Police stop-and-frisks called 'unethical'

Seizing an opportunity to spotlight their message, 20 critics of police stop-and-frisks began telling a judge Wednesday that they shouldn't have been arrested during a demonstration last fall.

While arguing that they hadn't broken the law while protesting in front of a police station last fall, some said they willingly risked arrest to manifest their complaints about stop-and-frisks -- officers stopping, questioning and sometimes frisking people considered to be behaving suspiciously, but not necessarily sought in any particular crime. Police say the stops net illegal weapons and curb crime; critics call them a racially tinged injustice.

One of the demonstrators, an Episcopal minister, told the court that police had stopped members of his congregation for what he believed was no reason. Another said both her children had been stopped. A third recounted once being questioned as he left his apartment building, asked for identification and asked to open his own apartment door with his key to show he belonged there.

"(The stop-and-frisk policy) sweeps up too many people who are innocent to be considered ethical. It's unethical," said the third protester, Gregory Allen, 39, a former social worker.

He and the 19 others, including Princeton University professor and civil rights activist Cornel West, are on trial on disorderly conduct charges stemming from an Oct. 21 protest outside a Harlem station house.

Prosecutors say the group blocked the sidewalk and station house entrance, were warned they would be arrested if they didn't move, and deliberately ignored the police orders to make a political point.