Policy Review #1 PDF

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stop and frisk policy review...

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Ella MacCallum SOC250_01 Prof. Anna Gjika October 18th, 2020

Stop and Frisk, otherwise known as Stop, Question and Frisk, is a policy where the police will detain and question pedestrians and potentially search them if they have a reasonable suspicion that the person in question committed a crime or is about to commit a crime. Michael Bloomberg, one of those responsible for creating the policy, claims that during the time that the policy was implemented crime drastically decreased, and that the policy was beneficial for the crime problem, specifically in New York City. However, in 2013, Judge Shira A. Scheidlin ruled Stop and Frisk a violation of the fourteenth amendment, which promises equal protection, because blacks and hispanics are subject to more stops and searches than whites (Washington Post, 2013). In my opinion, the benefits of Stop and Frisk do not outweigh the disadvantages. In fact, there are only a select few benefits of this policy, if any at all. Stop and Frisk, to put it bluntly, is a racist policy that gives police officers an excuse to constantly harass minority groups. The judicial system profiles minorities as more dangerous than white people, so Stop and Frisk focuses clearly on those minority groups that are seen as “scary” or “suspicious”, instead of doing what was promised and equally solving the crime problem. Even now, with it being banned and seen as “unconstitutional”, police officers still use that power they get from being able to pull someone aside and frisk them without reason to claim dominance over minorities that are targeted by our racist society.

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According to the Washington Post, Mayor Bloomberg claimed that “nowhere in [Justice Shira’s] 195 page decision does she mention the historic cuts in crime or the number of lives that have been saved.” Stop and Frisk is a policy surrounding the idea of persistent policing. If there are more police officers patrolling a street, there is more of a chance of a crime being stopped, so it would be logical to assume that Stop and Frisk would prevent harm from happening in communities. However, statistics show that Stop and Frisk has had “Statistically significant and negative effects of the lagged stop rates on rates of robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and homicide and no significant effects on rates of assault, rape or grand larceny” (The Washington Post, 2013). In that case, if Stop and Frisk has had no effect on most crimes, what has it done? People have expressed that there’s value to Stop and Frisk. “Maybe a gun gets off the street, a life gets saved, maybe drugs get confiscated…” (The Atlantic, 2014). However, at the policy’s peak in 2011, the NYPD made 685,724 stops, and also according to the Atlantic, 88% of those stopped were innocent. If Stop and Frisk’s purpose is to stop criminals and crime before it happens, but most of the people stopped and searched are innocent and crime rates aren’t changing, it’s safe to say that Stop and Frisk is not stopping harm from being caused. That brings me to the discussion of who is really treated fairly within the world of Stop and Frisk. If the NYPD was truly doing what it was supposed to be doing, patrolling and stopping people that they reasonably felt were suspicious and could commit a crime with NO bias, there would be an equal amount of stops made for each race. However, according to the Washington Post, Black people made up 52% of the people stopped, Hispanics made up 31%, and Whites and Others only made up 18%. Most of the stops made in New York, where Mike Bloomberg was mayor and Stop and Frisk is centered, are in areas like Flatbush, Brownsville, and Peakskill, neighborhoods that are minority dominated. The Bloomberg administration

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claimed that this is because the Stop and Frisk plan was focused more on neighborhoods with higher crime and had nothing to do with race. Similarly to the effects of the Broken Windows policy, if a police officer is stationed in an area that is shown to have higher crime rates than others, they will choose to detain anyone they see as remotely “suspicious looking” in order to keep the neighborhood’s crime rates down and show the government they’re doing their job. With police officers being stationed much more frequently in minority based neighborhoods, minorities are getting policed more often than white people, and being unfairly provoked and questioned, even if it’s just because he or she gave them a wrong look. It’s a proven psychological fact that when placed in a position of power, like the officers who are stationed in these “dangerous” neighborhoods, the power gets to your head and you begin to see your position as a much more dominant one. In this situation, that would be extremely dangerous and unfair, because if someone who didn't think they were doing anything wrong gets stopped and even slightly resists, the exchange can cross the moral line quickly and things can get unethical quickly. Looking at the policy this way, it’s fair to say the focus of Stop and Frisk, then, is not to stop crime rates. If that was the case, Bloomberg would have stationed more police officers in other neighborhoods and police officers would think to frisk white people as much as minorities. It’s to show dominance over minority groups. That, in itself, proves that the policy does not treat everyone fairly. The problem with Stop and Frisk lies solely on the ones who implement it. Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD made Stop and Frisk so that it would target neighborhoods that they saw as dangerous and suspicious. Therefore, in order to change the policy to actually solve what it’s supposed to solve, dive into the inside job and why the police feel that they can be so aggressive towards those that they are targeting. First, before anything else, provide bias training.

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A police officer should not be racist on a job that’s supposed to provide equal treatment to all people regardless of race. If a police officer is more likely to be aggressive towards someone who is a minority, train them on how to properly approach someone who is a minority with the same amount of respect as one would give to a white perpetrator. While on the job, I think it would be worth it to try to make Stop-and-Frisk polite. The Atlantic article even goes into this a little bit, saying “why not remove the testosterone” that makes a police officer so aggressive towards someone they see as suspicious? If a police officer opens a Stop and Frisk with a respectful walk through of what’s about to happen, asking for consent, like the law states that they’re supposed to do, police officers would show the respect that they are supposed to have on the job. Third, and finally, Bloomberg should be evenly distributing cops to every neighborhood. Regardless of what statistics say and what neighborhoods are seen as “bad”, crime can happen anywhere. If Bloomberg made it so that there were an even amount of cops in every neighborhood, patrolling every street and watching for any kind of crime instead of just “suspicious” people, crime rates could drop and Stop and Frisk could play its role.

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Works Cited Bergner, Daniel. “Is Stop-and-Frisk Worth It?” The Atlantic , Atlantic Media Company, 26 Apr. 2014, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/is-stop-and-frisk-worth-it/358644/. Matthews, Dylan. “Here's What You Need to Know about Stop and Frisk - and Why the Courts Shut It Down.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 13 Aug. 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/13/heres-what-you-need-to-know-abou t-stop-and-frisk-and-why-the-courts-shut-it-down/....