et Crime Unit, a mainly white group of plainclothes cops who leap from their vehicles and frisk people they believe to be carrying weapons. Amnesty International, former NYC Mayor David Dinkins, black activist Reverend Al Sharpton, minorities, and many others believe the police are out of control and direct the majority of their abuse at minorities. On the one hand, the Street Crime Unit polices minority neighborhoods which have the highest crime rates. It does not take a genius to figure out that the majority of the arrests (and thus possible charges of abuse) are going to involve minorities. Thousands of new police officers have been added to the streets of New York. Statistics show that because of this, the number of actual complaints have gone down per officer (Blakeman 3).
However, New York’s black leaders argue that since police began using the new and aggressive strategies put into place by Mayor Giuliani, the number of complaints of abuse and brutality have risen significantly. They also claim that blacks and other minorities are directly targeted by police and that crime statistics demonstrate blacks are targeted unfairly. As Mary Francis Barry, the Chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission states “While whites use drugs just as much, blacks are 20 times more likely to go to prison for drugs. If you target a community and that’s where you look for it, that’s where you’re going to arrest. The war on drugs has become a war on black people” (Blakeman 2).
Police and others counter these kinds of charges, arguing that the neighborhoods where they concentrate their most significant efforts are high crime neighborhoods where minorities live and often are in possession of weapons. There appears to be some truth to these arguments. An independent study conducted in New York City found that “police in 45 other major cities fire their weapons in fatal shootings more often than New York Police do” (Blak...