Michael Fleshman / Foter.com / CC BY-SAThe trial in the
main case challenging the New York Police Department’s
stop-and-frisk practices, Floyd v. City of New York,

began this week, and yesterday whisteblowing cop Adhyl Polanco

testified about the quotas that encourage officers to stop
people without the “reasonable suspicion” the Supreme Court has
said the Fourth Amendment requires. Polanco, whose recordings of
police roll calls caused a splash when excerpts from them were
first aired by WABC-TV in 2010, said cops feel strong pressure from
superiors and union representatives to issue at least 20 summonses
and make at least one arrest a month. “I spoke to the C.O.
[commanding officer] for about an hour and a half,”
says a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association delegate in a
recording that Polanco made during a 2009 roll call in the Bronx.
“Twenty and one. Twenty and one is what the union is backing
up….They spoke to the [PBA] trustees. And that’s what they want.
They want 20 and one.” That requirement, Polanco
explained in court, was “non-negotiable,” meaning “you’re gonna
do it, or you’re gonna become a Pizza Hut delivery man.”

Polanco and other critics argue that such expectations drive
officers to make unconstitutional stops in the hope of finding
something that will justify a summons or an arrest. According to
the NYPD’s
numbers, that happens in one out of 10 stops—a track record
that suggests cops’ suspicions are not very reasonable. In this
context, it is easy to understand why officers might trick people
into revealing marijuana they are carrying, then
illegally bust them for having it “in public view,” a
misdemeanor that justifies an arrest, as opposed to mere
possession, which is only a citable offense. The pressure to make
arrests helps explain the huge
increase in minor pot busts New York has seen since the
mid-1990s. It also helps explain why so many people, overwhelmingly
black and Latino, get hassled by the cops with so little to show
for it—nine times out of 10, not even a bogus pot bust or a
trumped-up ticket for blocking traffic.

Radley Balko covered
Polanco’s revelations and similar
recordings by another officer, Adrian Schoolcraft, in 2010.