Exposing "Stop and Frisk" (This American Life)

ThisAmericanLife.org, "414: Right To Remain Silent" (WBEZ, 9-10-10); Wisdom Quarterly

Is That a Tape Recorder in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Unhappy to See Me?

"It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Our show today -- Right to Remain Silent... Adrian Schoolcraft is a New York City policeman who decided to secretly record himself and his fellow officers on the job -- all day, every workday, he says for 17 months. 

 

Including lots of days when he was ordered to do all kinds of things cops are NOT supposed to do. It's led to a small scandal, several people removed from their jobs, and four investigations of the New York Police Department. Though Adrian insists he didn't get into this looking for trouble.

 

(stopandfrisk.org)

Graham Rayman: His father is a police officer, and, I would say, he went along with the program for a few years.

 

Ira Glass: This is the reporter who broke the story in The Village Voice about Adrian and what he recorded those 17 months, a reporter named Graham Rayman. When I asked Graham what Adrian, the person at the center of this scandal, is like, the first thing out of his mouth is --

 

Graham Rayman: I would describe him as an extremely earnest person, almost -- in this cynical age -- almost to the point of almost too earnest. He actually believed that he could get the police commissioner to change certain things about how the police department was being run.

 

Challenging authority in a police state (AP)

Ira Glass: Adrian Schoolcraft was working in Brooklyn -- Precinct 81, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a rough neighborhood, mostly Black, that was slowly gentrifying. The precinct is just seven blocks wide and 20 blocks long, roughly, and had 13 murders last year, which is a third of what it used to be. Adrian's kind of an electronics buff, and he bought himself one of those tiny digital recorders, tucked it in his breast pocket, and started recording -- as he walked his beat, when he talked to other cops... More

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