You May Be Stopped If...
2000
14 minutes
In February 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23 year-old West African immigrant, was killed in a hail of 41 police bullets in the Bronx. The killing sparked outrage among many New Yorkers about the NYPD’s Street Crimes Unit and it’s stop and frisk practices. My students at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Harlem responded with a video to inform young people about their rights when stopped by the police. The Street Crimes Unit has been abolished but stop and frisk remains a standard procedure of the NYPD. In 2011, the police stopped New Yorkers 685,724 times. 87% were black or Latino. 88% were innocent. (New York Civil Liberties Union)