City & State NY – Groups Target Koo and Rivera On Community Safety Act

June 21, 2013

In advance of an expected City Council vote on the proposed Community Safety Act next week, constituents and community groups will be holding actions in the districts of Council Members Peter Koo and Joel Rivera, calling on them to support the bills to ban racial profiling and establish an Inspector General for the New York Police Department.

These groups–which will include the Bronx Defenders, VOCAL-NY and Picture the Homeless in Rivera’s district, and Asian community groups like CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities and MinKwon Center for Community Action–will be joined by civil rights groups like the NAACP and the ACLU as they canvass the neighborhoods outside the councilmembers’ district offices to provide residents with their respective elected official’s phone numbers to contact them about the vote.

“Councilmembers should protect the people they represent from being discriminatorily stopped, an unfortunately common occurrence during the Bloomberg administration under the existing toothless racial profiling law,” said Joo-Hyun Kang of Communities United for Police Reform. “The people of their districts will be conveying why it’s a priority to ban the police from profiling someone simply because they are Black, Latino or Asian, and we hope the councilmembers will stand up for them.”

Written by Nick Powell