22 go on trial for stop-and-frisk protest

Nearly two dozen demonstrators who criticized New York City police for stopping and frisking people on the streets are gearing up for one of the city's biggest political protest trials in recent years.

Twenty-two people who were arrested at an Oct. 21 protest outside a Harlem police station, including Princeton University professor and civil rights activist Cornel West, are scheduled to go on trial Monday.

"We are going to trial, and willing to go to jail, because we love the young people" who primarily are the subjects of the street stops, West said by phone Friday.

The African-American studies professor has called the trial "a platform to highlight stop-and-frisks."

Police say the stops are crucial for fighting crime. Critics say they reflect racial profiling and often are made without proper cause. Blacks and Hispanics make up about 87 percent of those stopped, but 53 percent of the city's overall population.

The group carried signs and chanted "stop and frisk has got to go!" among other messages.

Police said the demonstrators blocked the sidewalk and the entrance to the police precinct and ignored orders to leave. "Pedestrians had to walk onto the street to get around" the group, according to a criminal complaint.

Lawyers for the stop-and-frisk protesters say they plan a justification defense: arguing that if the protesters did anything illegal, it was to prevent something more harmful.

Police conducted a record 684,330 stops last year, 14 percent more than in 2010 -- and more than seven times the total a decade ago.

Twelve percent of last year's stops resulted in arrests or summonses. They also turned up more than 8,200 weapons, including 819 guns, police said.