Nowhere else in Philadelphia are African Americans more disproportionately stopped by police than in the Center City neighborhood surrounding the Starbucks, two blocks from ritzy Rittenhouse Square, where rents in luxury apartments run as high as $10,000 a month.
While African Americans make up 3 percent of the area’s residents, they account for 67 percent of pedestrian police stops, according to a 2017 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has monitored racial disparity in Philadelphia policing for eight years. Most of those stopped were never charged.
Similar racial disparities in citations and arrests for commercial trespassing occur across the country, according to lawyers and civic leaders.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., African Americans make up 21 percent of the population but accounted for 59 percent of commercial trespassing arrests at businesses such as gas stations and bars, according to the ACLU, which filed a federal lawsuit against the city in 2013.
In Washington, businesses in Georgetown operated a private messaging app that allowed retailers to alert police officers about people they considered suspicious. The vast majority of suspicions in the wealthy, predominantly white community were about black people, some of whom were described in offensive language. The service was suspended in 2015 after concerns arose about racial profiling.
“It raises all kinds of questions. How long can you be on a property? Can you not browse at these stores now? Who gets to determine whether you’re acting as a patron or as a trespasser?” said Jason D. Williamson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, referring to the disproportionate targeting of African Americans. “It goes to the judgments that are made not only by the police but by store owners who ratchet up the level of suspicion depending on what you look like.”
