After reading about the stop and frisk phenomenon in New York City, many different issues came to mind. Perhaps the most obvious is the question of violating basic American rights by searching individuals without sufficient cause. The other, more ambiguous issue is that of racial profiling, and its impact on national security.

As observed in the Floyd vs City of New York case, there is a clear discrepancy in how the issue of constitutional rights is defined. According to Bloomberg, many people would die if the stop and frisk policies in effect would be outlawed. Sometimes, suspicion is enough of a reason to search an individual and ensure national safety. And random searching is a sort of algorithm to test a sample of a larger population.

Racial profiling is an interesting topic in America, because America is the land of the free, where everyone is equal. If people were truly standing on equal ground, there would be no reason to search people belonging to one race more often that people belonging to another. The fact that certain races do seem to be “frisked” more often has lead to bitter resentment of the policy.

However, in other countries, like Israel, racial profiling is an extremely prominent form of homeland security. In the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israeli soldiers look each visitor up and down before allowing them to pass through the airport, randomly pulling suspicious stragglers aside for questioning. At random checkpoints throughout the country, soldiers watch for any suspicious looking citizens. And they have had a tremendous success rate, stopping thousands of tragedies before they happen.

If stopping and frisking is really keeping New York City safer, does it matter that certain races are checked more often than others? As long as the suspicious Caucasians are checked as well, which they are, is pride and insecurity enough of a reason to allow dangerous individuals to roam freely?