Berkeley Stop and Frisk

STOP AND FRISK, TELEGRAPH AVE., USA

By Ted Friedman/Berkeley Reporter. Dec. 16, 2013

Say it ain't so.

Stop and frisk in Berkeley, where cops not only know your civil rights, but often observe them?

Definition: [after a stop] when a search for weapons is authorized by a "reasonable suspicion" of crime.

As the controversy over stop and frisk grips New York City, the controversy seems distant

 Yet here on Berkeley's South Side, especially upper Telegraph Avenue, stop and frisk abounds. Many subjected to such searches are blacks.

Frisks must be supported by the "reasonable suspicion" of a crime. 

Reasonable suspicion" ranges from looking like an Oakland banger, to a police car computer check for an outstanding warrant, or a possible parole violation. Not all of these stops and frisks lead to arrest or citation.

You would expect berkeley's NAACP to react. 

And react they did in a July "town hall' meeting, along with other Berkeley civil rights groups. Citing "numerous complaints" of "racial profiling," Berkeley's NAACP accused Berkeley police of "over policing" the South Side out of racial "prejudice."

Such charges had more clout  when Berkeley's blacks were thirty percent of Berkeley.

Their representation has shrunk to under ten percent.

Berkeley's NAACP, in August, recommended abolishing Berkeley's police drug task force and "end the use of the “Stop and Frisk” approach, especially in South Berkeley.

NAACP's charges cannot be proved.

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