By Johanna Steinberg

Thousands of law-abiding New Yorkers are unfairly and unlawfully subjected to stops-and-frisks because New York City Police Department officers routinely make unfounded assumptions of criminality based on race or ethnicity. Thus, the description of colorblind policing recently articulated by Heather MacDonald is nothing more than a commendable aspiration which bears virtually no relationship to the reality of NYPD behavior in many New York City neighborhoods.

Because racial bias continues to plague every level of our criminal justice system — including decision-making by both NYPD policymakers and officers on the street — Ms. MacDonald’s argument does a disservice to victims of crime in New York City, especially African Americans who are disproportionately victimized by crime. The NYPD’s racially-biased behavior perpetuates ineffective policing methods and requires victims of color to make an unfair choice between their constitutional rights and a police presence.

The facts speak for themselves.

The stop-and-frisk data recently released by the NYPD confirmed an ongoing and disheartening truth already known by far too many New Yorkers: the NYPD targets, stops, and frisks soaring numbers of innocent men and women based solely on their race or ethnicity. In 2009, African Americans and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by the police and, once stopped, were more likely to be frisked than whites. These disparities are particularly disturbing given that, once stopped, whites were just as likely to be engaged in criminal activity and more likely to have a weapon.

Ms. MacDonald’s argument that the stop-and-frisk data does not support claims of racial bias by the NYPD because the NYPD simply focuses police resources where demand is highest is also belied by the facts. Because victims of crime identify the perpetrator’s race in only a small proportion of cases and because African Americans are identified as suspects in approximately 20% of violent crimes overall, racial disparities in violent crime complaints simply cannot justify the disproportionate rate at which the NYPD stops African Americans and Latinos.

Furthermore, research reveals that even notwithstanding differences in crime rates, police in New York City continue to stop and frisk African Americans and Latinos based on their race and ethnicity and that the proportion of stops that yield criminal activity are lowest in the minority neighborhoods where police activity is concentrated.

A lawsuit filed in January by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, The Legal Aid Society and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison, LLP, also exposes the flaws in Ms. MacDonald’s analysis. The plaintiffs are New York City Public Housing Authority residents and their family members, friends and associates, who are routinely subjected to stops and arrests for trespassing on property in which they live or are legitimately visiting.

Preliminary analysis of the rate at which the NYPD makes stops and arrests for trespass reveals many of the same racial biases found in the stop-and-frisk data: even after controlling for variations in neighborhood crime rates, African Americans are more likely than whites to be stopped and arrested for trespass; even within the predominantly minority NYCHA residences, where the crime rate is constant, African Americans are stopped and arrested for trespass more often than whites. NYCHA residents and their guests are subjected to abuse by the NYPD at such an extraordinary rate that some are now more afraid of the police than the drug dealers.

No New Yorker should have to live in a neighborhood that is plagued by crime. The police play an integral role in ensuring the safety and protection of our communities and must seek to implement strategies that effectively target crime and protect all New Yorkers. It cannot, however, do so at the expense of the United States Constitution.

This nation’s security and the safety of individual communities are linked inexorably to the strength of our democracy, the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution and the unbiased exercise of power by those tasked with a duty to serve and protect us. As a nation founded upon principles of liberty, equality, and freedom, Ms. MacDonald’s contention that racial disparities are “inevitable” is simply false and unacceptable.

Johanna Steinberg is an Assistant Counsel in the Criminal Justice Practice Group of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund