Latino Families of Those Killed by NYPD Lose Faith in District Attorneys
/In many ways, New York City has been the epicenter of the struggle over police racial profiling. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union “innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than 4 million times since 2002,” and the overwhelming targets have been people of color. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the New York Police Department’s own reports. But for some New Yorkers of color, encounters with the police have yielded deadly results.
In the late 1990s through the early part of the current millennium, there have been numerous instances of unarmed men of color being killed by NYPD officers. Names like Amadou Diallo and Anthony Baez made national and international headlines and brought thousands of people, including activists and politicians to the streets in protest of what some have called “summary executions.” Recent cases of young Latino men dead at the hands of the NYPD have not garnered such attention however, and many local activists and members of the press are wondering why.
Last month, a jury declined to indict police detective Hassan Hamdy on any charges in the fatal shooting of 22 year old unarmed, National Guardsman Noel Polanco. [MORE]
