A Brooklyn woman says she was arrested outside a bar in Murray Hill last July simply for criticizing the NYPD's widely-criticized stop-and-frisk policies. Kaylan Pedine, who works for a non-profit that serves people with learning disabilities, was outside Mercury Bar on Third Avenue with two friends shortly before midnight on July 6th when two NYPD officers passed by, prompting Pedine to remark, "I wish they would stop stop-and-frisk." She was promptly arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for stating an opinion.



Kaylan Pedine

Pedine insists she did not even raise her voice at the officers, and her comment was directed to her friends, not the cops. (Nor did she give them the finger, as another man did to a group of cops before his stupid arrest.) But it seems Officer Craig Campion's feelings were so hurt that he handcuffed her, took her to the nearby precinct station house, and issued her the disorderly conduct summons, for allegedly blocking vehicular traffic.

The charges were dismissed, and now Pedine is suing the NYPD and the city. Her lawyer, Mark Taylor, argues that her First Amendment rights were violated. We asked Taylor to speculate on why Officer Campion went out of his way to arrest Pedine for stating an opinion; he says, "Officers are under a lot of pressure to make their collars. And if you've seen Ray Kelly get questioned about stop-and-frisk, you can see the department is getting pretty defensive about it." And in a statement announcing the lawsuit, Pedine says:

"I believe that the more awareness we can bring regarding Stop and Frisk policy, the more opportunities arise for authentic conversations about solutions and changing this policy- a policy that is horrendously unconstitutional to communities of color especially. You cannot turn your eyes away from the statistics and facts about Stop and Frisk. There is a reason people say 'ignorance is bliss.' However, I want to be a voice that firmly says, 'Enough is enough.'”

Next week, as it happens, a trial is scheduled to begin in Floyd v. City of New York, the Center for Constitutional Rights' class action suit challenging the legality of the City’s policy. Here's Pedine's lawsuit, which was filed today: