Gawker has posted an audio recording provided to them by an NYPD officer that seems to be an exchange in which the officer is being pressured to profile black men.
The recording was made during a performance evaluation of New York transit officer Michael Birch. He was expecting a routine evaluation, but instead he told Gawker, “the conversation just turned completely weird to me. Because he’s basically telling me it’s OK to racially profile.”
In the recording, his supervising captain can be heard criticizing him for only stopping two black men out of 54 people.
“Two male blacks,” the man’s voice can be heard saying. “So you’re telling me you only saw two male blacks jump the turnstile?”
An excerpt from the recording, posted by Gawker, seems to show the captain interrogating Birch as to why he didn’t target black men. The supervisor makes him admit that “mostly male blacks and Hispanics” between 15 and 19 years of age commit most of the crime in the city — though that would be a warped point of view if the group is in fact being targeted more than others by law enforcement.
Via Gawker:
Commanding Officer: Who commits the crimes in the city?
Birch: Who commits the crimes? Well, it’s mostly teenagers, anywhere between the ages of 15 and 19, mostly male blacks and Hispanics.
OK. Who are you stopping?
Everybody. I stop everybody.
Fifty-four TABs up to 8/20. Twenty-five of those are female. Half.
Like I said, I stop everybody. I’m not targeting anybody.
You just told me who the bad guys are.
Yeah, I know that. But there’s also other people who are committing violations as well. I’m not saying that there’s not violations being made.
The male blacks, that you told me commit the crimes—
Plenty of people that I write summonses to are male blacks and male Hispanics.
You stopped two male blacks.
Not for the whole year. You’re telling me for the whole year I only stopped two male blacks on summonses?
8/20. From January 1st to August 20th. Fifty-four TABs: two male blacks, seven Hispanics, seven other, ten white, three Asian. So where are you targeting the perps that you just told me?
Like I said, if I don’t see a perp jumping over the turnstile, what am I supposed to do to him?
These people are not going to pop.
How do I know that? A female Hispanic that I stopped in Sheepshead Bay did pop, actually, for a warrant, and I arrested her. Female Hispanic. The Hispanics that we’re supposed to be going after. That are committing the crimes. The people that I—
Did you think that she was going to pop?
Did I think she was going to pop? I didn’t put no thought into it. If you come up for a collar, I’m taking you in.
Here’s what I see. You just described to me who’s committing the crimes. You’re fully aware of it. But you’re not targeting those people.
I am. I’m targeting everybody.
Two male blacks.
Whoever is out there. If I—
So you only saw two male blacks jump the turnstile?
If you’re saying that’s what’s in front of you, then yes, that’s all I saw, is two male blacks for the whole year jumping the turnstile. If you’re saying that’s what’s in front of you, I’m not disputing that. If that’s what I got there.
That is what you have. That is not disputed here.
I’m saying, we’re also talking Hispanics as well. I stopped a lot of Hispanics, too.
Seven male Hispanics. But more than half are female.
And like I said, everybody’s committing violations in front of me.
1500 cases from 1990-2016 (that we know of). And to clarify, this lists comprises of brown and black lives.. there’s so many names I could add to this, we are far from this post-racial utopian society people try to paint us as. In some areas in the UK, black people are 17x more likely to be stopped and searched. Black bodies mysteriously die in cells while the IPCC torments the families with biased investigations that they were never here to seek justice for them. Just this February Sarah Reed a black British woman died under mysterious circumstances in her cell. Tell me how a black woman who was sexually assaulted in the psychiatric hospital she was put in ended up in prison? She was also a victim of police brutality a couple of years ago. In 2012, police broke the neck of science student Julian Cole leaving him brain dead while the family still awaits his justice in 2016!
We need to know why our lives are seen as so disposable. We need to know why black people are over represented in the custodial system and why such racial prejudices exist in the criminal system in the first place. They purposely hide the history and achievements of black people in the UK so we remain ignorant and forget about our own movements in the 60s - our fights to bring in “no discrimination” laws. Our fights to be treated as equal. Many Brits don’t even know the origin of the biggest festival in Europe - Notting Hill carnival, which was political, created as a means to celebrate our heritage and culture in the face of adversity. Gangs of police have been terrorising us since the majority of our grand parents came during the windrush era in the 40s. Police brutality is nothing new. Ask your grand parents how they used to try to intimidate black folks minding their business, kidnap and beat them up only to drop them off somewhere far from home. How they’d ignore evidence pointing to members of white hate groups who would murder us, harass us and vandalise our property/businesses. This isn’t anything new. And history continues to repeat itself as the list of brown and black lives continue to be taken away/brutalised. The media may try to hide it but it’s happening.
Let’s not pretend that the UK hasn’t played a huge role in propagating the false belief that whiteness is superior. Let’s not pretend that they have not spread this through violence, pillaging countries, colonisation and slavery. Do not wipe away the history of this country and what they continue to do, to paint some utopic fantasy which you can use to compare to America. What can Britain teach America about valuing black lives? We aren’t above them at all.
The UK has a higher incarceration rate of blacks than America does
