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Is Stop-and-Frisk an effective policing practice?

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How has the concept of "reasonable suspicion" evolved throughout history?

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How has the concept of "reasonable suspicion" evolved throughout history?

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As a result of high crime rates in the late 1900s, the use of the stop-and-frisk tactic exceedingly increased, prompting more regulations within state and federal laws on standards for stop-and-frisk conduction. Most notably, courts within the state, local, and federal governments have expanded/elaborated on the concept of reasonable suspicion, defining what is acceptable and unacceptable. For example, in People v De-Bour 1976, the courts ruled that a bulge in a pedestrian's pocket/garment is not a justifiable reason for a non-consented stop-and-frisk. Brown v. Texas 1979 also ruled that a pedestrian walking away from police can not be categorized as "suspicious behavior" to warrant reasonable suspicion for stop-and-frisk sufficiently. Constitutional causes for stop-and-frisk were legally specified in Spitzer 1999.

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When did Stop-and Frisk become legalized?

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When did Stop-and Frisk become legalized?

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The Supreme Court case Terry v Ohio(1968) implemented the legal standard for the "stop-and-frisk" procedure/practice. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the stop and frisk of pedestrians by police is constitutional under the 4th amendment if "reasonable suspicion" is present. Parameters describing the basis of reasonable suspicion were not specified in the ruling.

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Stop-and-frisk sparks racial profiling controversy evolvement 

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Stop-and-frisk sparks racial profiling controversy evolvement 

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Complaints against the NYPD's aggressive and unjustified stops evoked from public uproar over many reported assaults and cases of racial harassment. Specifically, these complaints outright accused the NYPD of conducting Stop-and-Frisks with racial bias. Decades later, stop-and-frisk continues to be a controversial practice, facing numerous complaints. In 2011, due to a surge in the number of stops, an opposition movement arose, where politicians, citizens, the Malcom X Grassroots movement, and other organizations advocated for the stop of stop-and-frisk. This movement led to evident further public support of the cause from media highlighting data on police stops in 2011, the march from Harlem to the mayor's house in a protest in 2012, and a lawsuit being filed against the practice of stop-and-frisk by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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Law enforcement's response to accusation of inclusion of racial bias/racial profiling in stop-and-frisks.

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Law enforcement's response to accusation of inclusion of racial bias/racial profiling in stop-and-frisks.

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Police defend patterns of stop-and-frisk that suggest racial bias through the argument that crimes are committed more by minority groups than white Americans. Additionally, police claim the concentration and the effect of these crimes justify more aggressive enforcement of policing tactics in communities with minorities and that the high stop rates of minority groups like African Americans and Hispanics reduce crimes and showcases the efficient and justifiable use of stop-and-frisk.

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Minority groups' argument on the use and prevalence of racial profiling in police stops. 

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Minority groups' argument on the use and prevalence of racial profiling in police stops. 

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Members of minorities claim that the disproportional rate of stop-and-frisks among different ethnic groups, with 23% of African-Americans and 39% more Hispanics being interrogated than white people, stems from selection bias from police officers. Furthermore, a disparate impact is created from the differential treatment towards minorities, where the criteria/standard for reasonable suspicion to conduct a stop is reduced, causing minorities to be interrogated and searched because of their race rather than justifiable causes.

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JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.

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Stop-and-frisk is a common practice in law enforcement, where police officers, based on reasonable decision stop an individual in public, interrogate them and pat them down for weapons, drugs etc. Some stop-and-frisks can lead to arrests if suspicion behavior is successfully detected or if weapons are found on a pedestrian.

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NYPD's response to the rise of crime rates in the late 1980's and 1990's and it's impact on public fear

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NYPD's response to the rise of crime rates in the late 1980's and 1990's and it's impact on public fear

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During the 1980s-1990s, concern was raised about the basis behind pedestrian stops due to the rise of policing strategies that targeted minority groups in an attempt to control/reduce crime in high-crime areas. Concern mostly spread in large cities such as NYC, as the New York Police Department began using a "zero-tolerance" policing approach based on the "Broken Windows" theory created in 1982. Broken windows and zero-tolerance policing include aggressive attention towards minor or low-level crimes in an attempt to deter serious crime rates. This new approach to policing ignited angry and fearful reactions from minority communities and resulted in a societal drift because of citizens' decreasing trust in police offer's legitimacy.

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Civil-rights activists are ecstatic that a federal judge declared the NYPD's policy unconstitutional. But law-enforcement officials say the practice has made U.S. cities dramatically safer. Now what?

Down the block on the other side of the street, next to a ragged lot with a couple of vans parked randomly in the undergrowth, was a house the cops knew as a hangout for Bloods. A few streets off, Newark's immense basilica stood high in the background, luminous. A group of black men sauntered and danced toward the Bloods' house, blasting a hip-hop anthem that proclaimed, "Nigga, I ain't worried 'bout nothin' / Nigga, I ain't worried 'bout nothin'." It seemed a vague taunt to the cops, who let it go. The warrant checks turned out negative on the two Cubans. Big Cat kept the knife but didn't make an issue of it. He wrote the two men summonses for public consumption, and sent them away.

Judge Scheindlin's ruling on racial bias is interesting because of the math it rejects and the math it embraces. Essentially, the NYPD made the case that the racial disparities in who gets stopped are due to the disparities in who commits crimes. The percentage of blacks and Hispanics stopped in New York turns out, in fact, to correspond to the city's percentage of black and Hispanic index-crime suspects. Many more blacks and Hispanics are naturally going to be questioned, the police maintain. "It's not racially driven profiling," DeMaio told me about Newark's practice. "It's crime-driven profiling."

But Darius Charney, the lead trial lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights' suit, looks at the issue very differently. Because 88 percent of the people stopped in New York were innocent, he says, the department was in effect arguing "that law-abiding black people are more suspicious-look more suspicious, behave more suspiciously-than law-abiding white people." Scheindlin's decision is grounded in this numerical proof of discrimination. The prejudice may not be willful or even conscious, but in the practice of stop-and-frisk, as Charney frames it, "race is a proxy for reasonable suspicion."

This situation isn't made any better by the Supreme Court's blurry decree half a century ago in Terry v. Ohio, the case that set the standards for stop-and-frisk. To carry out a stop, officers don't need anything so substantial as probable cause-that's the requirement for an arrest. But they do need more than just a "hunch," the justices said. They need "specific and articulable facts" and "rational inferences," or "acts, each of them perhaps innocent in itself but which taken together warranted further investigation." And, as the Court stated in a subsequent case, the officer can consider "the totality of the circumstances." So combine a couple of what the police term "furtive movements"-like walking with your hands in your pockets and glancing over at a police car, things any of us might do-with being in a high-crime area, and you're subject to a stop.

The criteria for elevating a stop to the level of a frisk are no more constraining. Technically, you can object at any point in the proceedings, you can question the cop's rationale, you can even attempt to walk away, but these responses can win you an obstruction charge or the allegation that trying to leave amounts to suspicious behavior. With legal standards like these, there's a lot of room for factors like race to come into play.

It may not matter enough that a department is well integrated. (The NYPD is more than 40 percent black and Hispanic; Newark's department, 74 percent.) An abundance of evidence demonstrates that race will come into play for cops, just like it does for any human being. Psychologists who study unconscious bias have shown that no matter what a person's conscious attitudes, he or she tends to associate black faces with unfavorable and nefarious traits-a finding that holds true, one important study suggests, for about half of black people themselves. If you're a cop, add to this a daily walk past an all-minority Most Wanted poster in your precinct house, and you're going to be prone to making some reflexive assumptions.

"Get on the car!"

Kiairus Diamond has heard these words from Newark police on three occasions in the past several months. We talked in the Dream Lounge at Malcolm X Shabazz High School, in the city's South Ward. Kiairus, a sophomore, sat with Roman Richardson, a senior, and Joshua Rodriguez, a junior. At Shabazz-a school that's pulling itself up after nearly being shut down four years ago for its dismal test scores and an unsafe environment-the Dream Lounge is a place where a facilitator guides kids to think up projects and life ambitions that might not have occurred to them without some help and space for imagining. The walls are covered in photos of kids declaiming their goals, the floor is carpeted, and there are big red balls to sprawl on while you're daydreaming. Kiairus, a slightly built, dreadlocked rapper, is now creating a piece of musical theater. "It's all genres of music," he explained proudly.

"Get on the car!" means hurry up and spread your hands on the hood or trunk. It means you'd better stay still while you're frisked. Roman and Joshua have heard it, too: Roman once, and Joshua, in one form or another, 12 times. Neither Kiairus nor Joshua had any record of lawbreaking or trouble at school. Roman was caught in Shabazz a few months earlier with marijuana and was on juvenile probation. He had a job leafleting for one of Newark's mayoral candidates. He's more than 6 feet tall and wears his hair in a one-inch Afro. He hopes to be a sanitation worker. His uncle is a policeman.

"Cops in Newark," Kiairus said, "if your skin is like this"-he touched his dark forearm-"they're going to think you're on your way to doing something, or coming from doing something."

"When I see the cop car pull up," Joshua said, "it's confusing and infuriating."

"It's racial profiling," Kiairus said.

I spoke with Shabazz's principal, Gemar Mills, in his office. He wore a cardigan in the school colors, black and gold, with the Shabazz crest beside the buttons. Behind his desk hung a giant school banner. "It reduces your self-confidence," he said of stop-and-frisk. "It's no different than getting robbed. Getting put up against a wall, it's no different than someone stealing your stuff. It can be traumatizing. For the police, they let you go, it's no harm, no foul. But it can make children feel the community has given up on their chance to be successful."

Mills has taken the school from a 19 percent passing rate on the state math exam to 37 percent. The situation at Shabazz was so bad before Mills took over, in 2011, that Newark's Star-Ledger once likened the school to Baghdad. His shoulders are broad. He played college football. As a teenager, before sports straightened him out, his life had been going awry; he wound up with 400 stitches in his face after friends started "some trouble in a club." The scarring is somewhat hidden behind his beard. "I grew up in the projects," he said. "My mother had me when she was 16, my father said I wasn't his. I'm not supposed to be sitting here in this office; I'm not supposed to be getting my doctorate. The labels don't always apply. But the labels affect the amount of stop-and-frisk that goes on in these neighborhoods."

He was thinking of his students, but he has firsthand experience. This past December, he was driving near Shabazz and spotted a kid who'd dropped out. He called the boy over to his SUV, chatted with him through his open window, encouraged him to come back to school, and continued on his way. Within seconds, cops in a squad car came up behind Mills, pulled him over with a whoop of their siren, asked for his ID, and told him to open his back windows so they could peer inside. Only once he'd calmly convinced them that he was Shabazz's principal did they say he was free to go.

Has stop-and-frisk brought any benefits? Scheindlin did not consider this question in her courtroom. In fact, she scolded the NYPD for raising it. Her job was to determine the constitutionality-not the efficacy-of policy and actions, and she sent a loud message, heard around the country, that the department's strategy fell on the wrong side of the law. Yet the answer to the question-which civil-rights advocates don't much like to hear-is probably yes.

Ever since the 1990s, as crime rates have tumbled in New York and diminished nationally, liberal camps have been loath to allow that the improvements have much to do with policing. This stems partly from an aversion to Mayor Giuliani, who would have to get some of the credit if credit were to be given. It stems, too, from long-held liberal uneasiness, even antipathy, toward law enforcement. Rather than praise human intervention, many liberals have tied the era of increasing safety, especially in New York, to impersonal trends, from demographic and socioeconomic patterns to the decline in the use of crack cocaine.

Nobody has studied the trends and the numbers more thoroughly than Frank Zimring, the chair of the Criminal Justice Studies Program at the University of California at Berkeley. Once you get him talking about the statistics he's gathered, it's hard to get him to stop. "I was and am a law professor who voted for McGovern," he said when I asked about his politics. "So I come to all this with ambivalence. But I am moved, as a scientist." Then he started in on his charts and tables.

In 2012, Zimring published The City That Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control, in which, drawing on an unsurpassed wealth of data, he tries to isolate the causes of the crime drop in New York, particularly after 2000. In doing so, he debunks all sorts of liberal claims. To begin with, he reveals that the demographic argument-which rests on the idea that New York's population has collectively aged beyond its worst crime-committing years-doesn't stand up. Yes, the city's overall population is slightly older, but to concentrate on the racial groups responsible for the huge majority of index offenses is to discover that the percentage of blacks and Hispanics between the ages of 15 and 29 hasn't decreased at all since 2000, even though crime has gone right on declining. As for the notion that falling crime rates can be linked to the availability of legal abortions beginning in the 1970s, and to fewer boys growing up in troubled, single-parent homes, Zimring assembles data showing that the number of children raised in single-parent households has climbed in the decades since 1980.

But what about New York's economic boom? What about gentrification? Since poverty is the root of crime, aren't these factors behind crime's abating? Zimring lays out the figures. Poverty counts have remained stubbornly high; so has youth unemployment. (If anything, the ever-widening gap between the city's rich and poor should lead to deeper feelings of alienation and more lawbreaking.) Maybe if New York consisted only of Manhattan, from where the impoverished have been displaced, the economics could explain the trajectory of crime. But turn to Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens, where index offenses have plummeted about as much, and economic answers don't hold up.

Incarceration rates? No, the incapacitation of criminals can't be the cause, because over the past two decades the rate of New Yorkers sent off to prison has dropped by 40 percent.

What about the end of the crack epidemic? Again, no. That came in the mid-1990s. It doesn't correlate well with the crime graphs.

What does correlate strongly is proactive policing. But is it possible to separate out the elements of this kind of law enforcement-to discern whether, say, arresting petty criminals like squeegee men, or holding local commanders strictly accountable, or stopping and frisking on the street, is the most important, or whether all are necessary?

About a year ago, amid the media firestorm leading up to Judge Scheindlin's ruling, the NYPD hurried to curtail stops. By the final months of 2013, the frequency had dipped well below the rate that led to the initial lawsuit back in 1999-though Zimring notes that wiggle room in record keeping could lie behind some of the statistical shift. No rush of crime has followed, which activists cite as proof that the tactic is an unnecessary evil. But others caution that the time frame is too short to clarify anything. There's also the possibility that with crime in New York so attenuated, aggressive measures have become less crucial.

Zimring, for his part, is certain about the effectiveness of the proactive package. "Stopping people you don't trust is an essential ingredient," he says, adding, unapologetically, "It is part of owning and governing the territory you're patrolling."

Less clear is how much stopping and frisking police should do, and how it should be done. "There are a lot of stops in any good big-city police department," he says. "The real problem is testosterone. In New York City, stops and frisks became ceremonies of dominance. The tactic is invasive, inherently. It is degrading when it's done wrong, when it's testosterone-laden ... What I don't know is if ... the dominance in those stops and the sheer volume of them were essential to the results."

When we talked, Zimring wanted to make another thing plain. No stop-and-frisk strategy of any value, he said, was going to look "democratic." As long as departments zero in on high-crime areas, as they should and do, cops are going to be patting down a preponderance of young minority men, some guilty and some innocent. And minorities-who are the preponderant victims of index crimes, the people most often killed and mugged and burglarized-are going to be the most immediate beneficiaries. This benefit, Zimring argues in cold terms, comes with a price, "a special tax on minority males." And that leads him to ask whether the awful emotional cost can be reduced while the benefit is retained.

Monifa Bandele has a simple reply to this kind of rumination. Stop-and-frisk, she insists, should be abolished. "The idea that cops need to intimidate people of color, to violate our rights in order to protect people of color," she says, "is like some Islamist societies' saying the only way to protect women is to keep them under Sharia law." It would be acceptable, she told me, to stop pinpointed suspects of specific crimes-but what she was outlining has little to do with proactive street policing.

The positions of civil-rights lawyers around the country may not be quite as absolute, but in 2012, when San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee discussed policing with Mayor Bloomberg and then announced that he was contemplating a stop-and-frisk policy to combat gun violence, local attorneys and advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights raced in to make sure Lee reversed himself. In New York, meanwhile, a curious thing has happened. The new mayor, who ran so ardently against stop-and-frisk, has named William Bratton, the architect of the city's aggressive tactics in the 1990s, as the new police commissioner. In ways yet to be spelled out, Bratton will have to attempt to soften policing while making the city ever more secure.

When I rode with Big Cat and Gesuelli, many of their judgments about the people they decided to stop, biased or not, were on the mark. Their track record suggests two lessons. One is that the tally of innocent people waylaid, as calculated by civil-rights attorneys, isn't completely accurate. That is, it's legally precise but at the same time misleading-a complexity that underscores the challenge of policing in accord with fundamental rights and in the hope of criminal deterrence. Cops may come up empty and let a subject go without an arrest or a summons (as happens 74 percent of the time in Newark), but this doesn't always mean that they've targeted a law-abiding citizen. Take the pair of black men Big Cat and Gesuelli stopped on a rough block during our rounds in the Second Precinct. One was sitting in a parked car, the other was leaning into its passenger-side window.

"When was the last time you were locked up?," Big Cat asked the two men.

"Four months," one of them said.

"For what?"

"I don't know. Narcotics. Something."

"You don't know?"

"It was heroin."

"How much heroin?"

"I believe it was 83 bags. But that don't mean I couldn't change my life around." He didn't sound altogether earnest.

It wasn't the only time I heard this kind of conversation. Another man, wearing ski pants and sitting on a parked car on a dark street, told the cops that he had 12 felony convictions and had done federal time on a gun charge. "I'm just waiting on my mom," he said when asked why he was perched on the car hood in ski gear. Frisking him, Big Cat found only some empty mini ziplock baggies in a breast pocket. "What are these for?"

"Paperwork."

The second lesson is more hopeful. What if cops were heavily trained to be careful in their judgments, and to do their field inquiries with respect and even a measure of deference? My nights with Big Cat and Gesuelli-who rarely raised their voices-suggest that such a change might be feasible. The idea may sound a little naive, but it comes up often in discussions about stop-and-frisk. Zimring brought it up during our conversations. "Why couldn't it work?" he asked. "Why not remove the testosterone? Why not Stop-and-Frisk Polite? Why not a different kind of policeman?"

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Civil-rights activists are ecstatic that a federal judge declared the NYPD's policy unconstitutional. But law-enforcement officials say the practice has made U.S. cities dramatically safer. Now what? Down the block on the other side of the street, next to a ragged lot with a couple of vans parked randomly in the undergrowth, was a house the cops knew as a hangout for Bloods.