BLACKS, LATINOS - COPS HARASS US

Young Men Call Tactics Offensive & Degrading

Miguel Lora, 23, a clean-cut worker in a mental health clinic, says he
was stopped by a police officer one morning last summer on E. 152d St.
in the Bronx. He was told to put his coffee on a car hood, put his
hands up and spread his legs. The cop frisked him and found nothing
illegal, so Lora turned to go, but the cop's partner began patting him
down.

"I told him I was already searched, and he said, 'You're a tough guy'
and took my belt off, so my pants were slipping down," Lora recalled.
"I know it's a drug area, but I live here, I work, I'm a taxpayer, I
never committed a crime."

Asked if he's been frisked before, Lora smiled and replied, "I live in
the South Bronx."

For minority males across the city, the stop and frisk has become
routine, experienced by every class in every neighborhood. In street
interviews this week with 100 black and Hispanic males between the
ages of 14 and 35, a startling number of them -- 81 97 said they had
been stopped, patted down and questioned, without being arrested.

The interviews were conducted in neighborhoods throughout Manhattan,
the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. The respondents were asked to detail
their experiences with police and their attitudes toward cops. Many
offered candid accounts of incidents that left them feeling demeaned.

"You fit the description" is the common refrain heard by high school
and college students, working men and fathers, as the reason for the
intrusion.

In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gordon Ward called the experiences a
blistering rite of passage for young minority males. The 25-year-old
Medgar Evers College student estimated he has been stopped by cops 50
times. One night, he said, he was stopped three times.

"It just so happens I always fit the description of someone who shot
or robbed someone," said Ward, an athletic 6-feet-2, 216 pounds.
"Unfortunately, it has become so routine, I'm not even bothered by it
anymore. I know if I go home, I've won."

With his gold-capped teeth and a robust bull terrier by his side,
19-year-old Andy Rivera, who said he has never been arrested, would
likely catch a cop's eye.

In his housing project in the Fordham section of the Bronx, he is put
up against a fence and patted down with regularity, he said. "You live
in the ghetto, you adapt," Rivera shrugged.

At the heart of the fury over the Amadou Diallo shooting death are
questions over why street crime unit cops approached him -- why they
considered him suspicious -- in the first place.

Stop-and-frisk reports by that unit show it rousted more than 20,000
innocent, predominantly minority men last year. Uniformed cops also
are urged to use the stop-and-frisk tactic on patrol.

More than half of those interviewed by the Daily News said they
believe they were singled out because of their race or ethnicity; many
said it was because cops view everyone in a crime-ridden neighborhood
as a criminal.

Some were resentful, but most seemed resigned. Some believe frisking
is a necessary tool to curb crime, but many see it purely as harassment.

Consequently, these encounters shape their attitudes about the police;
more than half the people interviewed look to the NYPD not as
protectors, but as a controlling force.

"If you want to protect me, you don't need to ask me where I'm going
every night," said City College junior Clive Peters.

"They touch you and go through everything you have, and you can't say
anything unless you want to end up the way you don't want to be," said
Edward Charles, 18, a messenger who lives in the Bronx.

"It's part of their job to look out for people in the area, but the point
is how they come
across to you. When it first happened, I felt like I was raped, but now I'm
getting used to
it," said Charles.

Not so for Alimany Yatteh, 18, an immigrant from Sierra Leone who is still
traumatized by
his first brush with the police. He said he was 16, walking down St.
Nicholas Ave., when two cop cars cut him off and officers jumped out
and pushed him against a wall. "Four of them aimed their guns at my
head and ordered me to freeze," said Yatteh, who lives in Harlem.

Cops searched his pockets and took his identification, he said.
"Everyone in the neighborhood was looking at me like I was a drug
dealer. . . . The cops said they didn't mean to do it to me, but I
looked like the person."

"I lost friends because their mothers thought I was a bad kid," said
Yatteh.

Jesse Meyers, 34, a construction worker from the Bronx, said he has
been stopped often. "Nine times out of 10 it's because I'm black," he
said.

On Saturday, he said, shots were fired in the project where he was
visiting his mother. "They said, 'You fit the description,' grabbed
me, threw me against the wall," he said.

"After they do it, they always say, 'Don't hang around here.' Like I
can't sit on my stoop with my son? They think anyone black out at
night is selling [drugs]."

Lawyers for the street crime unit cops who shot Diallo said the
officers approached the 24-year-old African immigrant -- who was
standing outside his Bronx building after midnight -- because he was
acting suspiciously.

Malik McFarlane, 21, a wiry sophomore at York College in Queens, said
he and his cousin came under suspicion in October, apparently because
they were on the street after dark.

"We just left the gym after playing basketball when the cops pulled
over," he said. "They asked us where we were going and patted us down,
searched our gym bags, tossed our items on the floor."

After an hour, they were released.

"They [cops] got back in their car and told us we shouldn't be out so
late," said McFarlane.

Two weeks ago, Jeykings Hernandez, 17, said he was removed from a
livery cab on Fordham Road while coming home from work at midnight.
"They searched me, searched the cab," he said. "I guess they get
suspicious when they look at a young guy taking a cab at midnight. I
didn't feel bad. It makes me feel safe, they're looking out for me."

But it rankles Arthur Williams, 27, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a
city worker who believes that "because I'm young and black, I'm a target."

He recalled how one morning he rushed out of his stepfather's house,
then quickly dashed back to retrieve an item, as a police car came
down the block. When he emerged, a cop stood with his gun drawn,
asking him if he lived there. Shocked and confused, Williams said yes
and showed his driver's license, which had his old address.

"The cop asked me if I thought he was stupid, why was I lying to him,"
recalled Williams. "He then started to open our garbage cans and
asking where were the drugs. This was a disgrace."

It stings Fordham University freshman Jose, who would not give his
last name. He said he is regularly stopped on his way to school from
Washington Heights. "They say, 'Someone jumped a turnstile, and he
looked like you, get up against the wall,' " said the slight
18-year-old. "I can't say it's racially motivated, but it sure looks
like it."

Racial motivation was viciously blatant to Victor Centeno.

Victor, 16, of East New York, Brooklyn, said he was riding his bicycle
to a White Castle one day last summer when four undercover cops leaped
out of their car and pushed him against the wall. The cops didn't
display their badges, pulled their weapons and yelled "police."

Victor, a junior at South Shore High School who has never been
arrested, said one of the cops called him a "black monkey" before they
drove off.

Of the 100 males interviewed, 81 said they have been stopped and
frisked by a police officer; 19 said they have not.

Sixty-six said they feel cops view them with suspicion because of
their ethnic or racial background, 22 said it is not a factor and 12
said it may be.

Only seven said they view the police as protectors of the community,
while 53 said cops are a controlling force and 40 see them as both.

The number of stop and frisks increased dramatically in 1994, when
street crime cops were given the mandate to get guns off the street,
at a time when parts of the city seemed like war zones. Seizures of
guns increased and then decreased because, cops said, people stopped
carrying them because they knew they'd be arrested.

Police Commissioner Howard Safir tripled street crime unit staffing in
1997, and the number of stop and frisks by that unit alone was 27,061
last year, yielding 4,647 arrests.

"I feel tremendous empathy" toward the innocent people who were
searched, Safir said in an interview last week.

He said he sends police where crime is, and if police are in a
minority area, minority members will be stopped.

"It's not racial profiling, it's dealing with the population of a
community in which there is crime," Safir said. "We're not doing it
because they're African-Americans or Latinos, but because we have
reasonable suspicion they may be somebody we're looking for."

But legal predicates are little comfort to men and boys who feel as if
they live in a police state.

Dereck Henry, a stocky 15-year-old from Washington Heights, offered
one of the ways he deals with it.

"I walk straight down the street with my head held high. . . . I show
them that I am somebody and not what they think I am," he said.

Daily News Survey of 100 Young Black and Latino Males

Have you ever been stopped and frisked by a police
officer?

Yes 81%
No 19%

Do you feel cops view you with suspicion because of your ethnic or
racial background?

Yes 66%
No 22%
Maybe 12%

Do you see the police as protectors of the community or as a
controlling force?

Controllers 53%
Protectors 7%
Both 40%