Stop-And-Frisk: Not Good For Citizens Or Police Officers

As a middle-aged white female who has experienced being pulled over by the police only a few times in her life (for admittedly legitimate reasons and by officers who usually let me go with a polite warning to keep an eye on my speed), I sympathize with anyone who is going about their day, living their life, doing nothing wrong, yet gets targeted by police and questioned like a criminal.

A free society should have little tolerance for police officers who randomly detain innocent people – despite the hubbub that randomly stopping and frisking people can decrease crime rates.  

Police are trained to watch for suspicious activity, and the safety of themselves and society often depends on nothing more than their gut instincts. So, while I have zero intention of bad mouthing everyone who carries a badge (I happen to like cops a lot – they’re the ones I call when I need help), I am suggesting that statistics show that the NYPD has fallen into a pattern of letting the race, ethnicity and socio-economic status of citizens sway their decision on who looks like they’re up to no good and who doesn’t.

Based on New York’s own statistical reports, the numbers of citizens randomly stopped, interrogated and/or searched has steadily increased since 2002. Not surprisingly, blacks and Latinos have consistently experienced the highest number of detainments by police. Also worth noting is that police reports show that 82 to 89% of people who were stopped between 2002 and 2012 were “totally innocent.”  

Interestingly, along with this obvious pattern of profiling comes the officer-driven allegation that a so-called quota system keeps track of how many people they stop, frisk and question. If their numbers are not high enough, reprimands or sub-par performance evaluations may be leveled against them by supervisors or commanders.

If stop-and-frisk quotas truly exist, it is a daunting revelation as this endangers the lives of officers as citizens grow to dislike and distrust neighborhood police officers more and more, and officers are forced to ignore their gut instincts and focus on meeting the demands of ill-conceived quotas.  

But, NYPD statistics aren’t enough to rattle Mayor Bloomberg as he insists murder/crime rates are down in New York because more weapons and drugs are confiscated during random searches of citizens. We’ll have to wait and see what Bloomberg will do now as he vows to appeal the recent ruling of Judge Shira Scheindlin who believes the practice of random stop-and-frisk policies are unconstitutional.