Pearce 1 Dylan Pearce Bedell CAS138T 5 February 2014 Civic Issues Blog 1: An Overview of Stop & Frisk Practices

One controversial debate over civil rights, race, and policing continues to standout in the headlines of newspapers since the start of the new year- the New York Police Departments stopand-frisk practices. New Yorks police officers have been have been stopping, questioning, and usually frisking hundreds of thousands of citizens every year in an attempt to reduce crime rates. Unfortunately, evidence shows that these procedures have been extremely discriminatory. Since 2002, over 4 million completely innocent New Yorkers have underwent interrogations, as they walk the streets, and a vast majority of these individuals are African American or Latino. The stop-and-frisk policy reached its height under Mayor Michael Bloombergs administration (2002-2013), which wholeheartedly supported the broken windows theory of crime. From a sociological perspective, broken windows aims to eliminate major crimes by cracking down on and increasing punishments for less-serious offenses. Bloomberg applied this concept to New York by allowing police officers to frisk any individual who appeared suspicious of a violation. By finding and confiscating weapons, drugs, or other illegal paraphernalia, the citys police hoped to deter individuals from committing more violent offenses, such as murder or assault. However, a major issue revealed itself each year when the NYPD released its mandatory arrest reports- approximately nine out of ten people that were

Pearce 2 stopped and frisked were entirely innocent. In other words, only about ten percent of these suspicions were actually accurate and resulted in arrests. Not only are these stop-and-frisk practices ineffective, they are also unfair because they target certain individuals based on their race and ethnicity. This point is proven by statistics, which show that nearly 90 percent of the stops between 2002 and 2011 were conducted on blacks and Latinos. In response, supporters of stop-and-frisk will generally argue that these numbers do not carry much weight because blacks and Latinos make up a large population of the residents in New York City. However, statistics can once again disprove advocates; in a predominately white region of New York known as Park Slope, blacks and Latinos only amount to 24 percent of the population, yet they are involved in 79 percent of stops. How does this maltreatment affect the innocent New Yorkers being prejudged and stopped by police officers? The simple answer is that these New Yorkers mistrust the men in blue who are supposed to be around for protection in the first place. This mistrust is highlighted in the Vera Institute of Justices survey of 500 men and women who had been stopped-and-frisked in highly patrolled regions of New York. A majority of these residents were blacks and Latinos who reported that they dealt with both physical force and threats during their stops. Additionally, these individuals revealed that the threatening ordeals have become reoccurring phenomena in their lives. For instance, 44 percent of respondents said that theyd been stopped at least nine times and one male claimed to be stopped more than 60 times. To make matters worse, only 29 percent of the survey group had been given a reason of stoppage by a police officer. As a result, these New Yorkers no longer have trust in their police officers. Only 40 percent claimed to be comfortable requesting help

Pearce 3 from the police if they were in trouble and only 60 percent said they would talk to the NYPD if they were victims of violence. Clearly, there is a major civic issue within New Yorks policing system if citizens cannot trust their own police officers to protect them in times of need. However, there is hope on the horizon for those residents being racially profiled. December 31 not only concluded the year 2013, but also concluded Mayor Bloombergs time in office. With newly sworn in Mayor Bill de Blasio governing the city, stop-and-frisk may have a very different future in New York. Additionally, many different civil rights organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union are beginning to help blacks, Latinos, and people of any background fight against the discriminatory stop-and-frisk program. Implications for these many new changes in New York will be analyzed in future blog posts, so stay tuned for more information. Sources:

http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/stop-and-frisk-nypdmistrust_n_3955175.html