnell McFarland, 18, who had been fatally shot a week earlier.
 The police, already fearing retaliatory violence, say the teenagers were exchanging gang signs, wearing T-shirts with a gang name and bounding atop cars when they were arrested. Parents and teachers of the group and witnesses said that they were no more boisterous than any group of teenagers would be in similar circumstances, and that they did not see any youths atop cars.
 The charges are misdemeanors: unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. No drugs or weapons were found, and there were no injuries to those arrested or to the police. The officers did not draw their guns. Yet this roundup of Brooklyn teenagers and young people has gotten widespread attention.
 Interviews with those arrested, their parents, witnesses who did not know the teenagers, as well as accounts provided by the Police Department and the Brooklyn district attorney, provided contradictory versions of events. But they correspond in one aspect: The arrests were part of a police operation that unfolded with precision.
 Undercover officers circled in unmarked cars; a police captain monitored the teenagers gathering; and blue-and-white vans and buses cut off Putnam Avenue in both directions at a key moment, trapping the teenagers less than a block into their journey.
 "Once the kids hit Irving, the police came from everywhere," said Lisa Guerrero, 52, who lives nearby and saw the group gather and head up the block. "I was like: 'What happened? Why is this happening?' "
 Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said, "The police were being responsive to community leaders who warned that the group was poised for trouble after a week of murder, shootings and fistfights between two rival gang factions in Bushwick."
 On May 15, Mr. McFarland was shot in the head at Linden Street and Knickerbocker Avenue by James Kelly, 16, the police said. Mr. Kelly was soon arrested and charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. Friends of both said the shooting was the climax in a string of violent events involving Mr. Kelly, a onetime friend of Mr. McFarland's turned enemy.
 The shot echoed for blocks.
"We were on the basketball court, and we all kind of froze," said Asher Callender, 19. Someone ran into the park, crying, using Mr. McFarland's nickname: "They killed Freshh."
 The police say the murdered teenager was the leader of the Pretty Boy Family, which they describe as a subdivision, or "set," of the Bloods gang. But those who knew Mr. McFarland and are familiar with the Pretty Boy Family described it as a tight group of friends who like to dance and hang out, not a gang. The police say the Pretty Boy Family had been at odds with James Kelly's gang, the Linden Street Bloods, another Bloods subdivision, for some time. Both sets frequent the Hope Gardens housing project.
 Word of Mr. McFarland's death spread from the neighborhood streets into neighborhood schools.
"I didn't have a single class that whole week where I didn't have two or three people in my class crying," said Tabari Bomani, a social studies teacher and college counselor at Bushwick Community High School, where many students knew Mr. McFarland. Dozens of them met with grief counselors, school officials said.
 Mr. McFarland's wake was set for the following Monday at a funeral home in Coney Island. Officials at the Bushwick high school allowed students to sign out for the day if parents signed a permission slip.
 Mr. Callender said that many students wanted to attend, but that he was one of the few who knew the way to the funeral home. So he spread the word: Meet at Putnam Park between noon and 12:30 the day of the wake, May 21. They would gather, walk up Putnam, and head for the subway station.
Meanwhile, police were connecting the dots in a yearlong investigation into the Pretty Boy Family and a recent rash of gang violence.
The police said a Pretty Boy Family member was shot in the foot two weeks before Mr. McFarland's death. Later, they said, there was a confrontation between William Gonzalez, who had been feuding with Mr. McFarland, and a man they believed belonged to the Pretty Boy Family.
The same day, Jakai King, whom the police described as a member of the Linden Street Bloods, was attacked by members of the Pretty Boy Family, the police said. Two days later, they said, he was attacked again, this time stripped down to his underwear and sent running down the street.
It was in this atmosphere of attacks and revenge, Mr. Browne said, that the police received reports that a gang would be "mustering at the park" the day of the wake and that there would be violence. Community leaders warned the police in the 83rd Precinct in Bushwick and the 60th Precinct in Coney Island that Mr. McFarland's rivals had said that they would shoot anyone wearing a T-shirt memorializing him.
 Ms. Hollis, 40, her 15-year-old daughter and two of her nieces joined Donna Seabury and her two daughters, 12 and 16, at the park. Mr. Callender said he went to the school that morning to retrieve the school permission slip he left with the assistant principal. He then headed to the park. He was early, one of the first students to arrive. His friends slowly trickled in.
 The teenagers were to wear similar T-shirts, bearing Mr. McFarland's picture and words like "R.I.P. Freshh," to the wake.
Luis Pacheco, 18, said he went to the print shop that morning to pick up his $14 T-shirt. After meeting a friend, they went to the park. It was just about 12:30 p.m.
 Others recounted similar stories: rushing to school to get slips, waiting for their parents to walk with them to the park, meeting friends to travel together.
 Zezza Anderson, 18, said teenagers sat in small groups or off by themselves. "Everyone's sad. We're sad; we're grieving," Mr. Anderson said. "No one was being rowdy. Just chilling, waiting for everyone to show up. We're trying to make sure we don't leave anybody behind."
 Just after 1 p.m. the students walked from the handball courts to the macadam path that leads to the street.
Capt. Scott Henderson, of the 83rd Precinct, was one of the officers doing surveillance. In his report, he wrote that the teenagers greeted one another with gang hand signs, wore gang bandannas and shirts with a gang name on them, and gathered near a wall covered with gang slogans. Mr. Browne said last week that since they believed Mr. McFarland was in a gang, the police considered "Freshh" a gang name.
 The police said the group then left the park and took over Putnam Avenue, stopping traffic, frightening pedestrians and hopping onto parked cars. "It's when he sees that group grow in size and start walking on cars and forcing others to go into the street is when he called for the arrests," Mr. Browne said of the captain. "It's not like they had a plan where they were going to go to the park and arrest people."
Some witnesses, including some parents, said the teenagers were behaving peacefully. The Brooklyn district attorney's office said witnesses saw unruly behavior, including walking on cars, but Charles J. Hynes, the district attorney, would not provide specifics of those accounts.
 Several owners of cars that were parked on the block said they did not notice any damage to their vehicles afterward.
Hector Polonia, 52, was sweeping the sidewalk in front of United Cleaners, where he works as manager, on Irving Avenue near Putnam, when he saw the group crossing Putnam. Then he saw the police move in. "They weren't making any noise or anything," Mr. Polonia said. "They were acting like a normal bunch of teenagers."
 Ms. Guerrero was sitting in Putnam Park. "They didn't get on any cars," she said of the teenagers.
Those under 16 were quickly released. The six female mourners in the group were given summonses for disorderly conduct. The remaining young men were run through the system, charged with disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly. Most remained in jail overnight, some as long as 36 hours.
 "They seemed more interested in asking us questions about the murder than telling us why we were arrested," Mr. Callender said. "They just kept asking us stuff like, 'Who has the guns?' and 'Who is going to strike next?' But they were giving me information about people that I didn't even know. They knew more than we did."
 Several of the teenagers said they were interrogated about the Pretty Boy Family. Some said the police pulled out a big black binder labeled "P.B.F." with photos of people from the neighborhood.
 "At first I thought they were going to question us, then let us go," said Mr. Pacheco. "But then I could see the sun going down from my cell. I got upset. And people were crying. Some people were throwing up."
 The last members of the group were released on May 23. The next day, a news conference was held at the headquarters of Make the Road by Walking, a community rights organization in Bushwick.
 More than 50 students, including many of those who were arrested, demanded an apology from the Police Department.
The district attorney has offered to give those arrested community service assignments in return for guilty pleas. So far, none have accepted.
 Al Baker, Michael Brick and Daryl Khan contributed reporting.
 ------------------------------------
 
 Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

June 26, 2007
 Op-Ed Columnist, nytimes.com
 Doubting the Police http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/opinion/26herbert.html
 By BOB HERBERT
 
The woman was reluctant to let her name be used. She said she had a teenage son and was afraid that he might be harassed by the police. But her desire to have the truth come out overcame her fears.
 
 "You can use my name," she told me, "because I did not like what the police did to those kids. My name is Greer Martin."
 
Ms. Martin was standing outside her home on a quiet, tree-lined block of Putnam Avenue in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. This was the block on which, a few weeks ago, the police closed in on a large group of young men, women and children who were walking toward a subway station, on their way to a wake for a friend who had been murdered.
 
Thirty-two of the young people, including a 13-year-old, were arrested. Most were charged with unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. Commissioner Ray Kelly and others in the Police Department have been spreading the word that these youngsters had been out of control, walking on top of cars and illegally blocking traffic in the street and on the sidewalk.
 
 It does not appear that any of that was true.
 
The arrests occurred right outside Ms. Martin's first-floor windows. "I was shocked beyond shock," she said. "My windows were open, and it didn't look like the kids had done anything wrong. The police handcuffed them and lined them up right there, at the beginning of my fence. One young lady was crying, but they didn't resist in any way."
 
She said she asked a detective why the young people were being arrested. "He told me they were trying to defuse a situation," she said. "He said they were going to take the kids in and have a talk with them."
 
 A man named Conroy, who asked that his last name not be used, said he witnessed the entire incident. He lives across the street from Ms. Martin, and his 2007 Chevrolet Suburban was parked on the same side of the street that the kids were walking along when they were arrested.
 
 He also said he was shocked by the police action. "The kids weren't doing anything wrong," he said.
 
I asked if anyone had been walking on top of cars. Conroy laughed and gestured toward his gleaming black vehicle. "Don't you think if they had been climbing on top of cars, I would have noticed?"
 
 He pulled out his cellphone to show me photos of some of the youngsters handcuffed and in police custody. I asked if the youngsters had blocked traffic. Conroy said, "No, not at all. There wasn't any traffic out here until the police cars swooped in."
 
 I have interviewed many civilians about this case, and none have supported the police version of events. This is not a small matter. It's a terrible thing if the police have been lying about their reasons for arresting these youngsters.
 
 The official charges make no mention of people climbing on top of cars. It took a while for that tale to develop. The first time I heard it was in an interview I did with Capt. Scott Henderson of the 83rd Precinct a few days after the arrests. He said he had seen people walking on top of cars and that several of the youngsters had red bandanas.
 
 The bandanas would have signaled that the youngsters were affiliated with the Bloods, the violent and notorious street gang. I asked what had happened to the bandanas. Captain Henderson said he didn't know.
 
 I e-mailed a list of questions to Commissioner Kelly's office, trying to get whatever information might be available to corroborate Captain Henderson's version of events. I asked if there were any other officers who saw anyone on top of cars. I was told that that information could not immediately be tracked down.
 
 I asked if there were any civilian witnesses to such activity. I was referred to the office of the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, which did not provide the identity of any witnesses.
 
 I asked if the Police Department had the names of any youngsters who had climbed on top of a car. I was told no.
 
I believe that an outlandish miscarriage of justice has occurred here, that the youngsters arrested did nothing wrong and that the Police Department's version of events is false. Commissioner Kelly could clear the matter up once and for all by mounting an honest investigation to determine what really happened.