In one of the discussion articles, Heather Mac Donald wrote “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.” I agree with the claim that New York is now a safer place to live in, since the numbers show that the crime rate of New York has decreased drastically over the past few decades. However, the articles say that the decrease in crime rate is relatively low, compared to the number of people who were stopped for the police’s stop and frisk tactics. This supports the claim that stop and frisk may not be an effective method of preventing crime. I agree with Robert Gangi, who states that the police department is focusing on the wrong numbers. He says, “a misguided emphasis on quotas explains the exponential increase in stop and frisk.” New York City police are led to follow a quota-based-policing, which leads to “nuisance arrests” for charges against things like sleeping on park benches and selling flowers in the street. This drives many people to dislike, and disobey the police. If the people do not respect or trust the police to be focusing on the important things rather than things that would fulfill their quota, are they really doing a good job? Crime and murder rates have gone down in other cities that use less stop and frisk tactics. Donnel Baird says, “The real criminals are far too organized and savvy to be caught by a sloppy policy like stop and frisk.” Shouldn’t we focus on capturing such real criminals rather than tracking down parked cars that went past their time on the muni-meter or watching out for people jumping subway turnstiles?
The racial profiling done by the police, which the NYCLU article discusses, is heavily criticized as well. The numbers were shocking, that African Americans consist of more than 50% of those stopped by the police and Latinos consist of 1/3 of the stopped. And the interesting fact was that the percentage of people actually carrying weapons was higher for the whites than for blacks or latinos. These disproportionate numbers clearly indicate racial profiling. The innocent people who are stopped because the police assume that they are “suspicious” must feel humiliated and annoyed. Furthermore, these stop and frisk rules that the police follow seem very vague. The officers can stop people if they feel that there is something suspicious going on. The number one reason for stops were “furtive movements,” which seems like a very vague reason for stopping someone. The reason “violent crime suspected” was only the fifth largest reason for stops. Should it not be the first? I believe many people are getting stopped for no good reason, and that the stop and frisk tactic is not an effective tactic (or “no longer” an effective tactic, if it ever was before). The police should focus on capturing real criminals, not innocent people just to fulfill their quota.
