Stop and Frisk/ Racial Profiling in New York City
The Stop and Frisk policy is practiced in New York City and it involves a police officer stopping a potential suspect then they proceed to ask the person questions and/or pat them down. 84% of these stops recorded are young men typically of African American and Hispanic heritage. However, only 6% of these stops lead to an arrest. Many of these men are only being stopped because of the color of their skin, not because the police think they are suspicious of something. These statistics are leading people to accuse the police of racial profiling, and the abuse of privacy rights which has also led to a class action lawsuit. Even though these are the people who live in high crime areas, race doesn't
…show more content…
An analysis by the NYCLU shows that innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and and street interrogations more than 4 million times since 2002, and the Black and Latino communities are the target of these approaches. Even though the New York Police Department are cutting the crime activities by 29%, other large cities are getting better results without using the stop and frisk policy. Martial Arts Instructor, Tauren Murphy believes that the NYPD uses stop and frisk to cover it’s real intent. Murphy states “The vast majority of the time, it’s a way to harass young men of color. The shootings are unfortunate, but there should be more police in the community, working with the community and not just showing when there is trouble.” Residents of Bronx believe that if there are just more police around in general then the numbers of shooting will go down because no one is going to risk getting caught when there are so many officers around. Many people have said that they would not even go to the police for help because they distrust them that much, this “proactive policing” that is going on is just driving a deeper wedge between the police and the community. Ray Kelly, police commissioner says that “about 70 percent to 75 percent of the people described as committing violent crimes-- assault, …show more content…
This policy ruins the trust that the community has with the New York Police Department and studies have shown that it is not even effective. Stopping and frisking is pointless because many of the stops do not even led to an arrest and there is usually never anything illegal found on the people stopped. If this policy would stop, the police would build a better relationship with the community, and crime rates would go down using different, better tactics just like other big cities have done. Other large cities have actually gotten better results without using stop and frisk. The community should remember that the police are just doing there job and they are just trying to protect everyone, but the police should also spread out their manpower instead of just targeting it to certain areas which leads the people of New York to think that they are racially profiling
The framework of Stop-and-Frisk started in 1968 in a case known as Terry v. Ohio. This was a landmark case that gave law enforcement the constitutional limitations by the United States Supreme Court to stop and search individuals in streets encounters for weapon or contraband (Rengifo & Slocum, 2016). In 1996, the Anthony General, Eliot Spitzer opened an investigation to assess the effectiveness of Stop-and-Frisk on the minority communities in New York City. The assessment involved looking at 175,000 UF-250 Forms from 1998 to 1999. During
Every day people walk down the street of New York wondering if they are going to be stopped. Paul Butler a law professor at Georgetown University and a former United States Department of Justice prosecutor says that “the problem with stop and frisk is not only that it makes the citizens of New York less free, it also makes them less safe” (Butler, 2012). This brings the feeling of the people in New York to light, as they feel like they are less than others and less free with the ability to them being stopped and searched whenever an officer has a suspicion. Not all officers have the right sense in mind when it comes to their suspicion about someone, because “according to the analysis, just 1.5% of all stop-and-frisk arrests resulted in a jail or prison sentence. Just one in 50 stop-and-frisk arrests, 0.1%, led to a conviction for a violent crime or possession of a weapon. Close to half of all stop-and-frisk arrests did not result in a conviction” (Lee, 2013). The percentages show that officers’ suspicions aren’t always correct and that they may use their own stereotype about someone when they stop and frisk. This policy is ineffective because they don’t have a 100 percent on catching people, and many times officers’ own opinions on someone gets in the way. This policy is kept around for the little percentage it has worked and to give the officers an option to do a stop and frisk if they feel necessary. If this policy
The New York Police Department's stop and frisk has been around for several years and people recently have been taking action about it but this is a very important and useful practice that officer conduct on a daily base, police officer are doing the right thing especially if neighborhoods are known for criminal or violent activities then these people should be stopped, questioned and frisked, from January to June of 2013 the NYPD's report shows that African American and Hispanics are more active to commit crimes like robbery, rape, murder and manslaughter, felonious assault, grand larceny, misdemeanor sex crime, misdemeanor assault, petit larceny, criminal mischief, shootings, procession of drugs, firearms, and other illegal substance overall blacks and latinos being targeted not only because what they are wearing or how they but also cause of what the numbers show us. The new soon to be Major of New York Bill de Blasio has said that he is against the stop and frisk but many officers say that taking away the stop and frisk will increase crime tremendously, people are going to start to walk around with weapons, the whole point about the stop and frisk and why police officers conduct it many times is because they want the public to see that anyone can be patted down meaning that if they carry weapons with them then they will get arrested. Bill de Blasio has also said
The NYPD’s stop and frisk practices raise serious concerns over racial profiling, illegal stops and privacy rights. The Departments own reports on its stop and frisk activity confirm what many people in
There has always been tension raised between maintaining a safe society and observing by the constitutional rights of its citizens. The New York City aggressive program of Stop and Frisk have been widely criticized and considered unconstitutional. However, Stop and Frisk, per se is not unconstitutional unless people are being stopped illegally. It 's a crime prevention tool that allows police officers to stop a person based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and to conduct a frisk based on reasonable suspicion that the person is armed. Some argue this policy was created to target minorities. Most of the people who have been stopped and frisked under this program have been African American or Hispanic. This concerns citizens and makes them oppose the policy because they believe its racial profiling and guided by color. Stop and frisk is now one of the biggest controversies in United States. It has become something that is affecting society in both a positive and negative way.
Eighty-seven percent of stops in 2012, were Black and Hispanic people. Compare that percentage to the amount of water on Earth, only seventy percent. Now, imagine eighty-seven percent water covering the Earth. That would make the world unbalanced and difficult to live in, which is how life is for the minorities impacted by Stop and Frisk. One of the most debated and controversial topics in New York City is the Stop and Frisk policy, and the impact it has on police, Latinos, and African Americans. Stop and Frisk fails to promote justice and equitable society because it creates a society where one group is lesser than another. The Stop and Frisk policy was created in Ohio, 1968, because of the a Supreme Court case, Terry v. Ohio (US Courts).
The statistics show that to be an African American or Hispanic in New York you are more than twice as likely to get stopped as a white or Asian person. Studies of reports show that 15,000 or 30% of stops are deemed unconstitutional; and those are just the ones that are reported, imagine all of those that go unreported. Imagine all of those people who were victimized just because of the color of their skin. The stop-and-frisk procedure was once a good thing that helped clean up the streets, but now it’s becoming an epidemic of racial profiling, and teaching racism and intolerance to anyone who is a victim or witness of these stops.
With blacks being stopped more than half of the time, and Latinos being stopped around 30 percent, its clear why these groups along with other minority groups feel they are being singled out and picked on; in fact, Mayor Bill de Blasio even made a public apology for the policy’s negative impact after the New York Times (2014) claimed that Judge Shira A. Scheindlin described it as “a policy of indirect racial profiling.” It’s reasons like these that encourage people to believe this tactic is inherently corrupt. If police officers are not using clear logic and reasonable suspicion when stopping individuals, it can create a major separation between our law enforcement agents and society and allow for noble cause corruption. While this policy has the ability to create major distrust and dislike for the cops, however, it can also have a very positive impact as well. For example, if officers continue to improve the accuracy of their stops and become more successful in taking weapons off the streets and deterring crime, their communities should begin to back them and also this
The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices raise serious concerns over racial profiling, illegal stops and privacy rights. The Department’s own reports on its stop and frisk activity confirm what many people in communities of color across the city have long known: The police are stopping hundreds of thousands of law abiding New Yorkers every year, and the vast majority are black and Latino. In 2011, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 685,724 times. 605,328 were totally innocent (88 percent). 350,743 were black (53 percent). 223,740
Stop and frisk was created and is still enforced by Minnesota, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles metropolitan police departments. The Stop and Frisk policy gives officers the jurisdiction to stop and search any individual that may infer any suspicious characteristics. Each person can be questioned via the suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon, regards of their whereabouts, searched for illicit drugs, and other contraband that may harm community members. Moreover, "the officers must point out and specifically articulate what led them to conclude that criminal activity may be afoot" (Richardson 2011). Any citizen can be stopped for whatever reason an officer believes is “reasonably suspicious". What is reasonably suspicious is also determined by the court of law when a suspect is reprimanded and turned into their respective justice department. This policy was meant to enforce weapon and drug possession laws in the event that criminal activity is to be suspected. Contemporary statistics show that the stop and frisk policy is ineffective, targeting mostly people of color (POC).
The police administration doesn’t see that they are being discriminatory because they are focusing on the areas of concentrated poverty. All the administration wants to do is prevent crime. They believe they aren’t necessarily going after people of color, they are trying to prevent crime in the best way that they know how. Police and their superiors are well aware that the areas of poverty go to illegal ways to make money. The stop and frisk method was implemented in areas of concentrated of poverty, which meant increased contact with minorities. It was seen to be a solution to get the most contact with minorities because that’s where the administration sees crime happening. The administration is telling the street cops what to do to prevent crime and the street cops are
New York and Philadelphia are two out of a handful of states that suffer from huge amounts of criminal activity and homicide. The police of those states do not have enough officers to get to every crime scene immediately. The mayor of New York decided to implement a new program called Stop and Frisk. It worked well enough to also be implemented into Philadelphia. With the Stop and Frisk Program, New York and Philadelphia have been able to reduce the amount of illegal weapons from the street, arrest criminals or illegal immigrants, and find/stop any terrorists that may be lurking around.
The policy of New York Police Department‘s (NYPD) stop question and frisk for some time been a highly controversial situation of policing under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Commissioner Raymond Kelly administration. This administration praised the stop and frisk policy as a valuable resource to the City‘s successful mitigation in reducing violent crime. A resource to removing guns from the streets as well improving the quality of life for the communities that are most affected by those
“One. The police stop blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than whites. In New York City, where people of color make up about half of the population, 80% of the NYPD stops were of blacks and Latinos. When whites were stopped, only 8% were frisked (Quigley, 2010).” Police stops are a very common effect on society. It isn’t fair that police don’t hold everyone accountable the same way. Not every cop is that way but there are that selected few who still have that racist mindset and hold it against innocent people. It’s no secret that in New York especially, there is a lot of crime and gang activity produced by different minority groups in the city. However, The facts does not provide a good reason that in routine stops are people of color targeted and frisked down compared to
The framework of Stop-and-Frisk started in 1968 in a case known as Terry v. Ohio. This was a landmark case that gave law enforcement the constitutional limitations by the United States Supreme Court to stop and search individuals in street encounters for weapon or contraband (Rengifo & Slocum, 2016). In 1996, the Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer opened an investigation to assess the effectiveness of Stop-and-Frisk on the minority communities in New York City. The assessment involved looking at 175,000 stop-and-frisk forms from 1998 to 1999. During the assessment, a report indicated a