One of the more interesting debates that is emerging is over the issue of stop and frisk as a crime control policy. The policy began in New York by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Depite the controversy and complaints from rights groups and minorities, the mayor continues to support it, arguing as he did in June, “that it had helped make New York the safest big city in the country, while acknowledging that the police needed to treat those whom they stopped with greater respect.”
“We are not going to walk away from a strategy that we know saves lives,” Mr. Bloomberg said as reported in the New York Times. “At the same time, we owe it to New Yorkers to ensure that stops are properly conducted and carried out in a respectful way.”
In the meantime, liberal San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee stunned his city “when he suggested bringing New York’s failed stop-and-frisk policy to San Francisco.”
“We’re not sure what Mayor Lee was thinking, but stop-and-frisk is a bad idea all around. Not only is it a civil liberties nightmare and toxic for police-community relations, it raises serious concerns about racial profiling,” wrote the ACLU of Northern California Legal Director Alan Schlosser. “Police already have the legal authority to stop individuals based on reasonable suspicion that they are involved in criminal activity, and to pat them down if there are reasonable grounds to believe the person is armed.”
In a July 9 letter from the ACLU of Northern California to Mayor Lee, Mr. Schlosser noted that under the Supreme Court’s Terry ruling, the police have “the power to stop individuals based on ‘reasonable suspicion’ that they are involved in criminal activity, and to pat them down if there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe the person is ‘armed and dangerous.’ “
Chief Suhr has made it clear that the SFPD uses the “stop and frisk” technique. Mr. Schlosser argues that the chief understands its constitutional limits. “We detain people based on reasonable suspicion and when we pat search people it’s for officer safety sake,” the Chief said.
“While the serious problem of gun violence merits a free and full discussion about causes and solutions, the New York stop and frisk program has become a code word for racial profiling, and thus injecting it into the ‘conversation’ has already spread fear, distrust and polarization, and in fact distracted attention from the problems you are trying to address,” Mr. Schlosser continues.
What New York-style stop and frisk adds to these existing powers is the saturation of communities of color with police and the generation of a sudden outbreak of “reasonable suspicion,” leading to a stop and frisk explosion in communities of color.
The number of stops in New York went from about 97,000 a year, before Mayor Bloomberg took office, to 685,724 in 2011.
Mr. Schlosser argues that most of the stops – 90% – are of innocent people who were neither arrested nor cited.
“These statistics illustrate why the New York policy has become a code word for racial profiling and led to such an outcry in New York and beyond. That it has raised a similar outcry in San Francisco should not be surprising, as it is thoroughly inconsistent with this City’s values and policies,” he adds.
In a July 5 op-ed, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi argued, “The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all Americans the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.”
“It applies to all of us, whether we live in Bayview-Hunters Point or Sea Cliff, the Mission or Pacific Heights, the Tenderloin or St. Francis Woods. Although the mayor has said he would implement this policy only in neighborhoods experiencing high-crime rates, thus sparing the more affluent neighborhoods, this would mean that some residents of only some neighborhoods would be subject to being stopped and searched,” he added.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a police officer may stop a citizen if there are ‘specific and articulable facts’ that would indicate that a crime is about to be committed,” Mr. Adachi wrote. “But the court also held that a person cannot be frisked unless the officer has a reasonable belief that the person is carrying a weapon or illegal contraband.”
Mr. Adachi argues that “racial profiling does occur in San Francisco,” and notes that “despite its liberal leanings, a 2007 study by The Chronicle found that African Americans in San Francisco are arrested for felonies at nearly twice the rate as in Sacramento and Fresno, and three times the rate in San Jose, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego, and four times the rate in Oakland.”
“While Mayor Lee says that the law would not be applied in a discriminatory fashion, data from stop-and-frisk cities bears out the discriminatory nature of the policy’s implementation,” Mr. Adachi argues. “The ACLU found that of the 4 million people stopped and questioned by the New York Police Department since 2002, most were black or Latino and 90 percent had committed no crime.”
“Effective anticrime and antipoverty strategies, coupled with proven violence prevention and intervention strategies, is the better path to addressing violence. A program that targets the very people we want to protect isn’t the answer,” he concludes.
“Make no mistake: New York style stop-and-frisk is code for racial profiling. Our ACLU colleagues in New York have seen first-hand just how discriminatory the policy has been since its implementation there. The NYCLU found that while young black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 comprise only 4.7% of the population of the city, they accounted for a whopping 41.6% of stops,” Mr. Schlosser adds.
“Mayor Lee should reconsider the idea. A New York style stop-and-frisk won’t lead to a safer San Francisco. It will result in young men of color being targeted by police simply because of what they look like. That’s racial profiling. It’s illegal, it’s wrong, and it’s precisely what San Francisco doesn’t need,” Mr. Schlosser concludes.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
As I was reading this article I could not help but think of the irony of racial profiling in view of the recent shootings in Aurora. The Aurora shooter was white. So were the Columbine shooters. So were Timothy McVeigh, and the Unibomber. Likewise Charles Manson and his followers. All of these extremely dangerous individuals were missed by the police, and would continue to be missed under this policy because they did not fit the stereotype.
Because I have nothing to hide, I have no personal problem with a stop and frisk policy( besides its unconstitutionality). As long as it is applied equally. Think airport security.
Either everyone is subject, or no one is. So if the police want to do random stops and frisk little old Caucasian ladies as well as young African American men, fine, have at it. Otherwise, we need to come up with something better than stopping someone because of their age, color of their skin, and the neighborhood into which they were born. Again, Frankie Carrillo is the perfect example of how very wrong police targetting on the basis of gender and ethnicity can go.
On this topic, I strongly recommend Michelle Alexander’s, [u]The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness[/u]. It is a compelling and well-researched account of how discriminatory criminal justice policies and practices have created a racial caste system in the U.S. [url]http://www.newjimcrow.com/index.html[/url]
Standards for legal stop-and-frisks have been in place for decades in this country. To say that we are going to institute a stop-and-frisk crime control policy in nothing more than reaffirming what already exists as a crime control measure. Other than its possible political value, such a remark is not even newsworthy.
“Opponents” of stop-and-frisk are entitled to challenge the Terry Ruling that governs the legitimacy of this policy and case law. The ACLU, for example, could take select stop and frisk incidents (they have 4 million to choose from in NYC alone) and seek appellate court relief of the Terry rule. ACLU is, after all, a legally staffed civil liberties entity.
But the ACLU and its supporters disregard this judicial option and choose, instead, the court of public opinion and equate stop-and-frisk with the currently volatile term, racial profiling. For any reader who might be a little dense, it was said repeatedly and described as “code.” Note: Stop-and-frisk now becomes racial profiling.
The ACLU cited its own analysis of 4 million stop and frisks in New York. Now we have researchers with a pre-conceived bias doing a statistical analysis, hoping for a favorable and supportive result. They got what they were looking for, albeit with carefully crafted wording and omission.
We are told that most stops involved persons of color(note the ambiguity and absence of a number for “most”). I’d enjoy seeing a further analysis of the neighborhoods where the stop and frisks occurred. If they were in areas of high population concentrations of blacks and Latinos, then maybe the fact that whites were not being stopped was due to the fact they weren’t there!
How many stop and frisks took place on Park Avenue at 9am, and what was the racial breakdown? How do street crime rates compare on that same Park Avenue compared to, say, Harlem?
Additional ACLU analysis disclosed that ten percent of the stops were successful in terms of arrest or citation. The other 90% were portrayed as innocent citizens. Were they all innocent of a crime? Or could there have been numerous possibilities of street criminals avoiding detection upon seeing the police first–or maybe they tossed their stash or weapon before they were stopped?
Another view: [url]http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/07/17/does-stop-and-frisk-reduce-crime/to-see-its-value-see-how-crime-rose-elsewhere[/url]
[quote]One purpose of stop and frisk is to deter criminals from carrying guns, in order to minimize spur-of-the-moment shootings. That deterrence has taken place. Street gangs now keep “community guns” in communal locations rather than on their person, to avoid a gun possession arrest if they are stopped. The city’s astounding homicide drop — 82 percent from 1990 to 2009 — is driven by a decline in gun crime, which disproportionately affects black males. In 2011, guns were used in 61 percent of all homicides, but 86 percent of black males between the ages of 16 and 21 killed that year died from gunfire, according to N.Y.P.D. data.
Being stopped when you are innocent is an infuriating, humiliating experience. New York’s officers need to better explain to stop subjects why they were accosted. And if a more powerful method of deterring crime is developed, the N.Y.P.D. should and would adopt it. But for now, New York’s most vulnerable residents enjoy a freedom from assault unknown in any other big city, thanks to the N.Y.P.D.’s assertive style of policing.[/quote]
[quote]We are told that most stops involved persons of color(note the ambiguity and absence of a number for “most”). I’d enjoy seeing a further analysis of the neighborhoods where the stop and frisks occurred. If they were in areas of high population concentrations of blacks and Latinos, then maybe the fact that whites were not being stopped was due to the fact they weren’t there![/quote]
Exactly! One of the issues with stop-and-frisk implementation is that it most often targets urban neighborhoods with high concentrations of blacks and Latinos. That’s part of the problem. If drug enforcement efforts, for example, targeted white communities, college campuses, etc., they’d catch at least the same percentage of drug offenders. Studies of traffic stops, for example, show that a far higher percentage of non-white drivers are stopped for minor infractions (e.g., broken tail light) to justify searches, but that a higher percentage of white drivers stopped are found to be in possession of unlawful substances.
Again, if you want more data, see the book I recommended above.
This is infuriating. Primarily white self-designated protectors of underclass blacks rejecting this practice because others will be subjected to “infuriating, humiliating experiences”, and thereby causing more young black men to die. Who is protection whom here?
There is no denying the statistics. Stop and Frisk in New York City reduced gun deaths. Since New York stopped the practice (due to the cries of those primarily white self-designated protectors of the black underclass… and the law suit threats from the ACLU) gun deaths have risen again.
It is fantastic to consider that some people are willing to trade the death of many more young people to prevent others suffering inconvenience and hurt feelings. Here is the approach that a real hero would take: He/she would thank law enforcement for stopping and frisking him/her to help make sure more lives are protected.
Protection of life, liberty and happiness comes before protecting us from inconvenience and hurt feelings. Let’s get our priorities straight and stop with the irrational egalitarian sensitivities that prevent us from solving these critical problems.
Note that Chicago has the toughest anti-gun laws of all the big cities, and homicide by gun is at epidemic levels. However, Chicago does not have Stop and Frisk.
My thinking here is that most of the same people rejecting Stop and Frisk, are those that are extreme anti-gun/pro gun control. Frankly, I think they are worried that Stop and Frisk works because that would mean a lesser “crisis” that could be leveraged to feed their emotional-driven campaign to demonize guns and trample the rights of law-abiding citizens to own guns.
San Francisco is considering Stop and Frisk.
[i]”Protection of life, liberty and happiness”[/i]
Sorry… shortcut to…
“Protection of life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness”
Big difference.
You don’t have freedom to pursue happiness if you are dead.
[quote]There is no denying the statistics. Stop and Frisk in New York City reduced gun deaths. Since New York stopped the practice (due to the cries of those primarily white self-designated protectors of the black underclass… and the law suit threats from the ACLU) gun deaths have risen again.
[/quote]
[quote]One purpose of stop and frisk is to deter criminals from carrying guns, in order to minimize spur-of-the-moment shootings. That deterrence has taken place. Street gangs now keep “community guns” in communal locations rather than on their person, to avoid a gun possession arrest if they are stopped. The city’s astounding homicide drop — 82 percent from 1990 to 2009 — is driven by a decline in gun crime[/quote]
So if what you both are saying truly represents the mechanism by which gun related deaths have fallen,
and having gun owners keep their weapons in “communal locations” is effective in minimizing “spur of the moment shootings” then the answer would seem to be obvious. Just apply this policy equally to all of the population instead of doing racial, ethnic, or economic targeting. Make stop and frisk applicable to the entire population. Let everyone have access to their guns at “communal houses” or “sporting centers” or “shooting clubs”. This would have the added advantage of having guns not falling into the hands of adolescents and children with the attendant risk of accidental deaths.
Jeff
[quote]You don’t have freedom to pursue happiness if you are dead.[/quote]
Correct. And you also don’t have it if you are starving, or lacking shelter, or unable to get adequate care for an acute or chronic illness. Not all threats to “life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness” come carrying weapons.
Eric,
Several years ago I was stopped about 8-10 times within a year while driving late at night in Davis for minor infractions (intermittently defective tail-light, bent rear license plate, intermittently defective license plate light, trailor hitch partially obstructing rear license plate). I drove an older small pickup truck with canopy. While I did not particularly enjoy being stopped; i didn’t resent it and was grudgingly glad the police were on the alert (in all cases the stops were very late at night; the ‘wee’ hours).
I am white with blond hair and blue eyes.
I largely support Jeffs comments above.
Although I suppose it is possible that many Law enforcement personnel are fixated on race; like so many contributors to this forum seem to be, with their obsession on racial issues and insisting that danger of racial profiling supersedes any other concerns in the practice of law enforcement.
At the same time; the police do have a duty to remain as courteous as possible (even if being cursed or spat at) when they do the stop and searches; and I think the standards for stop and frisk should be fairly stringent, regardless of race (don’t want to give the police unwarranted power).
[i]”The NYCLU found that while young black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 comprise only 4.7% of the population of the city, they accounted for a whopping 41.6% of stops,”[/i]
The statistical significance depends on the demographics. The neighborhood demographics matter when determining what the above percentage means. If law enforcement is targeting certain neighborhoods due to disproportionately high volumes of gun violence or whatever the reason, what percentage of those neighborhoods are black and Latino?
Re: “The NYCLU found that while young black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 comprise only 4.7% of the population of the city, they accounted for a whopping 41.6% of stops,”
I would bet the age demographic between 14 and 24 accounts for more stops than any other age groups for asians and caucasians as well. Age and race are confounded together in this statistic.
While we are stuck on the race focus, what are the rates of violent crime committed by this age group for the various races?
[quote]My thinking here is that most of the same people rejecting Stop and Frisk, are those that are extreme anti-gun/pro gun control.[/quote]
Yes absolutely. We of the gun control freak lobby would like to see you not own a gun. I personally would like to see you banned from owning firearms. The Second Amendment is a dead artifact. It no longer serves its stated policy objectives and is therefore it is as obsolete as the ball and musket weapons in use at the time of its enactment. The personal possession of firearms even collectively will do nothing to protect a citizen from the tyranny of government in this modern world of aerial drones and laser guided bullets.
The other Amendments are solid gold and stand the test of time. Like the Fourth Amendment which proscribes government searches and seizures which are unreasonable. That has been interpreted to mean that the police may only detain you if they have a “reasonable suspicion” based on articulable facts that you are involved in criminal activity. And similarly there must be some quantum of factual objective reason to believe you are armed with a weapon before they may be entitled to pat down your outer clothing to see if they feel a weapon. Now if a ‘stop and frisk’ program loosens that standard in any way then it is unconstitutional as a matter of law. If it does not loosen that standard then it is nothing to begin with. It grants the police no greater authority than they had in the first place. That’s it. Either way, it’s bad. Unless you don’t approve of the Fourth Amendment the way I do not approve of the Second. [url]http://medicinelawyer.tumblr.com/[/url]