Page 46 - 1Proactive Policing
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Pro-Active Policing
An analysis by the NYCLU revealed that innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police
stops and street interrogations more than 4 million times since 2002, and that black and Latino
communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. Nearly nine out of 10
stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the NYPD‘s own
reports.
New York police officer Adrian Schoolcraft made extensive recordings in 2008–2009 which
documented orders from NYPD officials to search and arrest black people in the Bedford-
Stuyvesant neighborhood. Schoolcraft, who brought accusations of misconduct to NYPD
investigators, was transferred to a desk job and then involuntarily committed to a psychiatric
hospital. In 2010, Schoolcraft sent his tapes to the Village Voice, which publicized them in a series
of reports. Schoolcraft alleges that the NYPD has retaliated against him for exposing information
about the stop and frisk policy. The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), Latino Justice
PRLDEF, and The Bronx Defenders filed a federal class action against this program.
Monopoly on Violence
The monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force, also known as the monopoly on
violence (German: Gewaltmonopol des Staates), is a core concept of modern public law, which
goes back to Jean Bodin's 1576 work Les Six livres de la République and Thomas Hobbes' 1651
book Leviathan. As the defining conception of the state, it was first described in sociology by Max
Weber in his essay Politics as a Vocation (1919). Weber claims that the state is the "only
human Gemeinschaft which lays claim to the monopoly on the legitimated use of physical force.
However, this monopoly is limited to a certain geographical area, and in fact this limitation to a
particular area is one of the things that define a state." In other words, Weber describes the state
as any organization that succeeds in holding the exclusive right to use, threaten, or authorize
physical force against residents of its territory. Such a monopoly, according to Weber, must occur
via a process of legitimation.
State monopoly on violence, in political science and sociology, the concept that the state alone
has the right to use or authorize the use of physical force. It is widely regarded as a defining
characteristic of the modern state.
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