Going Outside While Black Or Latino And Living In NYC
It is so important that we have and use our right to record the police. In some jurisdictions, there have been prosecutions for this under "wiretapping" laws. From New York City, here's a recording of a stop-and-frisk that shows shocking abuse by the police:

Via Lisa Simeone, Ross Tuttle and Erin Schneider write at The Nation:

Exclusive audio obtained by The Nation of a stop-and-frisk carried out by the New York Police Department freshly reveals the discriminatory and unprofessional way in which this controversial policy is being implemented on the city's streets.

On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin, and two of the officers questioned and frisked him while the third remained in their unmarked car. Alvin secretly captured the interaction on his cell phone, and the resulting audio is one of the only known recordings of stop-and-frisk in action.

In the course of the two-minute recording, the officers give no legally valid reason for the stop, use racially charged language, and threaten Alvin with violence. Early in the stop, one of the officers asks, "You want me to smack you?" When Alvin asks why he is being threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, "For being a fucking mutt." Later in the stop, while holding Alvin's arm behind his back, the first officer says, "Dude, I'm gonna break your fuckin' arm, then I'm gonna punch you in the fuckin' face."

"He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down. So I'm going backwards like down the hill and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, it looked like he we was going to hit me," Alvin recounts. "I felt like they was trying to make me resist or fight back."

Alvin's treatment at the hands of the officers may be disturbing but it is not uncommon. According to their own stop-and-frisk data, the NYPD stops more than 1,800 New Yorkers a day. A New York Times analysis recently determined that more than 20 percent of those stops involve the use of force. And these are only the numbers that the Department records. Anecdotal evidence suggests both figures are much higher.

Law prof Jonathan Turley blogs:

There is no indication by the NYPD of any punishment for the officers, though it generally takes public pressure to force departments to act on such YouTube videos. It is yet another example of how important these videos have become to deterring police abuse despite the efforts by prosecutors like Anita Alvarez in Chicago to arrest citizens recording officers.

For a prior column, click here. As discussed in prior columns and blogs, police across the country have been arresting citizens who film them -- a clear abuse of their rights and an effort to prevent citizens from creating incriminating videotapes increasingly used against police.

This trend has continued (here) despite court rulings in favor of citizens.

Politicians have done little to reaffirm the rights of citizens in these cases and officers are rarely subject to discipline for such arrests.