For young African-Americans in New York City, “police stops are part of growing up,” Dionne Grayman, founder of a group called Mothers Empowered, writes on Women’s eNews. Recounting stories about her son, Grayman says, “One day, he was stopped by the police on his way home. Asked to present identification, asked where he was headed. That was the first time. The second time, he was asked for identification and frisked. Then the third time, the fourth, and the fifth. And he was patted down, had his backpack gone through, returned to him, sometimes gently, most times not.”
Grayman says her brother-in-law is a New York City homicide detective. The officer gave her son a courtesy card issued to officers to give to their relatives in the event they have an interaction with a fellow cop. “My son has had the card thrown into his face and onto the ground,” Grayman says. She calls her son a “typical All-American boy,” yet “the saddest part of all of this is he’d begun to become ‘immune’ to being stopped. He, like too many other men of color in this city, had become desensitized to being treated criminally.”