Stop and Frisk Jamel Mims: Protest As Crime

Jamel Mims, a New York City teacher, will stand trial for protesting the Stop and Frisk practices of the New York City Police department, a practice which New York City's billionaire mayor, supports. 

One always wants to pause, when something as obviously wrong as stopping a black youth and throwing him up against a wall and emptying his pockets or running your hands over his body above and below his belt is purveyed as a public safety practice, especially when over half a million such police actions have been aimed at Black and Latino men, and fewer than 120,000 have been conducted on Asian and white men.

Given the fear white police have of Black and Latino men, this sounds like a program of intimidation, clear and simple. But you want to ask what the argument is, on the other side, on the side of the mayor and the police.

You can argue tactics like this keep the streets safe. You can say, if you look at the statistics, over 80% of the time, nothing is found, no more action is taken, and the Black man thus examined is allowed to continue on his way. This is said, as if nothing has happened.

But something has happened. A Black man has just been told he is guilty of Walking While Black. 

The question is, even if we could demonstrate, with really reliable statistics (which we cannot) that this tactic is effective, would its efficacy justify the harm it does?

The answer is:  If it is so important, then why are white men not stopped and frisked on the streets of the Upper East Side? And you might ask: How long would Mayor Bloomberg defend it if it were done in Tribeca, Wall Street, or SoHo?

Now, Mayor Bloomberg might reply: We don't use this tactic against white men on East 69th Street because we don't have statistics to say those white men are likely to be carrying weapons--we have crime statistics for Queens, Bedford Stuyvestant to say that's where the crime happens and Black men are who do it.  But the statistics would also say 98% of Black men in these areas are law abiding and non violent. How can you justify violating 98% to get at the 2%?

When elements within the New York City Police complain they are being tracked by police supervisors as to how many stop and frisks they have done, when these numbers are used to judge performance of police officers, you, once again, have a perversion of the use of statistics by the mayor and his lieutenants in the police department. 

When the leaders of protests against this practice are jailed, charged with escalating levels of charges, the District Attorney of Queens and the Mayor of New York City begin to look like those southern police and the Governor of Alabama, who Martin Luther King described as having "hate dripping from his lips."

The Phantom considers himself an honorary New Yorker, having lived in the city for 8 years and having had his most formative years there.  The Phantom loves this pulsating, vibrant city and rejoices that NYC has become safer than Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Oakland, Los Angeles and Boston, Chicago and Miami.

Now, you may say, that is because all of those cities have failed to address the violence in their own Black and Latino communities. And you may point to statistics as the best way to document trends in crime.

But the Phantom has doubts, and those doubts arise by viewing the actions of the white guys in power, by looking at the attempt to intimidate by arresting a Jamel Mims and threatening him with a year or more in prison. This is the way the Governors of Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia and Arkansas responded. They said they had no complaints from their Blacks, until uppity agitators from the North came down. There was a time when Southern sheriffs arrested and disappeared freedom riders and protesting Blacks with impunity. And now it looks like the same thing  is happening in New York City, right now.  Jamel Mims is called "and agitator" by police officials. 

Yes, he would likely agree he is an agitator, just as Nelson Mandella was an agitator, just as Martin Luther King was an agitator. He is agitating to right a wrong.

And that wrong begins with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a man who strikes a very different pose than Governor George Wallace, but a man who is doing, in this one area, pretty much the same thing.

The Phantom knew Jamel Mims, when he was a 10th grader at the Sidwell Friends School, in Washington, DC, the same school  President Obama's kids attend. This is a very high class private school, in the swankiest part of Washington, DC, but Jamel Mims did not come from that part of Washington, DC. He came from across the river in Anacostia. Driving him home one late night, after a wrestling tournament, The Phantom found himself driving a van load of white wrestlers from some of the most prominent and wealthy families in the nation's capital, through a part of town which made the blood of most white people run cold. Jamel asked to be let off near a Metro stop but the Phantom, fearing for Jamel's safety said, "No, I can take you all the way home, just tell me where to go."  Jamel shook his head, "No, this is fine." 

Jamel did not want to endanger that van load of white kids. He pointed the safe road out of that dangerous area, and disappeared into the darkness.

Now, ten years later, Jamel is still walking into the darkness, trying to keep other people safe.