NYPD officers refuse illegal racial profiling order with help of union
October 12, 2006News & Politics
Lizardbreath of Unfogged says: "[This story] illustrates one of the less considered benefits of having a strong union: that when your supervisor tells you to do something that's just wrong, you can tell them to go pound sand without worrying about repurcussions. [...] Good for the cops who wouldn't go along with it, and good for the union that protects them."
[Unfogged]
The Gothamist reports racial profiling on the F-train. After a spate of robberies at the 7th Avenue subway station in Brooklyn, police officers were ordered to stop all black men (or all black male teens, reports conflict).
The New York Daily News interviewed five of the fifteen officers who got the order, and they all reported a crystal clear directive to frisk all black men at the 7th Avenue stop.
To their credit, the beat cops were shocked at the patently illegal order. Luckily they have a strong union behind them:
This, of course, has set off a frenzy from different unions and organizations. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Assication's Patrick Lynch said, "Ordering police officers to stop every black male teenager is against the department's racial-profiling prohibition and creates more trouble for the officers than it will solve," while 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care head Eric Adams said, "We're going to go to the Seventh Avenue station and do observations," given the NYPD's past abuse using 250 forms. [Gothamist]The officer who gave the order, Capt. Michael Vanchieri, is now insisting that there must have been some mistake. Yeah, right.
Lizardbreath of Unfogged says: "[This story] illustrates one of the less considered benefits of having a strong union: that when your supervisor tells you to do something that's just wrong, you can tell them to go pound sand without worrying about repurcussions. [...] Good for the cops who wouldn't go along with it, and good for the union that protects them."
[Unfogged]
