Stop And Frisk And The New York City Police Department Essay

The famous and controversial police practice known as the stop and frisk started on the last sixties. It was known national wide when the case Terry v. Ohio was presented this case was argued on December 12, 1967 it all started when Cleveland detective McFadden was on patrol on a foot post where he noticed the petitioner John W. Terry and another men known as Chilton were acting suspiciously on a street corner the detective noticed both men looking into a store multiple times with an interest to do something, then another men known as Katz showed up to the scene all three men joined and where walking around the store, that's when detective McFadden approached and identified himself as a police officer he started to ask them simple

The judicial system in America has always endured much skepticism as to whether or not there is racial profiling amongst arrests. The stop and frisk policy of the NYPD has caused much controversy and publicity since being applied because of the clear racial disparity in stops. Now the question remains; Are cops being racially biased when choosing whom to stop or are they just targeting “high crime” neighborhoods, thus choosing minorities by default? This paper will examine the history behind stop and frisk policies. Along with referenced facts about the Stop and Frisk Policy, this paper will include and discuss methods and findings of my own personal field research.

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.

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.

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 history of stop and frisk began in 1968 and ended in 2013. Stop and frisk began with the cases of Terry v. Ohio, Sibron v. New York, and New York v. Peters. The Supreme Court’s decision was made on legal grounds to stop with reasonable suspicion, question, and if necessary, frisk for weapons.

The stop, question, and frisk policy was implemented in the NYPD in an effort to make the city a safer place. With weapons becoming more easily accessible than ever, they are becoming more of a problem, and officers and the general public are now in more danger than ever of being killed by a firearm, knife, or a weapon. Although the policy is intended to prevent harm and protect society, it has been under major scrutiny in not only the past few years, but also the past few decades as well. Due to the fact that minorities are believed to be the main target of this policing tactic, many people have argued it is inherently corrupt should be abolished. On the other hand, it has shown to provide some positive outcomes and as a result, it is a necessary

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

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

The issue with Stop, Question, and Frisk is that is causes Police Officers and other law officials to look at specific people in a certain way because they assume that they are doing something illegal. It has become a huge racial issue,people believe that Stop and Frisk is breaking their basic rights and is unconstitutional. It is breaking their basic rights because it’s invading people’s privacy and makes them feel violated. It especially feels that way for women because they are being frisked in the middle of a street or public area by a male officer. Many people may claim that, “This has resulted in policing that undermines public safety and trust including biased stop-and-frisk abuses, unconstitutional searches, racially disparate marijuana arrests and summonses, discriminatory profiling and harassment, and the use of excessive force”. Especially after the increase in police shootings and riots, people don’t feel safe anymore because they never know if an officer will just randomly stop them and get aggressive. This fear of being harassed or even worst being shot/kill like all of the other people that they have seen all over social media and in the news.

New York City is one of the most popular cities in the United States. It is home to Times Square, Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and known to be the most culturally diverse part of the world. New York is one of the most visited cities in the country. New York City consists of five boroughs; Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. According to The Wall Street Journal’s website, there have been over 53 million visitors in just 2013. With it’s vast popularity comes a high crime rate. New York City is also a popular target amongst terrorism groups with a recorded 17 terrorist related crimes. As a society, we are continuously faced with the difficulty of surrendering our freedom to increase our safety. The Stop-and-Frisk law allowed New York City police offers to stop and search people for the suspicion of weapons, drugs and other illegal imports. This program that was started by the previous New York Major Bloomberg with the help of the police chief, sparked a lot of controversy because New Yorker’s believed this new law was going against their rights protected by the 4th Amendment.

The stop and frisk policy came about many years ago. The stop and frisk is used for protection for the officer or officers. An officer can stop a suspect and frisk him/her for weapons, contraband or any other items if the officer feels any other suspicion. A Stop and Frisk do not require a warrant. This practice is very common now days, but similar procedures to stop and frisk policy started in the 1980s. According to Clark (2015), the earliest origins of stop and frisk were used in 1994 by Street Crime Unit to prevent the carrying of illegal guns in well-known hot spots and areas with high crime rates. The crime rates decreased over time, but it caused another issue in the communities.

The idea of a stop and frisk is that a police officer can arrest a suspect only if they have enough suspicion that someone has committed a crime. A stop is only allowed when “a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot,” (Toobin, TNY 2013). Some believe that the search and frisk law itself is not the issue, but that the practice by police officers is what is at question. Constantly targeting minorities is what the basis of the controversy behind this law is. As the numbers will show in the rest of this essay, they are the ones who are being most frequently searched and this is resulting in a high number of people who are against this law. There have been countless trials in New York

Gaines, L. K., & Kappeler, V. E. (2014). Policing in america (8th ed.). (S. Decker-Lucke, Ed.) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America: Anderson Publishing. Retrieved January 2017

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