Stop and Frisk sounds like something good at the surface; cops randomly check people to see if they’re up to no good. While getting patted down in public is slightly awkward, there’s a chance that it could save many people’s lives. As stated in this article there has been success to tactic, as they’ve managed to “cut crime dramatically from New York to Los Angeles.” The main issue, however, is the targeting of certain races as opposed to others. How safe does Stop and Frisk keep us if only a select group of people are targeted, rather than everyone in general? A randomized checking of people that focuses on a particular race doesn’t seem so randomized at all.
This article by the New York Times shows us just how disproportionate these cases are. In a population made up of 23% black residents, 52% of people stopped and frisked were black. However, white residents made up only 10% of stop and frisk attempts, despite making up 34% of the entire population. There’s clearly racial bias in those numbers, and to be honest, I don’t think a lot of people in New York City deny that bias.
According to this Washington Post article, a Yale professor brought up a very solid point. If stop and frisk was being done properly, we’d see more frisking done in places with a higher crime rate. This is essentially a linear relationship, give or take any outliers, but in fact, we see a concave, curvilinear pattern instead. This means that places with a “medium” amount of crime deal with more stopping and frisking than places with lower or higher amounts, which doesn’t seem to make much sense either. The article also gives us another very interesting piece of information. On average, the cops manage to seize some of property from white citizens an average of every 27 stops, while it takes of average of 143 stops to seize something from a black citizen. You’d suspect that these numbers would provoke cops to disperse their targets a little more evenly, but the opposite seems to be happening. It’s interesting when we look at the article from The Atlantic, because the cops claim that “the race card is burnt out” and even resort to cursing to seem oblivious to racial targeting.
Everyone is capable of pulling off the same stunts, and a huge portion of people just slip under the radar due to their skin color. Instead of “keeping us safe,” they’re “keeping us safe from some people.” I think Stop and Frisk is incredibly useful in theory, but in practice, it’s nothing but a reason to further infuriate people of color within America. Especially with all the recent outbreaks of cop attacks over the past few months, it’s staring us right at the face. Cops abuse their power, and this is just one aspect of it.
How do we tackle a problem like this? Do we start forcing cops to wear cameras everywhere? Do we need to implement some sort of skewed quota to keep proportions of stop and frisks amongst races somewhat even? Do we eliminate stop and frisk all together?
Sources:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/is-stop-and-frisk-worth-it/358644/)
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/19/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-is-all-but-gone-from-new-york.html?_r=0
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/13/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-stop-and-frisk-and-why-the-courts-shut-it-down/
Nik, interesting and thought provoking post. I definitely agree that stop-and-frisk is not as clear cut as it may seem on the surface. I like how you acknowledged that it does cut crime before pointing out the discrimination aspect. Yes, there is a lot of racial discrimination in this policy and unfortunately there are cops who use it as an excuse to abuse power. It’s inexcusable. It’s a policy that needs reform and you ended with questions about how to tackle this problem. Your last question was, “do we we eliminate stop and frisk all together?”. I don’t think that that’s the answer. Stop-and-frisk does play a role in crime rates and getting rid of stop-and-frisk means allowing people in neighborhoods with higher crime rates to be at a higher risk. When stop-and-frisk went down, shootings increased (as you can see from the article posted below). Maybe those communities are just more dangerous places that have a higher need for stop-and-frisk. You mentioned that there should be more frisking done in places with higher crime rates and I agree 100%. So maybe that’s the proper reform. Instead of getting rid of it in communities with “medium” crime rates and allowing the crime rates in those places to increase, keep the stop-and-frisk there and also ensure we have it in other places with high crime rates. Stop-and-frisk shouldn’t be a policy only executed in places with minorities. But that doesn’t mean we should eradicate it all together. It should be a policy we keep but one in which people are frisked based on suspicious behavior, not “suspicious” skin-color.
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/william-bratton-nypd-commissioner-to-speak-on-crime-trends-shootings-up-and-stop-and-frisks-down-1.9992464
Nik I completely agree with the majority of what you stated here. Although there is a strong correlation for Stop and Frisk in reducing crime rates, it is undoubtedly racially driven a lot of the times. One thing you hinted to but did not expand on however was the uneven distribution of this policy. As the article you shared states, “the stop-and-frisk tactic was employed exhaustively, but not evenly”. In the context of our class and what we learned about the spatial aspect of New York City and it’s history I think this is also something important to consider. You stated that “instead of “keeping us safe,” they’re “keeping us safe from some people.” The first article I listed has a dotted map which indicated the areas of police stops in NYC. The second article I list also has a map but this time with the median incomes of areas in NYC that we can see have been gentrified over time. Both data sets are from the same year (2012) and when you look at them side by side, you can see that the places where stop and frisk was the most prominent have now become or are still in the process of being gentrified. This then makes me wonder, is stop and frisk really a policy to keep everyone safe or only certain people? Also apart from the impact that this policy has in terms of the racial divide, what other factors does it impact?
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/19/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-is-all-but-gone-from-new-york.html?_r=0
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/12/20/mapping_the_20yearlong_gentrification_of_5_nyc_enclaves.php
Nik, great post with interesting information! I think Ashley and Debra bring up interesting points about the spatial aspects to consider when discussing Stop and Frisk, in general. I found Ashley’s New York Times Article to be especially thought-provoking. The base articles we read for class bring up the issues of racial profiling and discrimination. While I think these are very important issues I would like to point out some of the conclusions that I drew from the statistics in Ashley’s source article. The article shows a steep decline in the amount of Stop and Frisk in NYC and shows various graphs on the crime trends and arrests trends over the past few years, some even dating back to the early 2000’s. One thing I found important to take note of is that while the decrease in Stop and Frisk has coincided with a lower arrest rate I don’t think that they are necessarily related in the way that some people may think. As pointed out in the article, the misdemeanors associated with “proactive policing are down […], while misdemeanors that don’t fit that category are not.” Logic would dictate that if fewer police officers are searching fewer and fewer people up front then the amount of crime they prevent or arrest people for would obviously decline. Now, while I can’t say for sure what the decline in violent crime has to do with the decline in Stop and Frisk, it’s still important to note the connection between the declines of misdemeanor charges and Stop and Frisk.
Now to address the issue of racial profiling and discrimination. I do agree with your statement, Nik, about “keeping us safe from some people” and I think it’s important to distinguish between events where the officer was frisking someone with de facto probable cause and something I would call, “biased probable cause”. Other bloggers for this week have addressed this issue of the officer’s state of mind and how their judgement undoubtedly affects these statistics in a direct way. We must have enforcers that police our population with a lens that should remain as objective as possible; however, this proves very difficult.
Nik asked a bunch of questions that made me think of all the sources and comments from this week’s blog. I think we can all agree that Stop and Frisk has benefitted the city, in terms of decreasing the level of crime, over the long-run, since its introduction. What we can not say for sure is if it’s benefits outweigh the social costs of its implementation. Do we want a more “suspicious” police force when that agenda is skewed and cookie cutter at times? Or do we want a less-invasive police force allowing more misdemeanor crimes to slip-by as the whole population gets by being less “checked”? It’s a thought-provoking tradeoff when both factors involved are not clear. This NYPD statistical compilation of year by year arrest percentages separated by race doesn’t show anything conclusive over the past four years. It shows an increase in Black misdemeanor arrests leading up to 2013 and then a small drop in 2014 and a general increase in the amount of white arrest for such crimes involving Stop and Frisk. These trends are, at most, varying by maybe 1% or 2% year-by-year, however. Small changes to reflect a shaky relationship between Stop and Frisk and a decrease in racial profiling.
Overall, racial profiling is and always will be present in policing. I find it hard to believe that we can train officers to profile less when they walk into their precinct and all of the wanted felons are non-white. Clearly, the indoctrination of who to look for has to be altered or people of a certain skin color really will “slip by unnoticed”. Some say the race card is “burnt out”, but much like a cliche is repeated, an issue such as race is integral to policing and should be a part of the conversation. Some say it is overused and in some cases it is, but here it is unclear and that is precisely why is must be discussed.
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/analysis_and_planning/crime_and_enforcement_activity.shtml