Silent march held to protest against Stop and Frisk program
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By MYFOX NEW YORK STAFF
Civil rights leaders joined Reverend Al Sharpton for a march protesting the city's "Stop and Frisk" program that has led to hundreds of people being stopped and searched by police.
The silent Father's Day march had members from about 300 groups walk down Fifth Avenue on Sunday afternoon from Harlem to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's town house on the Upper East Side.
The program has come under fire as critics are saying the police practice of stopping, questioning and searching people who are considered suspicious is illegal and degrading to thousands of blacks and Hispanics.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly defend the policy, saying the program keeps guns off the streets and helps stop crime before it happens.
Bloomberg spoke at a Christian cultural center in Brooklyn and said he is working with NYPD to ensure that people are treated respectfully when they are stopped.
"I cannot in good conscience walk away from work that I know will save the lives of so many of our brothers and sisters, and I will not," Bloomberg said.
Now, I understand why some people want us to stop making stops. Innocent people who are stopped can be treated disrespectfully. That is not acceptable. If you've done nothing wrong, you deserve nothing but respect and courtesy from the police. Police Commissioner Kelly and I both believe we can do a better job in this area - and he's instituted a number of reforms to do that."
The practice of silent marches dates to 1917, when the NAACP led a protest through New York against lynchings and segregation in the U.S.
According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, in 2010, the NYPD stopped more than 685,000 people, mostly black and Hispanic young men -- up from about 97,000 a decade earlier.
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