The Defenders Online | A Civil Rights Blog » public housing

Class Action Against New York City Over NYPD Checkpoints Allowed To Continue

The Editors — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:19:22 +0000

Adam Klasfeld of Courthouse News Service
Public housing residents can proceed with a class action lawsuit claiming that New York City and the New York City Housing Authority allowed the police to set up "checkpoints" that routinely violated tenants' rights in front of their homes, a federal judge ruled.

The Economic Crisis: Collateral Damage

The Editors — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:17:39 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
Given the stand-still overall unemployment rate of 9.6 percent – unchanged for the fourth consecutive month – some might think there’s nothing new to report about the country’s economic crisis.

They are wrong; for with each passing month the threads of the looming social catastrophe grow simultaneously clearer, denser and more knotted

New York City Sued Over Discriminatory Policing Policy in Public Housing

The Editors — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:18:00 +0000

By The Editors The lawsuit claims that the city’s policing practices in its public housing developments – most notably, its “vertical sweeps” of buildings -- “routinely” subject residents and those who visit them to illegal stops and false arrests that serve no lawful purpose.

Battling Racial Profiling, Police Harassment and ‘Quality of Life’ Arrests

The Editors — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:19:41 +0000

Despite repeated efforts at reform, police departments continue to target communities of color and subject them to dramatically higher rates of stops, search, and arrest. Recent studies show that after three decades of increasing incarceration rates, more than one in every 100 adults in the nation is now behind bars. The numbers for African Americans [...]