US News

MY CRIME? JUST FITTING THE PROFILE

The following is Post reporter Leonardo Blair’s account of being stopped and frisked by two cops.

NYPD spokesman Chief Michael Collins contends the officers, patrolling an area that had seen a rash of car break-ins, handcuffed Blair after he refused to answer questions, kept his hands in his armpits and became threatening.

The incident comes amid a disturbing upswing in complaints lodged against the NYPD. CCRB cases have increased 80 percent, and legal claims against the department by 79 percent, in the last five years; the number of stop-and-frisks by cops, meanwhile, has increased five-fold between 2002 and 2006.

I was just trying to get home.

It was 8:20 p.m. Wednesday, and I had just finished parking my 1993 Toyota Camry along Arnow Avenue in the Allerton section of The Bronx, where I have been living with my family since graduating from Columbia University last May.

Less than a block from my door, I heard a car’s squeaking brakes. I would have ignored the sound if I hadn’t seen an NYPD squad car out of the corner of my eye. I was relieved for a moment – until I saw the officers’ faces.

“Can you tell us what you were doing coming from that car?” asked the driver, a Hispanic officer whose name I later learned was Castillo.

“What?” I asked.

The street was virtually empty. Officer Castillo jumped out of the car.

“Do you understand English!” he demanded. “Answer the question!”

“No, no hablo ingles,” I quipped. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have said that to any cop, but I found his tone surprising and insulting.

Officer Castillo peppered me with questions in Spanish until I interrupted: “What do you mean by ‘What was I doing coming from that car?’ That’s my car!”

“So you speak English!” Officer Castillo exploded.

“Put your hands in the air!” he shouted. My arms shot up. He frisked me. His partner, Officer Reynolds, rifled through my rucksack.

The search ended quickly and, thinking they were done, I let my hands fall.

Bad idea.

“Did I tell you to put your hands down?” Castillo barked.

He pinned my left arm, cuffed my wrist while ordering me to put my hands behind my back. His partner then took away my cellphone, which had started ringing in my pocket.

“C’mon, man,” I said. “I live right there. Let me call my aunt and uncle inside the house.”

I felt like I was being kidnapped. Castillo told me I was guilty of “disobeying an order.”

Sitting in the back of the squad car, a million thoughts were exploding in my head: What if I told them I just graduated from Columbia with a master’s degree in journalism? That I was a reporter with The Post? Should it matter?

“What did I do?” I asked when we arrived at the 49th Precinct station house. “Why am I being arrested?”

“Keep walking. This is not an arrest. You’re getting a summons,” Officer Castillo said.

Inside, Officer Reynolds shoved me into a cell. Digging through my bag, Officer Castillo picked out my driver’s license and said, “Look at this. He is not even from the projects.”

I angrily shouted, “Because I am black that means I’m supposed to be from the projects? That’s profiling and you know it!”

“Tsk, tsk,” Castillo replied.

When Officer Reynolds returned, I again asked why I had been incarcerated. “This is not incarceration. Do you know what incarceration means?” he said.

I unloaded: “I have a master’s degree from Columbia University. I am a reporter for the New York Post. What do you mean this is not incarceration?”

The air froze. Officer Castillo kept writing, but I watched his face go flush.

“Now I understand what black people mean in this country when they talk about things like this,” I said to Officer Reynolds.

“What do you mean? I am black, too,” he said.

“That’s what makes it so shameful,” I said. “You stood there and watched him cuff me for no reason and you said nothing.” He walked away.

At 9:04 p.m., 10 minutes after I was put in the cell, Officer Castillo let me out.

“Mr. Blair,” he said. “You are free to go.”

“What did I do?” I asked again.

“You will see on the summons,” he said. The two pink slips I received showed complaints for making “unreasonable noise” and “disobeying a lawful order.” I go to court in February.

As I left the station house, I was no longer at ease. The harrowing ordeal lasted less than an hour, but I felt like I had lost part of my freedom. I called my family from the bus stop, trying to explain what had happened.

“Hurry up and come home,” said my aunt. “We’re just glad you weren’t killed.”