Cops stopped and questioned nearly one-third of Brownsville’s residents last year – the highest out of the city’s 76 police precincts.
Six miles away in Borough Park only 2 % of the neighborhood’s population was quizzed by cops in 2011 – the lowest number in the New York Civil Liberties Union citywide ranking analyzing “stop-and-frisk” NYPD data.
“There is a set of rules for people of color; and a set of rules for whites,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. “Policing in New York is a tale of two cities.”
Lieberman said Brooklyn’s divide shows what’s wrong with the controversial policing practice now at the center of a heated debate on whether racism fuels its widespread use.
“No matter how you slice it, counting the number of stops, or the stops per capita, blacks and Latinos were targets,” Lieberman said.
In Brownsville, where 25,167 people were stopped by cops, older men complained of being harassed in the neighborhood, which is 96% black and Latino.
“I was smoking outside my building. This cop said I couldn’t be there. He thought I didn’t know the law,” said Benjamin Cruz, 50, living in the housing project with his two young grandsons. “They are really getting out of hand out here.”
Neighborhood police sources said race isn’t enough to warrant a stop. Rather, officers focus on suspects’ descriptions and more obvious signs of criminal activity like young men sporting beads and handkerchiefs.
“You have to watch out for the colors that they wear,” said a Brownsville beat cop noting that the area’s high concentration of public housing is a breeding ground for gang crime.
Still, the NYCLU found more racial disparity tied to the borough.
Officers in East New York – a largely black neighborhood – stopped the most people citywide counting 31,100 run-ins; while Greenpoint – a largely white neighborhood – was at the bottom of the list with 2,023 citywide.
“It is based on race, and it is ineffective,” said Councilman Jumaane Williams (D-East Flatbush. “It is either accidental, incidental, or purposeful racism.
“It boggles my mind how they can continue this policy.”
But the Police Dept, is not backing off the practice.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said cop stops were up 10 % in the first four months of 2012 and that murders are down compared to the same period in 2011 when a record high of nearly 686,000 cop stops were logged.
A Greenpoint police source said local officers don’t stop a lot of people because guns and drugs aren’t a major problem in the quiet leafy community home to mainly older Polish families and new hipster transplants.
“If you have less crime, few people are targeted,” the source said.
simonew@nydailynews.com
