Is Stop and Frisk Racial Profiling?

Stop and Frisk: The Efficacy of This Technique

Stop and frisk is one of the most controversial techniques used by the NYPD to reduce crime. Stop and frisk, as its name suggests, is when police officers stop pedestrians on the street and frisk them for drugs, weapons, and other illegal substances. On the surface, it might seem as if this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment which prohibits searches and seizures without probable cause. Almost by definition, stop and frisks are conducted without adhering to usual standards of probable cause since they are usually made relatively randomly at police discretion with only minor evidence of an infraction. Furthermore, the NYPD's specific stop and frisk program was recently declared unconstitutional but not primarily based on the Fourth Amendment. According to the district court judge the policy was "discriminatory, and showed little regard for the requirement that stops be based on rational grounds. It had led repeatedly to violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments" (Bergner 1). Concerns about racial profiling in the stops were the primary reason for the judge's ruling (Bergner 1). The decision, however, is likely to be appealed.

Stop and frisks are usually justified by the U.S. Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio which allowed non-obtrusive pat-downs. "The exclusionary rule cannot properly be invoked to exclude the products of legitimate and restrained police investigative techniques, and this Court's approval of such techniques should not discourage remedies other than the exclusionary rule to curtail police abuses for which that is not an effective sanction" (Terry v. Ohio, 1967). An analogy might be made with random traffic stops for drunk driving of cars in high-risk areas during times when people are known to be drinking. However, the Terry decision still requires the policy to carry out such policies in a manner that is not discriminatory and protects subjects' civil rights.

New York City adopted stop and frisk policies during the Giuliani Administration, as an extension of the popular 'broken window' theory which underlined the need to keep a substantial police presence in at-risk communities as a means of constant deterrence. Since then, "in cities across the country, stop-and-frisk strategies have gained great currency. They aim to get guns off the street, to glean information and solve crime sprees, and, perhaps above all, to act as a deterrent, by letting criminals and would-be lawbreakers know that they might find themselves getting a pat-down at any given moment" (Bergner 1). In its NYC incarnation, stop-and-frisk is ostensibly random and is universally applied to see if the targets have illegal weapons or otherwise pose a danger to the community.

However, there has been a great deal of resistance to the campaign even before the court ruling. First, a number of people have called it ineffective. "In 2011, the NYPD recorded 686,000 stops. Only about 12% ended in an arrest or a summons" (Bergner 2014). Secondly, and more seriously, there is the allegation that is conducted in a manner that racially profiles certain individuals. According to the most recent available data on the program, "in 2013, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 191,558 times" of which 169,252 were totally innocent (88%)…104,958 were black (56%)…55,191 were Latino (29%). 20,877 were white (11%)" ("Stop and frisk data," NY Civil Liberties Union). In other words, the vast majority of stops were conducted on innocent persons never convicted of crimes.

In one recent stop, as chronicled in the news magazine the Atlantic, it is noted that very minor transgressions can cause the police to search an individual. "Did these three [detainees] meet the Supreme Court's guidelines for reasonable suspicion? Did they look, from a rational perspective, like they might be criminals? Did they fulfill the legal criteria for a stop...in the current era of what's known as proactive policing, this minor offense frequently serves as a basis for a field inquiry" such as drinking alcohol from an open container (Bergner 1). "They collected IDs and used their phones to run warrant checks" and when cleared, the men were issued minor summons.

The police argue that the disproportionate number of minority suspects is due to the fact that high-crime areas are disproportionately populated by minorities. They defend the practice, noting that minorities often have the most to lose by allowing a neighborhood to remain crime-ridden. When asked, "had the men been white, would the patrolmen have been so eager to bother them about two open beers...but with two white children present, would they have even prolonged the encounter with the questions and the warrant checks" the police said race was not a factor (Bergner 1). Although the police interviewed in the article denied this, there can be no doubt that there is a strong perception that stop and frisk is unjustly applied against members of historically-discriminated against racial groups, particularly young men. The anger it generates against the police and the lack of community goodwill must be weighed against any deterrence value it might possess.