‘The Haunted and the Hunted’: A Flash Seminar on Stop-and-Frisk


The Carter G. Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences will present a screening of the documentary video, “The Hunted and the Haunted: An Inside Look at the New York Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy,” followed by a panel discussion, on Nov. 5 at 6:30 p.m. in Minor Hall Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

New York’s “stop-and-frisk” policy, in place since the 1990s, allows police to stop people whom they consider “suspicious.” It is intended to keep crime down and guns off the streets.

However, Kwame Holmes, a postdoctoral fellow at the Woodson Institute and one of the event’s organizers, said, “New York’s ‘stop-and-frisk’ policing strategy has emerged as one of the most dramatic illustrations that people of color remain vulnerable to potential and actual attack on an everyday basis.”

Recently, The Nation magazine posted the video, which features an audio recording made during a stop-and-frisk incident by “Alvin,” one of the nearly 1,800 New Yorkers of color stopped by the NYPD every day, according to police department data. 



In the video, produced by filmmakers Erin Schneider and Ross Tuttle, Alvin describes his experience of the stop, and working NYPD officers come forward to explain the damage stop-and-frisk has done to their profession and their relationship to the communities they serve.

The discussion will address why the stop-and-frisk policy specifically, and mass incarceration broadly, are not understood as national political issues and are absent from candidates’ discourse. Participants will address how policies such as stop-and-frisk directly determine the experience of racial marginalization in large cities like New York and college towns like Charlottesville. They will also highlight existing and potential activist responses to police harassment.

Along with Holmes, panelists include:

• La Marr J. Bruce, Woodson pre-doctoral fellow and Ph.D. candidate in African American and American studies at Yale University;
• Alexandra Moffet-Bateu, Woodson pre-doctoral Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Chicago;


Hailie Clark, U.Va. undergraduate and political and social thought major.