VIDEO: Philly Has a Stop-and-Frisk Problem

46-year-old cop aggressive and verbally abusive.

Yesterday, the Daily News ran a cover story on a former cop who himself got stop-and-frisked in West Oak Lane, for no apparent reason. Today, they’ve got another one, and it’s a whole lot more explosive. It concerns a video said to have been recorded on September 27th, in which a couple police officers stop-and-frisk and verbally harass two men, again, with no apparent reason.

The cop who is featured most prominently has been identified as 46-year-old officer Philip Nace. Here are some of the highlights lowlights:

  • Nace called one of the men a “f—ing dirty ass.” When they protest that they haven’t done anything wrong, he shouted: “Why don’t you shut the f— up! Everyone thinks they’re a f—ing lawyer, and they don’t know jack s—.”
  • At one point, Nace told one of the men: “We don’t want you here, anyway. All you do is weaken the f—ing country.” “How do I weaken the country? By working?” the man asked. “No, freeloading,” Nace said. When the man said he’s a server at a country club, Nace responded, “Server. Serving weed?”

Among the most striking aspects of the exchange is Nace’s extreme defensiveness when one of the two men repeatedly asks why he’s being stopped. Frazzled, he essentially makes the case that it doesn’t matter if he has cause or not, which more or less amounts to a defense of the stop-and-frisk program in general.

The “stop-search-and frisk” program, which Michael Nutter promised to implement when he first ran for Mayor in 2007, has ostensibly been scaled down in Philadelphia since a court came to an agreement with the city in 2011. But while the number of stops has declined in the last few years, the Daily News points out, the ACLU says the amount of stops made in Philadelphia without arrest–which suggest racial profiling–was still staggeringly high last year.

In the video, one of the men stopped gets his phone back and is released. It is unclear what happens to the other, but it doesn’t appear either were booked.