The Stop and Frisk Policy Analysis Essay

Although the original intent of the stop and frisk rule was to prevent crime, get guns off the streets, and increase public safety, the policy has turned into a racially bias program that stops innocent people and arrests those committing non-violent crimes by carrying marijuana. While the NYPD claims its stop and frisk policy is especially needed to get illegal guns off the street, just 0.15 out of each 100 stops over the last six years resulted in officers actually confiscating a firearm. That undeniably low figure is quite alarming when compared to the 40,000 New Yorkers who were arrested in 2008 for marijuana-related offenses, majority of them being black and Latino.

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.

In 1990, New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton instituted a stop, question, and frisk policy in his jurisdiction . The program allows police officers to search citizens without probable cause . This empowers police officers to use their discretion when deciding whether or not to search a subject . Since its inception, the policy has disproportionately targeted people of color . When police officers are allowed to use their discretion, some call upon their own prejudices against people of color to guide their decision-making . Despite President Trump’s calls to expand the program, stop-and-frisk should be eliminated altogether because it exposes people of color to discrimination. This discrimination creates resentment for police in minority communities.

The stop, question, and frisk policy qualifies as a criminal justice issue that has captured the attention of public nationwide. Empirical research has presented evidence that the stop and frisk police is disproportionately used against minorities, which indicates the prevalence of racial profiling. Firstly, statistical databases have shown that the New York Police Departments have stopped and frisked approximately 685,000 persons since 2011, with 85 percent of those individuals representing African Americans and Latino Americans (Zamani, 2012). Many of the individuals are male. The statistical representation, unaccompanied, speaks volumes that the racial profiling is prevalent in the practice. The racial profiling of minorities violates the constitutional rights of the individuals that are stop and frisked based on their skin color.

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

Did you know that about 88 percent of all Stop and Frisk incidents result in finding the victim to be “clean” meaning ruled completely innocent without cause for an arrest? Remember this statistic and several others that I give you, because they are alarming. Currently, the Stop and Frisk situation in the United States seems to be at a crossroad. The Stop and Frisk practice originated during the 1950’s, when crime rates were at an all-time high within cities. The purpose of this practice was to help eliminate crime off the streets within these major inner cities. This practice was used by law enforcement during a time where racial segregation and racial tension began to build up; and a feud between black citizens and white law enforcement grew rapidly. Unfortunately, we still today live in a world where individuals often times find themselves in the middle of a “wrongdoing” in the eyes of the law enforcement. The results of these situations through history have not always turned fatal, but recently it seems that the end result from these situations do so. How many of you are aware of the incident that occurred between Eric Garner, a 43-year-old black Staten Island male, and the New York Police Department (NYPD)? For those of you who are not, victim Eric Garner was approached by the NYPD under the suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes. This led to a Stop and Frisk altercation between

Stop and frisk is supposed to be a tactic that equally targets all races and tries to stop/ reduce crimes that’s going on in the cities. There is a lot that’s going on with this stop and frisk, many people will say there’s a war going on. The two sides are “Racial Profiling vs. ‘Proactive Policing’”. Some people might say that stop and frisk is working because the deaths in New York City went down 7,300 in the last past eleven years since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office (backlash). In such ways, this is true that stop and frisk helped in New York but in other cities like Los Angeles (59%), New

The New York City Police Department stop-and-frisk impacts thousands of peoples lives everyday, and unfortunately most of the cases involve African American and Hispanic Males, which shows racism is still present in the world we live in today. Prior to speaking about a stop and frisk, one must have general knowledge about what it is and all of its supporting parts. A “Stop and frisk” occurs when an officer of the law temporarily detains an individual or group of people on the street to question them about the reason or reasons in which they were stopped, and possibly also frisking or searching them for the safety of the officers and the detainees as well. A stop may end with someone being arrested or given a ticket if evidence of a crime being committed comes to light. “A stop and frisk is a concise, non-invasive, police stop of a “suspect(Cornell University Law School, 2014).”

I believe the Stop and Frisk policy based in New York City is a biased and unconstitutional tactic that police officers use. The Stop and Frisk Policy states “if the police have reasonable suspicion that a person is armed and dangerous, they may conduct a frisk, a quick pat-down of the person’s outer clothing.” (Law.cornell.edu/stopandfrisk) I am not Pro-Stop and Frisk: by stopping an individual based on the officers own suspicion, the officer is violating that person right of privacy. The fourth amendment in the United States Constitution.

Stop-and-frisk practices have been an ongoing controversy in the United States for decades. This is one of the most debated and controversial issues in New York City as it impacts police treatment towards minorities, especially African-Americans and Hispanics. I agree with Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s ruling in an article from The New York Times, (Goldstein, 2013). She ruled “that the stop-and frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of minorities in the city.” After reading the article I believe the judge made the right decision. The judge did her homework. She had written a 195 page paper explaining her decision. Judge Scheindlin found racial profiling to be prevalent in many cases at the Police Department.

With president elect Donald Trump compilatning reinstating the stop and frisk people around the country mostly in the major cities have began fearing for there civil rights. One of the reason they are in fear is because stop and frisk has been notice that it could poetically violate our civil rights as americans. The main reason president elect Donald Trump wants to reinstate stop and frisk is because its has shown to decrease murders and dangerous felines to be carrying weapons on the street. This is a major problem in policing field, because it could potentially make police make a hardly decision on americans. The decisions that police are going to be forces to make is if the person walking down the street is carry a unregister weapon. This decisions is so are to make because they have to do this purely on appearances and body langue of that person.

In reading an article upon the idealism of “stop and frisk” it said that “An analysis by the NYCLU revealed that innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than 4 million times since 2002, and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics.” Showing how not only is it a waste of time but it brings fear upon people. I am here writing this letter to inform you upon your actions of ‘Stop and Frisk’ which gives the right to police officers to stop someone who they feel like is suspicious or looks suspicious. Which I think is just absurd, New York Polices forces should discard the injustice and distrust objective of “stop and frisk” to end the inflicting of people’s

In the recent ruling made state court decided that police may not frisk in an encounter. Police may frisk if they believe that the citizen is involved in a criminal case or may be armed and dangerous. The article discusses a case dealing with two male teenagers that were stopped and frisked, they did seize guns by both male teenagers. But court declared that the search made by police was not authorized for a warrant because the search was not specific enough. Another point made by the case involving the two male teenagers, is that just because two black male teenagers walking in a neighborhood with a high crime rate makes law enforcement pin point them as suspicious. Many law enforcement officers are putting their lives at risk due to stopping and frisking, these rulings were made to protect the officer’s life. I will use the information discovered in this article as a reference to why stopping and frisking is unnecessary in many

First of all, a tactic used by police departments in several American cities called Stop and Frisk allows officers to stop, question, pat down, and search the belongings of anyone deemed suspicious. In addition, this tactic has removed illegal drugs and guns off the streets. “Advocates of the practice contend that it helps police target potential criminals, thereby preventing crimes before they are committed, and credit the practice for a reduction in crime rates” (Stop and Frisk 1). Many people credit stop and frisk with reducing New York City’s crime rate from its highs in the 60s-90’s. “New York City’s crime rate has dropped 80% since the early 1990’s” (Stop and Frisk 5). For example, history has shown that most of these crimes and murders are committed by minority groups on minority groups.

America’s justice system relies on beliefs that are essential to an individual's safety. Laws are broken everyday, yet they have the meaningful purpose to ensure an individual's rights. Although policies have the intend to keep the public safe; they are not to be followed in all cases. New York’s ‘’stop-and-frisk’’ inquires a police official to briefly stop any suspect and call for random searches on city streets. Random searches are not consented by the people who bring the distrust and trepidation to many. Arguably this policy is meant to decrease criminal rates but they often fail to realize that there is always alternatives to induce violence. In other words this law is only fostering the act of racial profiling, it disrupts the fourth amendment and permits law enforcement to abuse their power due to the unlawful actions of authorities, for this reason ‘’stop-and-frisk’’ should be voided.