NYPD Fail - Report Finds Stop and Frisk Harms, Not Helps

New Yorkers protesting "stop and frisk" including NYC Comptroller John Liu

As a follow-on to an earlier CJB post this week regarding police brutality at Occupy Wall Street protests by the New York Police Department, a report from the Center for Constitutional Rights finds that New York's "stop and frisk" policy has been applied in a racially discriminatory manner, and has by and large, failed as a policy.  The CCR report indicates that more than 85% of New Yorkers stopped and frisked under its policy are minority.  Stunningly, the report finds that in the "stop and frisk" context, where police officers are supposed to be motivated by a reasonable suspicion before frisking, contraband or weapons are found only in 1.14% of the stops.  This is an abysmal statistic for such an intrusive policy.

The CCR report further details the terrible effect "stop and frisk" is having on the lives of New Yorkers:

Racial Discimination:  The NYPD "is conducting stops and frisks in record numbers – roughly 685,000 in 2011 and on track to reach over 700,000 this year. Black and Latino people are consistently and intentionally stopped at a hugely disproportionate rate: nearly 85 percent of all stops. These alarming statistics speak volumes on their own – the overwhelming racial disparity and the low rate of lawful arrests or discovery of contraband that result from stops and frisks raise serious questions about the purpose or usefulness of this practice." 

Failing as a Policy:  "The use of stops and frisks has grown at an astounding rate – a more than 600 percent increase over the past ten years. The number of stops in 2011 was the largest on record and 2012 is on track to be higher still, with over 203,500 stops in the first three months alone – an average of 2,200 stops per day. These numbers are all the more significant in light of evidence that an alarming number of these stops, frisks, and searches are illegal, in part because they are not based on the required level of suspicion of criminal activity. Despite the City’s attempts to justify the program as aimed at confiscating illegal weapons, a 2010 expert report by Professor Jeffrey Fagan that CCR submitted to the court in Floyd found that the weapons and contraband yield from stops and frisks hovered around only 1.14 percent – a rate no greater than would be found by chance at random check points."

(photo courtesy of Thomas Good via WikiMedia Commons)