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Tom, if you and everyone in the U.S. aren’t paying close attention to tonight’s mayoral race in New York City, you should be because so goes New York City, so goes the rest of the country.
The city is home, aware of it or not, to one of the most important races in the world.
Why? stop-and-frisk or stop-question-and-frisk. The question part gets eliminated most of the time and therein really lies the most critical part of the law, the question part.
Because if you question many people in New York City, even some black and Hispanic people, they will tell you that on the surface they don’t really have an issue with stop-question-and-frisk. Not the idea of it at least.
Not if the controversial policy was conducted like the occasional, random airport screening.
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If they could truly believe that the officers would stop someone and say, “Sir I’m sorry but I need to check your bag and your person but they know that that’s not the reality of things on the street.
They know that officers will most likely not be that polite, if you can call that polite. They know that in reality they will probably be ordered to put their hands up, spread their legs, or lay on the ground and be handcuffed while an officer or officers have their ways with them; touching them wherever they’d like or handling them however they’d like.
So for those of us who’d like to believe in theory that we’d rather be inconvenienced by being stopped by police than shot by gun wielding criminals on the street, we deeply know that while that is true, it is highly unlikely that the police, the people holding the authority, and our fates in their own hands will treat us as citizens who deserve the same respect as any other citizen who happens not to be of color in the United States.
And while we are not letting the people who commit the crimes worthy of stop-question-and-frisk off the hook for perpetuating the stereotype, we know that it is too easy for police and people in authority to become so drunk with power that they abuse it.
Stop-question-and-frisk is the biggest issue in the country right now other than jobs and Obamacare and the next New York City mayor may not know it: but so goes New York City, so goes the rest of the country.
If he alters the equation of the formula that has reduced crime in New York City to its lowest in decades. One of which is stop-question-and-frisk and the crime rate creeps back up, beyond local citizens moving away to the suburbs, people will stop visiting, stop spending their tourist dollars.
A big driver to the city’s economy, the city will suffer international consequences, cities and municipalities around the country will follow suit; looking at the big apple as an example of what to do or not to do.
So whatever the mayor here decides will be reflected in your city, reflected in your crime rate, and in your economy.
So the question is: would you rather be politically correct or safe and alive? That’s the real issue facing the citizens of New York and pretty soon, ultimately YOU.
