Paterson Puts An End To Stop And Frisk

David Paterson, for all his faults, has done good things in his time as Governor of New York. Yesterday included one of those, when he signed legislation ending the stop and frisk police procedure that police use in our state. The controversial tactic of stopping and searching frisking people without little cause (or a warrant) has been overwhelmingly used against minorities in our city. Police claim that it's helped them solve cases, but Paterson saw through their anecdotal evidence.

From The NY Times:

Mr. Paterson said in an interview, the examples Mr. Kelly provided only further convinced him that signing this bill would not lead to a rise in murders and other violent crimes, as some, including Kelly had warned. “I saw this as a two-pronged test,” he said. “One, was it violative of privacy rights, which I thought it was. Two, was the effectiveness of stopping very serious crime, or perhaps acts of terrorism, dependent on this information? And my conclusion was overwhelmingly that it was not.”

The documents submitted by Mr. Kelly represented the first time the police had put specific cases behind its argument for being allowed to keep information on all of those stopped.

A look at these 170 cases shows instances where the stop-and-frisk data clearly did assist investigators in tracking down perpetrators. In many cases, the data provided shortcuts that speeded investigations along, such as providing hangouts of a known suspect or the names and addresses of potential witnesses known to frequent a location where a crime occurred.

But in many of the cases, it was hard to determine how helpful the data was in solving crimes, because the information provided to the governor was, in his words, “at best inconclusive.”

The only conclusive data found here is that police by and large stop people who live in poor areas that creates a feeling of fear and submission to law enforcement that hardly protects and serves. Governor Paterson made the right decision yesterday in ending this police-state procedure, and I for one applaud him.

Justice Dept Finally Cares About Civil Rights Laws...For Whites

With a week to go in the Bush Administration, the Justice Department has finally decided to act on defending civil rights. Ironically though, it isn't to help combat the racial prejudice against minorities but to sue the city of Gary, Indiana for not hiring white EMTs. Perhaps this is one last hurrah and tip of the cap to the social conservatives still out there that would love to go back to the pre-civil rights reform era.

From RawStory:

The suit alleges that the city told applicants that offers of employment would be based on the order they were ranked. But the city seems to have ignored their own ordering and instead hired several African American applicants who placed lower than the white applicants.

Each of the six who were hired ranked lower than the highest-ranking white applicant, the Justice Department wrote.

OMG! This must be a case of affirmative action to the nth degree and a concerned citizen brigade's worst nightmare come true. It is but one example of the systematic persecution of whites in this country and it must be stopped here in Gary. Oh wait a sec, what, you want to know what Gary officials are saying?

Gary's corporate counsel, Hamilton Carmouche, told a local paper the list was prepared by the city's previous mayor, and gave preference to applicants who lived in Gary.

"We hire not on the basis of any race, but on the basis of residency," Carmouche said.

Shocking! Gary wants to hire people from within the community. Terrible isn't it?

Seriously though, for the last eight years the Justice Department has all but forgotten about standing up for civil rights in this country. Unless it was to protect a corporation in need or help a loyal Republican operative, the DoJ has been MIA. Spare us this phony discrimation crap and slowly exit the building before the grownups from the Obama camp arrive.

Discrimination Alleged At DoJ Civil Rights Dept.

In a perfect world (or even less than perfect) the civil rights division of the Department of Justice is supposed to fight racial strife where it shows its ugly head wherever and whenever within our country. Unfortunately under the Bush Administration, the trouble of race and discrimination is under it's very own roof.

From The Tri-State Defender:

Joi Hyatte, who works in the voting rights section, states in the lawsuit that her boss subjected her and other African American employees to “numerous forms of discrimination and harassment.”

The suit, filed May 29 in U.S. District Court in Washington, alleges that supervisors used special hiring programs to circumvent regular procedures and avoid giving African Americans on staff an opportunity to apply for analyst jobs.

Hyatte, a 13-year veteran of the department who received outstanding evaluations, says in the suit that she was “repeatedly denied the opportunity to apply and compete” for promotions because she is African American.

A few weeks after her suit was filed, the Justice Department’s inspector general issued its own report stating that applicant screeners for the department had illegally used political or ideological factors in a recruitment program, preferring law school graduates with conservative credentials to those with more liberal political ties.

Race may very well be a part of this but it seems to me that the corrupt and crony ways of the Administration trump everything that the Executive Branch stands for these days. Making sure the "right people" get well-paid means more than upholding the law when it comes to minority treatment, respecting the Hatch Act and anything else that may be written in the legal code to protect the government from itself. Ms. Hyatte deserves everything she wants and then some....as the rest of us deserve a Justice Department that serves the country and not the cronies within it.

An Inspiring Civil Rights Story Happened Yesterday

When you think of the trials and tribulations of the civil rights era, we generally say this or that happened in the 60s and 70s. Well the fight for equality hasn't been won yet and that means there are plenty of incredible stories that have happened within the last thirty years with more to come in the future. Just yesterday the students at Prairie View A&M got tired of the way their county seat did business down in Texas so they decided to make a statement.

From The Houston Chronicle:

PRAIRIE VIEW — More than 1,000 Prairie View A&M students turned out on Tuesday to march in support of their voting rights.

The marchers said Prairie View student voting rights have been suppressed for decades in Waller County.

The protesters carried "Register to Vote" signs and wore black shirts with the slogan, "It is 2008 and we will vote.

"I was angry after registering to vote in the 2006 election only to be turned away at the voting booth," said sophomore Dee Dee Williams.

The march began at 9 a.m. as the protesters left the campus on the seven-mile journey to the Waller County Courthouse in Hempstead.

Students, local leaders, civil rights activists and elected officials took part in the march. Police estimated the total crowd at about 2,000 people.

"These are wonderful kids. They are making a statement, until they spoke up there was only one early voting place in the entire county. They spoke up but everyone is benefiting from what they are doing,'' said Prairie View Mayor Frank Johnson.

Last week, under pressure from the federal government, Waller County officials added three temporary polling places for early voting, ditching plans to open only one voting site in advance of the March 4 primary.

The Justice Department questioned the county's January decision to cut early-voting sites from a half dozen throughout the county to just one in Hempstead. The county's about-face came on the same day that critics announced a mass march to the polls next week.

Of course this wasn't going to have the violence to resemble some of the skirmishes that were prominent back in the day. Though the reasons for the march remain the same. Similar attitudes from the county leaders still reek up the air in this part of Texas. Disenfranchising these students stem from the same motives that the racists and bigots had thirty or forty years ago. It really is all about power for them but fortunately for us, power travels on a two-way street and a huge march through this rural area makes a big difference.

Spitzer Puts Gay Marriage On The Table For NY

You would have never seen this under Pataki, but it is long overdue for New York to legalize marriage between two people that just happen to be of the same gender. Massachusetts started the ball rolling and now we are picking up the torch of equality for all, regardless of sexual orientation. I'm sure the conservative anti-gay groups will come out in force against the bill but in these times they will be far out-weighed by civil rights organizations and plain old common sense. Unfortunately, the legislature is still not a friendly place for the bill.

From The New York Times:

Legislation to allow same-sex marriage has never made it to a floor vote in either the Assembly, which has a Democratic majority, or the Republican-controlled State Senate. Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, has declined to take a stand on the issue. Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, has supported legislation to outlaw hate crimes and workplace discrimination against gays, but he remains opposed to same-sex marriage.

Even among lawmakers who say they favor the legislation, there is some division over the best strategy to get it passed. Two legislators from Manhattan, State Senator Thomas K. Duane and Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, both Democrats, have tried for several years to shepherd a gay-marriage bill through the Legislature and are trying again this year. That bill has at least 14 sponsors in the Senate and 42 in the Assembly.

If Mr. Spitzer does propose a bill, it is unclear how much muscle he will be willing — or able — to put behind it. The priorities he has outlined — such as overhauling the state’s campaign finance laws and introducing a constitutional amendment to require nonpartisan legislative redistricting — already pose a considerable challenge. That would leave Mr. Spitzer with little political bandwidth that would allow him to build support for another controversial bill.

Spitzer may be biting off more than he can chew with all the other controversial legislation on the table. Yet it is good to see he is following his principles when it comes to this hot button issue. Even if the bill does not make it into law this session, it puts the question in the minds of New Yorkers that we need to make marriage and its benefits available to anyone that wants to live together for eternity or something like that.

For the state to deny people their rights based on the fear of some heterosexuals is simply ridiculous. We have gotten rid of other hateful policies that have affected people's rights in the past, this one is for the here and now.