STOP AND FRISK NEW YORK
 

“It is simply fantastic to urge that a [stop and frisk] procedure performed in public by a policeman while the citizen stands helpless, perhaps facing a wall with his hands raised, is a ‘petty indignity.’  It is a serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person, which may inflict great indignity and arouse strong resentment, and it is not to be undertaken lightly…. Even a limited search of the outer clothing for weapons constitutes a severe, though brief, intrusion upon cherished personal security, and it must surely be an annoying, frightening, and perhaps humiliating experience.”   

– Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, Terry v. Ohio, 1968

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EXCERPTS FROM MAJOR NEWS STORIES AND COMMENTARY ABOUT NEW YORK CITY'S ENORMOUS STOP AND FRISK CAMPAIGN AND THE OPPOSITION TO IT FROM 1999 TO FLOYD TRIAL IN 2013

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  Intro from the summer of 2013:

In Mayor Bloomberg's third term (2010-2013) the NYPD has averaged over 600,000 recorded stop and frisks where police officers filled out what the NYPD calls "UF-250" forms. At the same time, the police department also made an unknown number of stops, frisks and searches, possibly hundreds of thousands more, in which UF-250 forms were not filled out. The numbers of reported and unreported stop and frisks have been increasing since the 1990s prompting multiple lawsuits, an investigation and report by the NY state attorney general, protests, lengthy academic and research studies, strongly critical newspaper  columns, and many news stories. Yet the mayor and his police commissioner go on, targeting mainly teenagers and young men, nearly 90% of whom are blacks and Latinos.

As the following excerpts note in passing, the stops often include a search of the person's clothing and possessions. Although it is rarely discussed, most such searches inside of pockets, clothing and possessions are illegal and unconstitutional.  

As everyone including Governor Cuomo now say, the marijuana possession arrests are a direct product of the stop and frisks. In 2012 the stop and frisks were down 22%. In 2012, the marijuana possession arrests were down ... 22%.  Despite Governor Cuomo's push for decriminalization to stop the marijuana arrests, and the support of all five NYC district attorneys and much of the legislature, it may not be possible to end the marijuana arrests without seriously altering the stop and frisks. And Bloomberg and Kelly may stall that change until the next mayor takes over in 2014.  We will see..... 

                                                                                                             [written in the summer of 2013]

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Stop and Frisks Trial in Floyd case, Judge Scheindlin and more

Center for Constitutional Rights law suit against the NYPD's Stop and Frisks, Floyd, et al. v. City of New York.
http://www.ccrjustice.org/floyd
 

New York Daily News Articles about the 'Floyd' trial and more
http://www.nydailynews.com/search-results/search-results-7.113?q=Scheindlin&selecturl=site

"The Stop-and-Frisk Challenge," by Matthew McKnight, The New Yorker, March 27, 2013
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/03/the-stop-and-frisk-challenge.html
The plaintiffs in Floyd v. City of New York, a class-action lawsuit regarding the N.Y.P.D.’s stop-and-frisk practices that went to trial last week, contend that stop-and-frisk practices violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But that’s the legal wording. In a press briefing a few days before the trial began, David Ourlicht, one of the four named plaintiffs, put the violations he feels into more everyday terms:
I don’t [want to] have to walk outside and have that thought in the back of my mind: “This time will they shoot me or will I get beat up? Will I go to jail for something I didn’t do?” I want to be able to move on and not have to feel that. I don’t want my friends to have to feel that anymore. I don’t want my—when I have kids, I don’t want them to feel that.
 

"Orwellian Law Enforcement: Police 'Stop and Frisk' Detentions in New York City" by By Li Onesto, March 27, 2013
http://www.globalresearch.ca/orwellian-law-enforcement-police-stop-and-frisk-detentions-in-new-york-city/5328718
More than 1.6 million people live in Manhattan, New York. If every single one of these people were detained and harassed, had their pockets gone through and were humiliated, if all these people had this done to them not only once but three times this would be the number of stop-and-frisks carried out by the NYPD since 2004: FIVE MILLION in the last nine years.

"Walking While Black in New York," New York Times Editorial Board, March 22, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/opinion/walking-while-black-in-new-york.html?_r=0
The New York City Police Department has a long history of violating constitutional rights by stopping, questioning or frisking people on the streets without legal justification. The city has steadfastly denied that the detentions — made under its increasingly unpopular stop-and-frisk program — have been based on race.

But that claim is being challenged in Floyd v. the City of New York, a federal class-action trial in Manhattan, where witnesses including police officers are arguing that the department does, in fact, use race as the basis for stopping and frisking hundreds of thousands of citizens a year.

This week, the court heard a troubling recording secretly made last month by Officer Pedro Serrano, of the 40th Precinct, in the South Bronx. Mr. Serrano is one of a handful of officers who began tape-recording conversations with their colleagues or superiors to document what they saw as wrongdoing.

In the recording, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack is heard urging Mr. Serrano to stop, question and, if necessary, frisk “the right people at the right time, the right location.” When Mr. Serrano asked for clarification about who the “right people” were, the inspector replied: “The problem was, what, male blacks.” He continued, “And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21.”

On its face, this would seem to violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against unlawful search and seizure. Police officers can legally stop and detain a person only when they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is committing, has committed or is about to commit a crime.

The trial court also heard this week from Officer Adhyl Polanco of the 41st Precinct, who had taped proceedings in his station house. Mr. Polanco testified that officers were subject to a quota system, which required them to write more summonses, make more arrests and create stop-and-frisk encounters. He said that his superiors wanted “20 summons and one arrest per month.” The plaintiffs argue that a quota system put officers under pressure to make unconstitutional stops.

The trial is expected to last six weeks. But the testimony has already pointed to disturbing conduct by the police command and a profound indifference to the constitutional rights of the city’s citizens.
 

"Momentum Surges For Police Reform," By Natasha Lennard, Salon, March 20, 2013 NYC Politicians Push For A Police Watchdog. A Federal Judge Examines Stop And Frisk.
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/man_turns_face_into_tattoo_billboard_for_internet_porn_sites_regrets_it/
The NYPD is currently on trial in more ways than one. While a federal judge presides over a landmark case challenging the constitutionality of the police department’s stop-and-frisk tactic, political will is growing to ban the racially divisive policing practices and to increase oversight on NYPD behavior. From the streets of East Flatbush to the forums of mayoral debates, momentum is growing to challenge the NYPD as it currently operates.

"In The Floyd Case, The Nypd Faces Tough Scrutiny Of Its Stop-And-Frisk Tactic," by Bruce Reilly, The Guardian, UK,  March 19, 2013
New York's mayor defends the policy, but critics say crime rate claims are overstated, with communities hurt by racial profiling, The Guardian, UK,  March 19, 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/19/nypd-stop-frisk-floyd-case
The New York Police Department is on trial in Floyd v City of New York, and the public is watching.
 

"NYPD Stop-And-Frisk Lawsuit Starts 'Trial Of The Century,' Lawyer Says" by Matt Sledge, Huffington Post, March 13, 2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/13/stop-and-frisk-lawsuit_n_2870401.html
The Center for Constitutional Rights contends that the NYPD's practices disproportionately affect people of color, even allowing for higher crime rates in black and Latino neighborhoods. It hopes to force the NYPD to curb -- though not end -- its use of the practice following community consultation. The judge in the federal case, Floyd v. City of New York, is the same one who briefly halted a component of stop-and-frisk that targets Bronx buildings in a separate lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin's ultimate decision on stop-and-frisk will apply to both cases.

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Judge To Weigh Ny Police Tactics In Bronx Housing Case, Basil Katz, Reuters, November 7, 2012

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-newyork-stopandfriskbre8a62hy-20121107,0,7345781.story

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A civil liberties lawyer on Wednesday asked a U.S. judge to force the New York Police Department to develop and implement clear policies on how it stops people in and around certain buildings in the borough of the Bronx.

The request capped seven days of testimony before U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan, in one of three main lawsuits challenging aspects of New York City's controversial "stop and frisk" crime-fighting tactics.

In the Bronx case, the New York Civil Liberties Union and 12 plaintiffs have asked Scheindlin for a preliminary injunction against aspects of "Operation Clean Halls," a citywide police patrol program inside and around private, mostly low-income housing buildings that opt to enroll.

In his closing argument Wednesday, NYCLU attorney Christopher Dunn asked the judge to compel the city to improve oversight of the police so that stops of people suspected of criminal trespass outside a "Clean Halls" property are made with reasonable suspicion.

"We want a real, specific department policy and procedure that spells out how and why a person can be stopped outside 'Clean Halls' buildings," Dunn said. Dunn also asked the judge to order new training and accountability measures....

The NYCLU argues that last year, 1,137 of 1,857 stops in the Bronx of people suspected of criminal trespass outside "Clean Halls" properties were made without reasonable suspicion and were potentially unlawful....

Over the course of the seven-day bench trial, the judge heard testimony from high-ranking police officials, individual plaintiffs and expert witnesses. Scheindlin on Wednesday said she would rule only after reviewing additional written briefs to be submitted later this month.

In a ruling last month allowing another stop-and-frisk lawsuit to proceed to trial, Scheindlin said that case involved "matters of grave public concern." She also questioned whether police, in their zeal to keep housing residents safe, were violating the rights of the same people they were seeking to protect.

The case is Jaenean Ligon et al v City of New York, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, no. 12-cv-2274.
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Momentum Builds in the Fight Against Stop-and-Frisk, by Christie Thompson, The Nation, October 31, 2012

http://www.thenation.com/article/170944/momentum-builds-fight-against-stop-and-frisk

New York City Council member Deborah Rose adjourned a three-and-a-half-hour evening hearing on stop-and-frisk with a word of advice:  “Be safe traveling home,” she said. “Avoid the police.”

There seemed little else to say, now that Rose and the packed room of hearing attendees had heard nearly thirty testimonies of abuse and harassment at the hands of the New York City Police Department.

Among others, Rose heard from a Bangladeshi teenager who was patted down by two male police officers looking for marijuana on her way to school, a mother who was beaten by police in front of her home for having a closed bottle of alcohol, and a civil rights activist who was thrown against a wall and frisked during an afternoon smoke break outside his Manhattan office.

The city council hearings in Brooklyn and Queens last week provided a forum for roughly sixty community members to share their stories and speak out on stop-and-frisk. Between the two hearings, all but one of the testimonies offered emphatically opposed the practice. Many who spoke called for support of the Community Safety Act, legislation that would increase oversight of a police department now operating with near complete autonomy.

Momentum has been building in the community effort against stop and frisk. On October 22, activists gathered for the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, many marching in memory of those killed by police shootings. As city council considers the Community Safety Act, organizers have been increasing pressure on local legislators to address the current impunity of the NYPD.

The City Council’s public safety committee first held a hearing on the Community Safety Act in Manhattan at 10am on Wednesday, October 10, but few from the communities most impacted by stop-and-frisk were able to attend. “Their voice needed to be a part of the record,” said council member Rose. “We are hearing from the so-called experts, but we haven’t had the personal testimonials.” The hearings were the first opportunity many community members had to share with city officials their stories of mistreatment by the NYPD.

Fifteen-year-old Ceiro De Jesus from the Bronx was one of the youngest to speak in Brooklyn. He and a group of friends were playing football at a neighborhood park on a Saturday afternoon, when two white police officers parked next to the field and ordered them to put their hands up.

When De Jesus asked why they were being frisked, the cop answered, “Because you’re young, out of control and colored . now get your ass home before you learn how it is to be in jail.”

De Jesus told his mother, but her advice was the same as council member Rose’s: watch out for cops. He and his friends have stopped going to the park, and mostly stay indoors. “Ever since that day, I feel like I have no freedom,” he said.

Several former NYPD officers also spoke out against the number-driven system pushing police to make random stops. “Our community is under siege,” said retired officer Howard Henderson in Queens. “There is profiling and there [are] quotas.  In this community, there’s a quota of one arrest and thirty summons in a month. Certain communities [in] the city do not have quotas. In these communities, the minority communities, they definitely do.”

Missing from both the Brooklyn and Queens hearings were representatives of the Mayor’s office or the NYPD. (Bloomberg sent his lawyer Michael Best to attend the October 10 hearing, but NYPD has not had an official representative at any of the stop-and-frisk hearings.) Both Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelley have been highly defensive about the program. While they admit that individual abuses of power need to be addressed, they continue to claim that the tactic at its core is making New York City streets safer. They have repeatedly claimed that gun violence has decreased as a result, though a gun was recovered [4] in roughly .001 percent of the 685,724 stops conducted in 2011.....

The proposed legislation would prohibit officers from using racial profiling as a police tactic, and make them accountable for policies that have a disproportionate racial impact, such as stop-and-frisk. It also broadens the ban on profiling to include targeting individuals based on ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and housing and immigration status. During a stop, officers would have to identify themselves and cite a reason for the stop. Though NYPD would still be allowed to perform pat-downs, they would have to explain the individual’s right to refuse a search of their pockets and belongings without a warrant.

Most importantly, Bill 881 of the act calls for the creation of an Inspector General’s office to perform routine reviews of NYPD policies. “The number of New Yorkers who believe the problem is a systemic lack of oversight leading to a culture with no accountability is growing,” said council member Brad Lander, a vocal supporter of the act. The FBI, CIA and police departments in Los Angeles, Chicago and DC all have independent oversight. The NYPD is one of the few city departments not subject to such review.

It is not just black and Latino communities calling for the passage of protections that heighten police accountability. Several activists also testified on the need for deeper investigation into the department’s anti-terrorism efforts, which regularly sends informants into Muslim neighborhoods. “We’re not being thrown up against walls, we’re being spied on,” said Linda Sarsour, director of the Arab American Association in New York. Recognizing the links between stop-and-frisk and police surveillance, the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition has joined with Communities United for Police Reform to advocate for the new legislation. “At the end of the day, it’s about discriminatory policies of the NYPD. The more communities involved the more effective we will be at reforming it,” she said.

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NY City Council hears testimonies against NYPD Stop, Question & Frisk, By Karen Clements, Examiner.com, October 25, 2012

http://www.examiner.com/article/ny-city-council-hears-testimonies-against-nypd-stop-question-frisk

They lined up last night to give their testimony on their experience with the NYPD practice of stop and frisk. They represented a broad spectrum from teens and seniors to those with kufis to others with clean shaven heads. They were parents, civic leaders and victims of the stop and frisk policy.

It was the New York City Council Committee on Civil Rights public hearing at York College on the New York Police Department’s use of stop, question and frisk. There was a similar hearing the previous day in Brooklyn. The hearing was an attempt to capture stories from the public on the record in an effort to “further bolster our efforts to reform stop, question and frisk,” said Committee chair Councilwoman Deborah Rose. She called the policy “one of the most pressing civil rights issues of the time”.

Brought up in groups of four, speakers were given a time limit of three minutes but dropped down to two when the long line of people for testimony was assessed. Some of the testimonies were personal and often times the speakers would run over the limit with a tale too compelling to interrupt.

Marlon Castro was subjected to homophobic slander during his stop. “You AIDS infested faggot,” was the term Marlon says the cop used when he was stopped.

Manny, a 14 year old Bangladesh teen and resident of Jamaica, has been stopped on the way home from school. She believes the stops are because of her “darker skin,” she said. “They treat us like we are already guilty,” she said.

Current and retired police officers placed their testimony on the record telling their tales of retaliation for pushing back against the policy. In one of the rare editorial moments of the hearing, Councilwoman Rose extended her apologies for the retribution that Officer Polanco spoke of at his turn at the microphone during his tenure. She also thanked Howard Henderson, a retired police officer, who spoke of productivity quotas police had to make in certain areas. “Thank you for vindicating me,” she said on the issue.

And throughout the night, the support of police while condemning the policy was evident. Councilman Jumaane Williams, a co-sponsor of the hearing, acknowledged the police that risk their lives daily for our safety in his closing remarks. But it was also evident that there is a disdain for the Police Commissioner and Mayor. “If the Commissioner and the Mayor refuse to engage in this conversation they are continually and increasingly putting this city in danger” Councilman Williams said in his closing remarks.

“We are making every effort to make changes”, said Council Woman Rose during her remarks. She said the Council had been “stymied by Commissioner Kelly” calling the action “blatantly disrespectful”.

Civic and community leaders from the Southeast Queens also took their turn at the microphone in their support for reform and oversight. Donovan Richards, Chief of Staff to Councilman Sanders, said “we can no longer afford to do nothing”. Leroy Gadsden, President of the Jamaica Branch NAACP, spoke about how the NYPD is out of control and called the policy “racial profiling”....  The standing room only attendance also included various community and civic leaders.
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Report: Cops more likely to harass non-white LGBTs, by Clare Trapasso, New York Daily News, October 25, 2012

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-10-25/news/34734423_1_frisks-police-harassment-city-councilman-daniel-dromm

Black and Hispanic gays and lesbians in Jackson Heights are more likely to be harassed by cops than their straight peers — especially during stop and frisks, a new report claims.

The Make the Road New York report, released Tuesday, also alleges that transgender women are particularly vulnerable to being arrested and charged with prostitution — often without cause.

“When (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people are stopped and frisked, it’s a very different experience from when heterosexual people are stopped,” said Karina Claudio-Betancourt, who runs Make the Road’s LGBTQ Justice Project. “They are usually verbally (and) physically harassed.”

Her group, along with various elected officials, is trying to pass the Community Safety Act, which would limit racial profiling in stop and frisks and require cops to get consent before searching anyone. “Stop and frisk is a huge problem,” said City Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Jackson Heights). “People are degraded; they’re embarrassed.”

Almost 29,000 people were stopped and frisked in 2011 in the 110th and 115th precincts, which cover Jackson Heights, Corona and Elmhurst, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Of LGBT respondents surveyed in the Make the Road NY report, 51% reported that they had been harassed when stopped by police. Only a third of straight respondents said the same. The report surveyed more than 300 people in total.
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Stop and Frisk Comes Under Fire at Public Hearing, By Kathleen Horan, WNYC. October 23, 2012

http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2012/oct/23/stop-and-frisk-comes-under-fire-public-hearing/

More than 300 New Yorkers showed up to express their feelings on the controversial police tactic of stop-and-frisk at a City Council Civil Rights Committee hearing Tuesday night.

The committee heard passionate first hand testimony about what it's like to be stopped by the police, and many said the fear of being stopped and possibly arrested is persistent.

East New York resident Romale Johnson, 21, said he's been stopped and frisked about 20 times in the last five years.
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Trespassing in Your Own Home, Editorial, New York Times, October 22, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/opinion/trespassing-in-your-own-home.html

District attorney’s offices in New York City have generally supported the Police Department — or kept quiet about their reservations — during the escalating battle over the department’s stop-and-frisk program, under which hundreds of thousands of citizens are stopped every year, often for no reason.

But a hearing under way in Federal District Court in Manhattan is featuring an open and fiery dispute between the Police Department and an assistant district attorney from the Bronx, who has testified that her office began to have misgivings about the legality of some trespassing arrests as far back as five years ago.

The federal lawsuit, Ligon v. City of New York, was brought on behalf of people who say they were illegally stopped, given tickets or arrested on trespassing charges in apartment buildings, some in buildings where they lived. The suit focuses on the city’s two-decade-old “Clean Halls” program, under which police officers patrol private buildings with the permission of landlords.

Jeannette Rucker, a veteran prosecutor, recounted that her office began to have questions about many of the Police Department’s trespassing arrests in the past several years. She said Bronx judges “just started dismissing these cases left and right” because they believed that the officers had no legitimate legal reason for approaching the people who had been arrested — sometimes merely because they had been seen entering or leaving a Clean Halls building. Her staff also told her that judges were throwing out cases because the police had charged people with trespassing in their own buildings.

In a memo in April 2009, Ms. Rucker notified the Police Department that trespassing cases had become “problematic for the district attorney’s office” because judges were dismissing them for insufficient cause. The memo cautioned officers to check to establish people’s residency and to determine whether they were legitimate visitors.
Yet the improper arrests were still a big problem two years later. Ms. Rucker testified that in 2011, “we were getting people who were arrested who were tenants. We were getting people arrested who ... were lawful visitors. And I’m like: What can we do to stop this?”

Last year, the Bronx district attorney’s office issued another memo to the police, noting that courts had held that a person who merely exited a Clean Halls building could not be legally stopped unless the officer had a clear reason to suspect criminality. This summer, Ms. Rucker notified the Police Department that her office would no longer prosecute Clean Halls or public housing trespassing cases based on paperwork and would require that officers be interviewed.

The case could potentially go into next year. But the prosecutor’s testimony is strong evidence of the program’s problems and the Police Department’s failure to protect people’s constitutional rights.
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Prosecutor Testifies on Stop-and-Frisk Tactics, By Joseph Goldstein, New York Times, October 15, 2012

ttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/nyregion/federal-hearing-challenging-police-stop-and-frisk-program-begins.html

As a federal court hearing began on Monday in a critical challenge to New York City’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, a Bronx prosecutor testified that she believed the police were wrongly stopping and arresting innocent people for trespassing.

The testimony of the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Jeannette M. Rucker, came as the hearing opened in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the first court proceeding in which a federal judge is expected to rule whether the Police Department has engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional stops under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration.

The hearing is expected to feature testimony over two weeks from numerous people who say they were improperly stopped, as well as from several of the department’s highest ranking officials, including Chief of Patrol James Hall. The police witnesses are expected to defend the stops as both legal and necessary and to explain the legal training that officers receive.

On Monday, Ms. Rucker spoke about the concerns that led her in July to send a letter to the Police Department alleging that officers were engaging in wrongful arrests. Ms. Rucker, who runs the complaint room, where charges are drawn up against defendants, testified that she had grown concerned over the legality of some trespass arrests after noticing that judges had “started dismissing these cases right and left.”

Soon, she explained in testimony, her staff of prosecutors began telling her that they had found instances in which the defendants lived in the very buildings where the arrests occurred. “O.K., this seems to be a problem,” Ms. Rucker said, recalling her thinking.

She said she later received an anonymous letter from a person claiming to have been arrested on trespassing charges while leaving a building with a friend who lived there. She forwarded it to other senior prosecutors in the Bronx, adding her own note. “I said, ‘Enough is enough, we have to stop this,’ ” Ms. Rucker recounted.

Ms. Rucker explained that in one instance an assistant district attorney, David Grigoryan, went to the building where a trespass arrest occurred, where he spoke with a guard and learned that the defendant “lived in the building with his sister.”

That case, Ms. Rucker testified, “really pushed me over the edge.” In July, she sent a brief letter to numerous police officials outlining her concerns and announcing this change in policy: From then on her office would prosecute trespass arrests only after interviewing the arresting officer. Previously, prosecutors went forward with a case simply on the basis of the paperwork the officer filled out.
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New York City Council Seeks to Limit Police Stop-and-Frisks, By Henry Goldman, Bloomberg.com, Oct 10, 2012

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-10/new-york-city-council-seeks-to-limit-police-stop-and-frisks.html

The New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy came under attack from city council members considering four laws that would restrict the encounters and create an inspector general to monitor the practices.

Police stopped 685,724 people they deemed suspicious on streets in 2011, of whom 84 percent were black or Hispanic, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York- based nonprofit that in 2008 filed a federal civil-rights suit in Manhattan against the NYPD over the tactic.

“It’s despicable, totally unacceptable and it should not be tolerated by the NYPD,” Harlem Councilman Robert Jackson told Michael Best, counsel to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who opposes the bills. “It needs to be totally revamped and it needs to be done now.”

About 200 people packed the council’s City Hall chambers today for the hearing, where members took turns questioning Best and expressing disappointment at the absence of Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who declined an invitation to appear. More hearings are scheduled in New York’s five boroughs in the next several weeks.

Best presented a statement to the Committee on Public Safety arguing that it had no power to change police practices. The state has exclusive control, he said. Council Speaker Christine Quinn said her members rejected the administration’s argument. A council memo created for the hearing cited the 1993 creation of the Civilian Complaint Review Board to investigate police abuse as one example of legislative oversight.

“I hope today’s hearing sends a message that the council’s call for reforming stop, question and frisk continues,” said Quinn, a probable Democratic mayoral candidate in 2013. “Although stop, question and frisk should be used as a tool in the police department’s tool box, when we have almost 800,000 stops at the peak targeting almost exclusively African-American and Latino men in neighborhoods of lower income, clearly that is a problem.”

The NYPD patrol guide informs officers they may stop and question a person they suspect has committed or is about to commit a crime, frisk the individual by running hands over clothing to feel for a weapon and search inside a pocket or other clothing to determine if an object is a weapon. A small percentage of those stops result in finding weapons, Quinn said.  [Note: It is not correct that police can legally frisk someone if they suspect the person is about to commit a crime. They can frisk only when the have articulable reason to believe that the person is armed and dangerous. See "It's Time to Fix The Frisk," Aug 19 below.]

Inspector General

Today’s hearing began a day after The Nation magazine published an audio recording purporting to capture a police officer stopping a Harlem teenager, threatening to break his arm and using a profanity while calling him a “mutt.”
New York spent $633 million settling and paying judgments on thousands of lawsuits alleging police abuse and civil-rights violations from 2006 to 2011. The new laws would allow a person to sue the city with evidence that an officer was motivated by racial profiling in a stop-and-frisk.

The laws would also create an office of inspector general within the NYPD to monitor civil liberties and community relations. Police would be required to identify themselves when stopping people and obtain consent before searching someone’s pockets or belongings.
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Stopped-and-Frisked: 'For Being a F**king Mutt' [VIDEO] by Ross Tuttle and Erin Schneider, The Nation, October 8, 2012

http://www.thenation.com/article/170413/stopped-and-frisked-being-fking-mutt-video

On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin and two of the officers questioned and frisked him while the third remained in their unmarked car. Alvin secretly captured the interaction on his cell phone, and the resulting audio is one of the only known recordings of stop-and-frisk in action.
In the course of the two-minute recording, the officers give no legally valid reason for the stop, use racially charged language and threaten Alvin with violence. Early in the stop, one of the officers asks, “You want me to smack you?”

When Alvin asks why he is being threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, “For being a fucking mutt.” Later in the stop, while holding Alvin’s arm behind his back, the first officer says, “Dude, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ arm, then I’m gonna punch you in the fuckin’ face."

“He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down. So I’m going backwards like down the hill and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, it looked like he we was going to hit me,” Alvin recounts. “I felt like they was trying to make me resist or fight back.”

Alvin’s treatment at the hands of the officers may be disturbing but it is not uncommon. According to their own stop-and-frisk data, the NYPD stops more than 1,800 New Yorkers a day. A New York Times analysis recently determined that more than 20 percent of those stops involve the use of force. And these are only the numbers that the Department records. Anecdotal evidence suggests both figures are much higher.

In this video, exclusive to TheNation.com, Alvin describes his experience of the stop, and working NYPD officers come forward to explain the damage stop-and-frisk has done to their profession and their relationship to the communities they serve. The emphasis on racking up stops has also hindered what many officers consider to be the real work they should be doing on the streets. The video sheds unprecedented light on a practice, cheered on by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, that has put the city’s young people of color in the department’s crosshairs.

Those who haven’t experienced the policy first-hand “have likened Stops to being stuck in an elevator, or in traffic,” says Darius Charney, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “This is not merely an inconvenience, as the Department likes to describe it. This is men with guns surrounding you in the street late at night when you’re by yourself. You ask why and they curse you out and rough you up.”

“The tape brings to light what so many New Yorkers have experienced in the shadows at the hands of the NYPD,” says Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP. “It is time for Mayor Bloomberg to come to grips with the scale of the damage his policies have inflicted on our children and their families. No child should have to grow up fearing both the cops and the robbers.”

“This audio confirms what we’ve been hearing from communities of color, again and again,” says Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. “They are repeatedly subjected to abusive and disrespectful treatment at the hands of the NYPD. This explains why so many young people don’t trust the police and won’t help the police,” she adds. “It’s not good for law enforcement and not good for the individuals who face this harassment.”
The audio also betrays the seeming arbitrariness of stops and the failure of some police officers to fully comprehend or be able to articulate a clear motivation for carrying out a practice they’re asked to repeat on a regular basis.
And, according to Charney, the only thing the police officers do with clarity during this stop is announce its unconstitutionality.

“We’ve long been claiming that, under this department’s administration, if you’re a young black or Latino kid, walking the street at night you’re automatically a suspicious person,” says Charney, who is leading a class-action lawsuit challenging the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices. “The police deny those claims, when asked. ‘No, that’s not the reason we’re stopping them.’ But they’re actually admitting it here [on the audio recording]. The only reason they give is: ‘You were looking back at us

’ That does not rise to the level of reasonable suspicion, and there’s a clear racial animus when they call him a ‘mutt.’”
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Prosecutor Deals Blow to Stop-and-Frisk Tactic, By Joseph Goldstein. New York Times, Sept 25, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/nyregion/in-the-bronx-resistance-to-prosecuting-stop-and-frisk-arrests.html

In a significant blow to New York City’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, the Bronx district attorney’s office is no longer prosecuting people who were stopped at public housing projects and arrested for trespassing, unless the arresting officer is interviewed to ensure that the arrest was warranted.

Prosecutors quietly adopted the policy in July after discovering that many people arrested on charges of criminal trespass at housing projects were innocent, even though police officers had provided written statements to the contrary.

By essentially accusing the police of wrongfully arresting people, the stance taken by Bronx prosecutors is the first known instance in which a district attorney has questioned any segment of arrests resulting from stop-and-frisk tactics.

Bronx prosecutors are now requiring that they interview the arresting officer in the “hopes of eliminating tenants and invited guest from being prosecuted unlawfully,” according to a letter to the Police Department from Jeannette Rucker, a bureau chief in the district attorney’s office....

Steven Banks, the chief lawyer of the Legal Aid Society in New York, said that the new requirement put “a procedure in place to verify that the stop and subsequent arrest were proper.” “This is exactly what prosecutors should be doing before proceeding with criminal prosecutions — namely making sure that formulaic statements by police officers actually have some basis to support the arrest and prosecution,” Mr. Banks said.

The city’s reliance on stop-and-frisk has come under intense scrutiny and legal challenges, as critics charge that the police disproportionately target minorities and harass innocent people. That sentiment is especially prevalent at housing projects, which account for about 10 percent to 15 percent of all police stops. 
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NEW YORK, Aug 27 (Reuters) - The broadest legal challenge to the New York Police Department's controversial crime-fighting tactic known as "stop and frisk" will head to trial in March, a U.S. judge ruled on Monday.

The case stems from a class action lawsuit filed in 2008 by four black men claiming they were improperly targeted by police because of their race.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan granted class action status to the lawsuit in March, saying the plaintiffs had established their cases were emblematic of a city-wide problem.

The City promptly appealed her decision and the NYPD has strongly defended the tactic, arguing it has been critical in taking guns off the streets and achieving an historic drop in crime rates. The police deny that race or quotas motivate stops and say they are stopping people considered suspicious.

At Monday's hearing, the judge said the case had dragged on long enough and noted that the March 18, 2013 trial would be more than five years since the case was first filed....  Judge Scheindlin is also overseeing two other separate lawsuits contesting the NYPD tactic
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Justin Serrano was 13 the first time he was stopped by police. He says he was walking his 7-year-old brother home from school when police forced him against a wall, patted him down and kept him in the back of a patrol car for more than an hour while both boys cried. Then they let Serrano go, telling him it was a case of mistaken identity.  It was a pivotal moment in Serrano's life....

The NYPD's policy of detaining and sometimes searching anyone officers deemed suspicious has prompted an emotional debate and a federal lawsuit.... The NYPD stopped close to 700,000 people on the street last year, up from more than 90,000 a decade ago. Nearly 87 percent were black or Hispanic. About half were frisked. About 10 percent were arrested.

A federal judge in May granted class-action status to the lawsuit, meaning thousands of people who have been stopped over the years could potentially join the complaint introduced by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of four black men. In June, the New York Civil Liberties Union rolled out a "Stop and Frisk Watch" smartphone app that allows bystanders to record police stops and instantly alert others to where it is taking place.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said there was "overwhelming evidence" police have conducted thousands of unlawful stops based on flimsy justification such as "furtive movement." She berated the NYPD for displaying "a deeply troubling apathy toward New Yorkers' most fundamental constitutional rights."

The next day, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced changes to officer training and supervision, and the number of stops has since declined dramatically....

"Nobody should ask Ray Kelly to apologize — he's not going to and neither am I," Bloomberg said on the day of the ruling. "And I think it's fair to say that stop, question and frisk has been an essential part of the NYPD's work."
The city government and the NYPD did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Other cities have adopted policies systems similar to New York's, provoking the same debate. Last year, officials in Philadelphia placed its "stop and frisk" program under court supervision to settle a federal lawsuit alleging racial profiling. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee faced a backlash when he raised the possibility of adopting "stop and frisk" to get guns off the streets. Lee announced Tuesday that he was no longer considering it....

Last year, the number of stops of young black males between the ages of 14 and 24 — 168,126 — exceeded the city's entire population of black males in that group — 158,406 — according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"The cops, they come around the corner. They see a young Latino kid. I was walking with my shorts below my butt. I guess that's the way they see kids, like, in gangs," said Serrano. "I couldn't even hold my little brother on the way home. He was terrified of me."

Kevin Vidal, 17, a senior at Manhattan Business Academy, was relaxing in his cousin’s car late one night in Jamaica, Queens, on the way to his grandfather’s house. They were speaking their native language, Spanish, when an NYPD officer decided to inspect the car.The officer told Kevin and his cousin to exit the car. When Kevin asked why, the police officer said he smelled drugs, and told his partner to check the trunk of the car. The police officer did not find any drugs or illegal objects. In the end, Vidal and his cousin were let go, but the experience left a lasting impression on him.“He was just suspecting us because we were speaking Spanish,” Vidal said . “I felt like they were being racist.”

This year, New York City police officers carried out more stop-and-frisks than ever before. Many young people believe these tactics are straining the relationship between the youth and police. Andrew Joseph, 17, a senior at Bishop Ford high school, is one of the young New Yorkers who believe stop-and-frisk tactics are not right.“I think that it’s wrong that they discriminate against certain people,” said Joseph. “[They] stop certain ethnicities more than others.”Joseph thinks that young people are also upset at police because they are the authority.“To put it simply, we don’t want the man holding us down,” he said.

Robert Gangi, Founder of the Police Reform Organizing Project at the Urban Justice Center, works to change the methods of the NYPD through meetings, petitions, and media such as YouTube videos.“[The Stop-and-Frisk tactics] are harmful to the individuals who are subjected to it,” he says. “[They] are mainly focused on young black and brown men…in an attempt to send a message and make the streets hard for them.”Gangi believes that stop-and-frisk not only affects the youth, but also the communities they grow up in.“[They] undermine the social norms that are building blocks to maintain a stable community,” he said.He believes the numbers of stop-and-frisk incidents are growing because of demands from the police officer’s superiors.“[These tactics] are driven by an excessively engrossed quota system,” says Gangi.

A New York civil liberties leader called Thursday for the police department to sharpen the language it uses to train officers on its stop-and-frisk policy, to prevent unconstitutional checks of people on the street. Former New York Civil Liberties Union director Norman Siegel said the department's training guide, patrol guide and a June NYPD stop-and-frisk training class for new officers does not clearly define the conditions under which an officer has a legal right to frisk a citizen.

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"Stop-and-Frisk in New York City," Editorial, New York Times, August 8, 2012

The New York City Police Department is trumpeting a decrease of about one-third in the number of citizens detained under its increasingly unpopular stop-and-frisk program. The news comes as a relief, since New Yorkers, nearly all of whom were innocent of any crime, were stopped nearly 700,000 times last year.

But the problems with this program were never just the number of stops. The real test is whether police officers can both reduce the number of stops and obey the law, which requires them to have reasonable, articulable grounds for suspicion before detaining people on the streets.

This point was underscored earlier this summer, when Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court granted class action status to a lawsuit accusing the Police Department of using race as the basis for stopping and frisking New Yorkers. The judge rebuked the city for its “deeply troubling apathy toward New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional rights,” and found “overwhelming evidence” that the program had led to thousands of baseless, unlawful stops. Despite the police claims that the stops keep criminals and weapons off the streets, only about 6 percent of stops lead to arrests, and last year, only one in every 879 stops turned up a gun.

Asked to explain the recent drop in stops, police officers told The Times that many sergeants conducting roll calls had stopped emphasizing the need to stop and question people on street. According to the department, it conducted 203,500 stops in January, February and March of this year — a record number — but stopped only 133,934 in April, May and June. Even so, it will most likely be several weeks before a data analysis by the lawyers in the class action suit, Floyd v. City of New York, provides a detailed sense of whether the trend toward illegal and discriminatory stops has indeed subsided.

News accounts continue to illustrate how the program has alienated communities of color. This week, for example, Wendy Ruderman reported in The Times about a little-discussed aspect of the program — the humiliating toll that it has taken on women, who say that male police officers have singled them out without cause for invasive searches and harassment.

In one case, a woman said she was sitting on the front steps of her home in the Bronx on a recent summer night when police officers rifled through her handbag, fishing out a tampon, a sanitary napkin and finally birth control pills, about which they questioned her. Another young woman from Harlem Heights said police officers who claimed to be searching for a rapist interrupted her and two female friends, demanded identification and then patted her down. “It was uncalled-for,” she said. “It made no sense. How are you going to stop three females when you are supposedly looking for a male rapist?”

People who have been singled out for unjustified searches have expressed similar sentiments all over the city. The longer those searches continue, the more public discontent will grow.

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"NYPD May Be Training Officers To Do Illegal Frisks,"  by NY1 News,  August 8, 2012

http://manhattan.ny1.com/content/top_stories/166580/lawmakers--nypd-may-be-training-officers-to-do-illegal-frisks

Some lawmakers and lawyers say the NYPD may be training officers to illegally frisk people.Attorney Norman Siegel says for police to legally frisk someone, they must suspect that person is "armed and dangerous."But he says these words are never mentioned in police training materials.As a result, Siegel says the controversial policy may be contributing to a large number of unconstitutional frisks."Reasonable suspicion of any other crime is enough to stop and question an individual but it's not enough to frisk him," Siegel said.

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Women Calling NYPD Stop-and-Frisk Tactics Sexual Intimidation,  By C. Zawadi Morris, Bed-Sty Patch,  August 8, 2012

http://bed-stuy.patch.com/articles/women-calling-nypd-stop-and-frisk-tactics-sexual-intimidation

Last year, more than 46,000 women were stopped and nearly 16,000 were frisked by New York City Police officers-- a source of embarrassment and, some women say, sexual intimadation, reported the New York Times.Of the 16,000 who were frisked, guns were found in 59 cases, that's 0.13-- less than one percent of all searches, further evidence for the argument by civil rights leaders that the bulk of stop-and-frisk encounters are legally unjustified. Nevertheless, the laws governing street stops are blind to gender, and the training does not draw a distinction between male and female suspects, Police Inspector Kim Y. Royster said.

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 Retired NYC Police Protest Union Support for Stop & Frisk, the Real News [YOUTUBE VIDEO] Aug 7, 2012 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0NgZ9B0Zko

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 San Francisco Abandons Plans for NYC-Inspired Stop-And-Frisk Policing.  Mayor Ed Lee's Proposal Was Greeted With Fierce Opposition By Groups Claiming That Stop-And-Frisk Policies Inevitably Lead To Racial Profiling.  By Victoria Cavaliere, New York Daily News, Tuesday, August 7, 2012

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/san-francisco-abandons-plans-nyc-inspired-stop-and-frisk-policing-article-1.1130784

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has dropped plans to implement a New York-inspired stop-and-frisk policy following outcry from community leaders and residents who said it would lead to racial profiling.Instead, Lee was introducing a policy Tuesday that targets gun violence through crime tracking software and community leadership, spokeswoman Christine Falvey said.

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Graph from the New York Civil LIberties Union

For Women in Street Stops, Deeper Humiliation, By Wendy Ruderman, New York Times, August 7, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/nyregion/for-women-in-street-stops-deeper-humiliation.html?hp

“What’s this?” the officer said, examining the pill packaging stamped “drospirenone/ethinylestradiol.”  “Birth control,” Ms. Archibald remembered saying.

She took a breath and exhaled deeply, hoping the whoosh of air would cool her temper and contain her humiliation as the officers proceeded to pat her down. The laws governing street stops are blind to gender. Male officers are permitted to frisk a woman if they reasonably suspect that she may be armed with a dangerous weapon that could be used to harm them. A frisk can escalate into a field search if officers feel a suspicious bulge while patting down the woman’s outer layer of clothing or the outline of her purse.

Last year, New York City police officers stopped 46,784 women, frisking nearly 16,000. Guns were found in 59 cases, according to an analysis of police statistics by The New York Times.

While the number of women stopped by officers in 2011 represented 6.9 percent of all police stops, the rate of guns found on both men and women was equally low, 0.12 percent and 0.13 percent, respectively. Civil rights leaders have argued that the low gun-recovery rates are a strong indication that the bulk of stop-and-frisk encounters are legally unjustified. (The number of police stops has dropped by more than 34 percent in recent months.)

When officers conduct stops upon shaky or baseless legal foundations, people of both sexes often say they felt violated. Yet stops of women by male officers can often involve an additional element of embarrassment and perhaps sexual intimidation, according to women who provided their accounts of being stopped by the police. And many incorrectly believe that the police, like Transportation Security Administration officers, are required to have female officers frisk women.

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“Drop in Stop-and-Frisks Not a Sign of Policy Change: Bloomberg”  By Colby Hamilton, WNYC, August 06, 2012”

http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2012/aug/06/drop-stop-and-frisks-not-policy-change-bloomberg/

Mayor Michael Bloomberg denied any suggestion that the recent drop in the number of stop-and-frisks conducted by police signaled an overall change in policy.

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 “Stop-and-Frisks, Crime Spikes and a Lesson in Statistics” By John Surico, Village Voice, August 4, 2012”

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/08/the_stop-and-fr.php

This morning, the New York Post had a breakthrough: its reporters came to the conclusion that the widespread practice of stop-and-frisk by the NYPD is a success. We solved it, guys. No more complaining about the infringement on constitutional rights, racial profiling or any of that other left-leaning drivel that the NYCLU loves to cook up.

But how did the Post come to this conclusion? Well, the media organization simply just looked at the numbers. According to Rebecca Harshbarger and David Seifman, the reason why we can lay out the 'Mission Accomplished' banner for the controversial means of searching citizens, notably minorities, is because of the corresponding crime statistics that go with it.

Exhibit A: Between January 1st and March 31st, there were 203,500 individuals who were stop and frisked, 881 guns seized and 24,571 crimes recorded in the books.

Exhibit B: Between April 1st and June 30th, there were 133,934 stop-and-frisk targets with 732 guns seized and 27,832 major crimes reported.

Notice the drop in stop-and-frisks and the 12% spike in crime. Well, there you have it, people - it's a wrap... unless you've ever taken a class in statistics. Then, this conclusion might seem a little far-fetched to believe.

Okay, how do we say this to the Post and its conclusion without coming off as pretentious, finger-wagging elitists that have no sense of a reality that doesn't include being judgmental. This is going to be hard; take a deep breath, John. Well, here goes nothing: 

You can't do that. You just can't. Although this is hardly mentioned anywhere in the media besides maybe in Ezra Klein or Nate Silver's writing, what the New York Post did with the stop-and-frisk and crime numbers is against mathematical axioms. 

And the rule-breaking is simple: you cannot make a wholehearted declaration of something based on a correlation. It is statistical logic that just because X spiked and Y fell flat doesn't mean that X and Y are in bed together. A correlation is basically a relationship between two factors that may have some sort effect on each other; when you write research papers smothered in statistics, every student knows to stress that maybe. In other words, one doesn't necessarily explain the other. 

What the Post is doing underlies the main problem with basing a conclusion off of a correlation: there are other factors we must all take into account....

But sometimes numbers don't mean all they seem. Today's story by the New York Post — that says that the number of police stops fell 34 percent in the second quarter of 2012 — is certainly interesting. But quarter-to-quarter changes in the number of NYPD stops are not uncommon: In 2011, the number dropped 15 percent between the second and third quarters, then jumped 12 percent over the last three months of the year. Even bigger shifts occurred earlier under Mayor Bloomberg: From 2006 to 2007, the annual number of stops dropped by 33,000, before beginning a steady rise — at least until now.

But questions of significance aside, the sharp drop in stops will become fodder for those who've claimed that crime is spiking in the city because political pressure in May and June forced the NYPD to back down on its street stops....

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 “Your Camera Can Stop NYPD Abuse.  See a stop-and-frisk? Record it on your phone.”  By David Galarza, New York Daily News,  August 3, 2012

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/camera-stop-nypd-abuse-article-1.1127761

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by Jazz Hayden

“What's Stop and Frisk Got To Do With It?” By Jarrett Murphy,  August 3, 2012

http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/blog/1676/what%27s_stop_and_frisk_got_to_do_with_it/

Many critics of the New York Police Department's mass stop-and-question or frisk policy focus not on the race of the people stopped but on the sheer volume of encounters. They say this reflects a larger problem for the NYPD: an obsession with metrics. The incredible decrease in crime during the 1990s attached enormous political weight to the city's statistics on major felony offenses. Inside the department, observers say, this translated into a fixation with numbers...

Well, given the steep drop in stops, what is happening to crime? So far in 2012, murders and car thefts are down in the city compared to the same period last year.  Rape (4.7 percent), robbery (5.9 percent) and grand larceny (9.8 percent) are up considerably, while felonious assault and burglary have climbed 2 percent or less.

Is the decrease in stop-and-frisk an explanation for the increases? Maybe. Or maybe not.

Crime was reported to be up early in the year, when the number of stops had actually increased. After the first quarter, New York was on pace to stop 800,000 people this year. It's important to remember that the second quarter decrease is coming off a record high in January-March.

Beyond that, recent experience establishes little pattern for how stops and crime interact. According to the FBI, from 2010 to 2011 the number of violent crimes in New York City increased 6 percent. Was this because the NYPD had decreased its number of stops? Nope. The number of NYPD encounters soared 14 percent last year. On the other hand, from 2006 to 2007, as the number of NYPD stops dropped 7 percent, the number of violent crimes fell as well (by just over 3 percent).

Obviously, this doesn't suggest NYPD stops cause crime. Sometimes stops rise in reaction to a crime jump. Sometimes they're not connected at all. In our analysis of stops in the 75th precinct last year, we found that the most common crimes associated with arrests made after stop-and-frisks were possession of marijuana and criminal trespass. Neither offense has much to do with the violence that's making headlines.

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“Street Stops in New York Fall as Unease Over Tactic Grows” By Joseph Goldstein and Wendy Ruderman, August 3, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/04/nyregion/number-of-police-street-stops-falls-34-percent.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

The number of times police officers stopped, questioned and frisked people on the streets of New York City has dropped significantly, by more than 34 percent, in recent months, and a key contributing factor appears to be that police commanders have grown wary of pushing for such stops at daily roll calls, police supervisors said.

At the same time, a general feeling of unease about the tactic by officers on the street — who have seen widespread criticism of so-called stop-and-frisks in the news media and by the courts — has also contributed to the drop, some say, with officers simply choosing not to question people they might have stopped before.

The decline suggests that officers are unsure whether the political support remains for street stops, long a focal point of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly’s crime-fighting strategy. In recent months, three court rulings have raised questions about the New York Police Department’s use of the tactic, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mr. Kelly have put in place new measures aimed at ensuring lawful stops.

“Cops are nervous, and supervisors are nervous” about the stop-and-frisk practice, said a police supervisor, explaining the drop. The supervisor, like other officers interviewed, spoke on the condition that he not be named for fear of angering his bosses.  Another said that officers who were not pursuing as many stops were thinking to themselves, “I don’t want to be on the receiving end of any kind of allegation.”

The Police Department conducted 203,500 stops in January, February and March this year, according to the department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne — a record number. But in the second quarter — April, May and June — the police stopped 133,934 people, he said. During this period, the issue received considerable attention in the news media. The second-quarter stops were about 25 percent lower compared with the number of street stops in the second quarter of 2011, police officials said. Generally, about half of the street stops resulted in the police’s frisking the person, police officials said...

New York’s police officials said that the department was not stepping away from the tactic and that the lower numbers merely reflected changes in the way armies of rookies were assigned to high-crime areas. Fewer officers have been assigned over the past few months to Operation Impact, a program that puts recent graduates of the Police Academy in high-crime neighborhoods with instructions to seek out suspicious behavior. These new officers conduct 30 percent to 40 percent of the department’s street stops, Mr. Kelly said....

Mr. Kelly acknowledged that the practice had come under scrutiny but said he did not believe that recent criticism by civil rights leaders played a role in the drop-off. He pointed to enhanced training and the “draw down” of Operation Impact officers....

 There are three daily roll calls in each precinct, in which information is shared and crime patterns and assignments are discussed before officers go on patrol. In recent months, several officers said, many sergeants conducting roll calls have stopped emphasizing the need to stop and question people on the street.

“They don’t ask for it anymore,” an officer in the Bronx said. “They just stopped.” This is key, the officer said, because when sergeants were asking for them, “it starts becoming a quota or a production goal.” “Why is it so important how many 250s someone did?” the officer added, referring to a form, a UF-250, filled out after a stop-and-frisk episode.

A police officer in the Bronx said that officers detected a mixed message from the top. In recent months, the officer noted, Mr. Bloomberg’s support of the stop-and-frisk tactic has, in the eyes of many officers, softened. In addition, the officer noted, Mr. Kelly ordered all officers to go through retraining on how to conduct lawful stop-and-frisk encounters. “You see an about-face, and it’s like they’re saying there was something wrong with how it was done before,” the officer said. “Before, you had the mayor and the police commissioner defending stop and frisk to the end.”

The officer also noted that a federal-court decision in May granted class-action status to a lawsuit on behalf of many New Yorkers who had been stopped. That decision, the officer said, had concerned officers, leading them to wonder if the federal judge was ultimately going to hold that the Police Department’s street stops had led to widespread Fourth Amendment violations.

“People read those articles and realized this may be illegal,” the officer said. A Supreme Court decision in 1968 permitted the police to conduct street stops if they had a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot and to subsequently frisk the person if the officer was concerned for his or her safety because of a belief that the person was armed....

 “I do believe there is a realization on the part of the New York Police Department that perhaps the number of stops got too large for the communities and the police officers to deal with,” the chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, Peter F. Vallone Jr. said. Mr. Vallone, who is generally supportive of the police’s use of street stops, said that the number of stop-and-frisk encounters had gone “higher than we should go,” given a reduced police force. He added that “officers had been left feeling the strain of a large amount of stop and frisks.”

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Well-trained cops ... are part of the reason stop-and-frisks have dropped dramatically this year, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Friday. At a press conference at police headquarters, Kelly responded to a report that the controversial practice of cops stopping and searching people — the majority of whom are young black and Latino men — fell by 34 percent between the first and second quarters of this year. Viewed as a crime reduction tool by law enforcement, stop-and-frisk however has triggered criticism from elected officials and civil liberties groups.

Kelly linked the decline in part to a department-wide retraining program where lawyers worked with officers to explain exactly what type of behavior rises to the level of "reasonable suspicion" and justifies a stop.
Another factor could be a change in record-keeping that eliminated redundancies in how stop and frisks are counted, Kelly said.

The plummeting number of stop-and-frisks could also be related to how officers are deployed, Kelly said. The NYPD has reduced the number of "impact" officers — rookies assigned to high-crime areas — who conducted about 30 percent of stop and frisks earlier this year.

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Former Mayor David Dinkins weighed in with NY1 on the growing controversy over the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy on Wednesday. Speaking with political anchor Errol Louis on "Inside City Hall" Wednesday, Dinkins said stop-and-frisk may be a needed strategy but that it is often abused.

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“In Harlem, a Surprising Pair, Allied Against Violence”  By Wendy Ruderman, New York Times, July 31, 2012

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Graph from DNAinfo NY

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 “Stop and Frisk: The Stories Behind the Numbers” By Vince Warren, Huffington Post,  July 25, 2012

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 “An NYPD Officer Analyzes the Controversial Stop and Frisk Debate” By Eugene Durante, Highbrow Magazine, July 24, 2012

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from DNAinfo NY

WNYC took it upon themselves to map all of the street stops – a.k.a. stop and frisks – using information from the police department showcasing where guns were recovered last year, since firearm control has been the primary justification for the controversial tactic. The map reveals that, in Sheepshead Bay, the NYPD has turned up no firearms in the areas in which NYPD has concentrated its use of stop-and-frisk tactics.

In Sheepshead Bay, police made 1,324 stops in the Sheepshead Bay-Nostrand Housing projects. Yet only two guns were found in the 61st Precinct’s command, and neither were in the vicinity of the projects....

An NYCLU analysis revealed that New Yorkers (mostly black or Latino) have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than 4 million times since 2002, and that nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers were innocent.

Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg say that stop-and-frisk is meant to get illegal guns out of the streets and criminals behind bars.

“You hear all the time from people who don’t like stop-and-frisk. But you know what people really hate in New York City, and always have? Guns,” said Kelly.

Current data shows that out of 685,000 stops in 2011, about 770 guns were recovered. This means that only one tenth of one percent of all stops resulted in cops finding a gun.

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly argue the main purpose of stop-and-frisk is to get guns off the street.  Out of more than 685,000 stops in 2011, about 770 guns were recovered.  That means about one tenth of one percent of all stops result in the seizure of a gun.

But those guns are not showing up in the places where the police are devoting the most stop-and-frisk resources.

Using data from the New York City police department, WNYC mapped all street stops by police that resulted in the recovery of a gun last year. The digital map shows an interesting pattern. We located all the "hot spots" where stop and frisks are concentrated in the city, and found that most guns were recovered on people outside those hot spots meaning police aren't finding guns where they're looking the hardest.

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Courts Putting Stop-and-Frisk Policy on Trial (front page, July 11) attributes the claim of unconstitutionality to ìrecent rulings by federal and state courts.î But even aside from the racial targeting of these frisks, the law has been clear for more than 40 years, and New York City has been blatantly violating it.

Ever since a Supreme Court ruling in 1968, reiterated a number of times over 25 years, the law regarding when police officers are allowed to frisk has been clear: police may legally frisk people only if they have a reasonable suspicion, based on articulable facts, not a hunch, that the person frisked is armed and dangerous.

That the police rarely have legally adequate reason to frisk is proved by the fact that their own statistics show that they find guns as a result of such frisks in less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the frisks ó more than 380,000 of them last year, more than 85 percent of them blacks and Latinos. Either the police are spectacularly incompetent at assessing reasonable suspicion, or they are frisking illegally.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has tried to rally public support for this unconstitutional policy by claiming that it prevents crime, but he provides no proof of this claim. How is crime prevented by violating the rights of innocent people?

The writer is a former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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TOP 25 STOP & FRISK SPOTS IN NEW YORK CITY

From DNAinfo NY

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(much more here

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Photo: Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Thousands of people marched down Fifth Avenue from 110th Street on Father's Day, June 17, 2012, to protest the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policies.

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"Rude or Polite, City’s Officers Leave Raw Feelings in Stops"  Wendy Ruderman, New York Times, June 26, 2012

 Most of the time, the officers swoop in, hornetlike, with a command to stop: “Yo! You, come here. Get against the wall.” They batter away with questions, sometimes laced with profanity, racial slurs and insults: “Where’s the weed?” “Where’s the guns?” The officers tell those who ask why they have been stopped to shut up, using names like immigrant, old man or “bro.”  Next comes the frisk, the rummaging through pockets and backpacks. Then they are gone. 

 Other times, the officers are polite, their introductions almost gentle. “Hey, how’s it going?” “Can you step over here, sir?” “We’d like to talk to you.” The questions are probing, authoritative, but less accusatory. “What are you doing here?” “Do you live here?” “Can I see some identification, please?” During the pat-down, they ask, “Do you have anything on you?” They nudge further: “You don’t mind if I search you, do you?” They explain that someone of a matching description robbed a store a few days ago, or that the stop is a random one, part of a program in a high-crime area. Then they apologize for the stop and say the person is free to go.

 In interviews with 100 people who said they had been stopped by the New York police in neighborhoods where the practice is most common, many said the experience left them feeling intruded upon and humiliated. And even when officers extended niceties, like “Have a nice night,” or called them “sir” and “ma’am,” people said they questioned whether the officer was being genuine.

 Michael Delgado, 18, said he was last stopped on Grant Street in East New York, Brooklyn. “I was walking, and a cop said, ‘Where’s the weed?’ ” he recalled. “In my mind, I’m like, ‘Yo, this guy’s a racist.’ He started frisking me, his hands were in my pockets, but I didn’t say anything because my mom always tells me: ‘No altercations. Let him do his thing.’ ” When the stop-and-frisk was done, Mr. Delgado said, the officer left him with a casual aside to stay safe.  “Stay safe?” Mr. Delgado said. “After he just did all that?”

 Last year, city police officers stopped nearly 686,000 people, 84 percent of them black or Latino. The vast majority — 88 percent of the stops — led to neither an arrest nor a summons, although officers said they had enough reasonable suspicion to conduct a frisk in roughly half of the total stops, according to statistics provided by the New York Police Department and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Behind each number is a singular and salient interaction between the officers and the person they have stopped. In conducting the interviews, The New York Times sought to explore the simple architecture of the stops — the officers’ words and gestures, actions, explanations, tones of voice and demeanors.

 What seems clear is that there is no script for the encounters, or that if there is one, it is not being followed. Under the law, officers must have a reasonable suspicion — a belief that a crime is afoot — to stop, question and frisk people. One thing an officer cannot do is stop someone based solely on skin color. Yet many of those interviewed said they believed that officers had stopped them because of race — and race alone.  Al Blount, a minister at a Harlem church, said he had been pulled over. “They’ll ask, ‘Where are you headed?’ When you’re African-American, you have to have a definite destination. Everyone else can just say, ‘Mind your own business.’ ”  Last month, a federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit alleging that the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics systematically violated the constitutional rights of blacks and Latinos, who say they are singled out for stops....

 The informal street survey, conducted over the past two weeks, sought to get at the root of an angry groundswell against the police among residents in predominantly minority and poor neighborhoods.

The interviews consisted of five questions: When and where were you stopped? What was the first thing the police officer said to you? How did the officer address you? Did the officer ever explain why he or she had stopped you? What was the last thing the officer said to you?

 The answers offered a glimpse into the experience and why it often leaves such a bitter taste in the mouths of so many who have been stopped, and raised questions about whether the Police Department’s new emphasis on courtesy and respect would help mend relationships in predominantly minority neighborhoods. While the encounter is often brief, the impression can be long-lasting.

 “I understand that they might need to be aggressive with some people, but you just feel it,” said Christopher A. Chadwick, 20, a college student from Brooklyn. “They talk to you like you’re ignorant, like you’re an animal.” Mr. Chadwick described a stop that began when an officer said: “You, come here. Show me your ID.”  Cruz Calixto, 48, said the foot-patrol officers who approached him last summer as he walked down Rockaway Boulevard in Queens were mild-mannered. “ ‘Can you step over here sir? We’d like to talk to you,’ ” Mr. Calixto recounted. Still, the encounter was degrading. “It makes you feel belittled,” he said....

 The department recently distributed thousands of wallet-size cards — labeled “What Is A Stop, Question and Frisk Encounter?” — to precincts across the city. Officers have been encouraged to give the cards to people they have stopped; at the bottom of the card is essentially a one-sentence, conditional apology: “If you have been stopped and were not involved in any criminal activity, the N.Y.P.D. regrets any inconvenience.”

Of the people interviewed, only one, Derrick Smith, said that officers had provided the card — in an exchange witnessed by The Times. Mr. Smith, 47, had been stopped as he emerged from the subway in East New York. He said the officers told him they had seen a suspicious bulge in his shirt. “I had to lift my shirt; I was coming home from work,” Mr. Smith said. “It was just my cellphone.” As Mr. Smith spoke with reporters, the officers returned to hand him one of the cards. Many of those interviewed said that they resented being stopped, but that the officers’ demeanor made the experience far worse.

 On an evening about a month ago, while walking with friends on Northern Boulevard near 78th Street, in Queens, Louis Morales, 15, and Alex Mejia, 16, found themselves swarmed by plainclothes narcotics officers. They shoved the teenagers’ palms onto an unmarked police car and searched them. Spewing expletives, the officers repeatedly ordered them to “shut up,” the teenagers said.  One of the officers, Mr. Morales said, warned: “Say one word and I’m going to make your parents pick you up at the jail. You guys are a bunch of immigrants.” “Yep, that’s what they said, ‘You guys are immigrants,’ ” Mr. Mejia interjected. “We can’t say anything to them. They curse at us. They treat us like we killed somebody.” Mr. Morales said he and other neighborhood teenagers had become so bitter that even if they had information about a crime, they would not share it with the police. “I’m not going to help them,” he said. “They are not helping me by disrespecting me.”

 Most of those interviewed said they could not remember the exact date and time when they were stopped and only six or seven said they knew the name of the officers involved. The sentiment, however, was clearer.

On a recent early evening in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Eric Togar said, he was on his way to meet his wife and her younger brother in front of the Langston Hughes Houses, where a cream-colored stretch limousine was on its way to take Mr. Togar’s teenage brother-in-law to a prom. The police cruiser pulled up, with lights activated, and two officers jumped out. The officers asked if he was wanted on a warrant, said Mr. Togar, 45, a computer technician. They asked to see identification and what was inside the red backpack slung over his shoulder. “Computers and tablets,” he told them. Mr. Togar said they patted him down, offering no explanation, then told him he could go. Mr. Togar almost missed the prom send-off. “They’re supposed to serve and protect, but all they do is patrol and control,” Mr. Togar said. “Walking down the street doesn’t make you a criminal.”

Photo: Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
"They just rude. Sometimes they curse but not most of the time. ‘Do you live here?
Got drugs? Got anything?’ Sometimes they just leave, sometimes they say 'sorry'."
                                                                             - Evan Guzman, 18, East New York, Brooklyn

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"Spin City: Inside The NYPD's Stop & Frisk Training Facility"  By Christopher Robbins, The Gothamist,  June 21, 2012

 Yesterday the NYPD loaded reporters onto a bus and drove them up to the Bronx to view their updated stop-and-frisk training program at the department's Rodman's Neck facility...  The combination of cloying overtures from the famously brusque NYPD press officers with a training facility that resembled a movie set made the entire experience feel like a Hollywood B-movie, Field Trip: Stop & Frisk. The surreality ended at the press conference, which followed the live-action demonstrations of three stop-and-frisk scenarios that 1,300 "high-impact" officers (those most likely to conduct stops) have completed since April, and are now required for new recruits.

 Two of the scenarios involved radio calls, the other a domestic disturbance. Weren't more than half of the 601,055 stops conducted last year for "furtive movements?" Why not incorporate those? "I think that everything you saw was realistic," Dr. James O'Keefe, Deputy Commissioner of Training said.... Also detracting from the scenarios' realism: the only man actually detained was white, and the officers assigned to performing the stops were seasoned detectives, not officers feeling their way through the exercise. There would be no learning curve, no adjustment of techniques. These two were perfect.

 We asked if the new training incorporated Commissioner Kelly's order in September to stop arresting citizens (mostly young men of color) who are essentially tricked into bringing small amounts of marijuana into public view—turning violations into misdemeanors—during stop-and-frisks. "That's not currently part of the training," O'Keefe said.

 Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Paul Browne asked Inspector Kerry Sweet, the executive officer of the NYPD's Legal Bureau to chime in. "We enforce the law as it is," Sweet said, as another six people were arrested for marijuana possession. "If there are legislative changes, we will address the changes."

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 “How Stop-and-Frisk (Not So) Quietly Became the Center of NYC Politics, by Seth Freed Wessler, Colorlines, June 18, 2012

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"Thousands March Silently to Protest Stop-and-Frisk Policies" by John Leland And Colin Moynihan, New York Times, June 17, 2012

In a slow, somber procession, several thousand demonstrators conducted a silent march on Sunday down Fifth Avenue to protest the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policies, which the organizers say single out minority groups and create an atmosphere of martial law for the city’s black and Latino residents....

The presence of several elected officials at the march, including the Democratic mayoral hopefuls Bill de Blasio, the public advocate; Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker; Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president; and William C. Thompson, the former city comptroller, seemed to signal a solidifying opposition to the policy, which has long been opposed by civil rights groups.
Wade Cummings, 46, a teacher, attended with his 19-year-old son, Tarik. Both said they had been stopped by police officers — once for the father, three times for the son.

“I’m concerned about him being stopped and it escalating,” the father said. “I like to believe I taught him not to escalate this situation, but you never know how it’s going to go down.”
Police officers stopped nearly 700,000 people last year, 87 percent of them black or Latino. Of those stopped, more than half were also frisked....

Demonstrators mostly adhered to the organizers’ call to march in silence, hushing talkers along the route. Members of labor unions and the N.A.A.C.P. appeared to predominate, but there were also student groups, Occupy Wall Street, Common Cause, the Universal Zulu Nation and the Answer Coalition. A group of Quakers carried a banner criticizing the stop-and-frisk practice; other signs read, “Skin Color Is Not Reasonable Suspicion” and “Stop & Frisk: The New Jim Crow.”

As of Friday, 299 organizations had endorsed the march, including unions, religious groups and Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arab, and Jewish groups. The turnout reflected the growing alliance between civil rights groups and gay and lesbian activists, who in past years have often kept each other at arm’s length. Last month, the board of the N.A.A.C.P., which includes several church leaders, voted to endorse same-sex marriage. The roster of support for the march on Sunday included at least 28 gay, lesbian and transgender groups....

The idea for the demonstration took root three months ago in Selma, Ala., after a commemoration of the 1965 civil rights march there, said Benjamin Todd Jealous, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., who met there with the Rev. Al Sharpton and George Gresham, president of 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East.... “Stop-and-frisk is a political tool, victimizing one group of people so another group feels protected,” Mr. Jealous said. “It’s humiliating hundreds of thousands of people.” According to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union, during the 10 years of the Bloomberg administration, the police have performed 4,356,927 stops, including 685,724 last year. Among African-American males ages 14 to 24, the number of stops last year was greater than their total population.

One man who held a sign that read “Stop Racial Profiling” said he came to Central Park to relax but decided to join the march because of his own experiences with the police.
“It happened to me about 10 times,” said the man, Bruce Fitzgerald, 48, of the Bronx.

Seeking a contrast to some recent Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, organizers called for a disciplined, orderly march, with no clashes with the police. Though protesters did not have a permit, organizers said that their talks with the police had been cordial and cooperative, and that they did not expect conflict.

“This policy did not emanate from the rank-and-file police officers, and we’re not protesting them,” said Mr. Gresham, who was arrested at an Occupy protest in November. “We’re not going to the police commissioner’s home. We’re going to the mayor’s home, because he is the guardian of New York.”

“If you’ve done nothing wrong, you deserve nothing but respect and courtesy from the police,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Police Commissioner Kelly and I both believe we can do a better job in this area — and he’s instituted a number of reforms to do that.”

At the end of the march, Mr. Jealous, who walked with his 6-year-old daughter, Morgan, on his shoulders, said the silence conveyed the seriousness of the demonstrators.
“In this city of so much hustle and bustle and clamor, sometimes the loudest thing you can do is move together in silence,” he said.

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The skyrocketing numbers of NYPD stop-and-frisks had little impact on the number of people shot in New York City or on gun violence in general during Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, a DNAinfo.com New York analysis of crime data has found.

While the NYPD was stopping and frisking a record 685,724 people last year, 1,821 people were victims of gunfire, according to NYPD and city statistics. That's virtually the same number as in 2002, Bloomberg's first year in office, when 1,892 people were shot, but just 97,296 people were frisked.

The year before, there were 1,845 shootings with a similar number of frisks.

"If you have a flat-line situation with shootings, and the stops are this high, you are throwing everyone up against the wall and you are losing the community, then you have to reassess," a former top NYPD official told "On the Inside."

"We are not a militia, but a police organization serving a community," the ex-cop continued. "We don’t want to be seen as an occupying army. We need the large majority of the community to be involved with us."

Between 2009 and 2011, the number of people shot in New York climbed from 1,727 to 1,821 even as the NYPD was ratcheting up the number of people it rousted from 510,742 in 2009 to the record 685,724, the statistics showed.

A similar pattern of rising shootings and escalating stop-and-frisks occurred from 2004 through 2006. During those years, the NYPD stop-and-frisks jumped 70 percent, from 313,523 to 506,491, but the number of shooting victims rose about 7 percent, from 1,777 to 1,880.

During Bloomberg’s first five years in office, the number of stops and frisks went up five fold, from 97,296 in 2002 to 506,491 in 2006. But the numbers of shootings and victims — 1,556 and 1,880, respectively — remained about the same since he and Kelly started.

Perhaps that helps explain why the NYPD kept the stop-and-frisk numbers a secret until February 2007 when they finally handed them over to the City Council, even though it was required following the 1999 fatal police shooting of Amadou Diallo.

To be sure, part of the rise in stop-and-frisks is due to cops getting better at reporting the encounters. But this in no way explains away a seven-fold jump in 10 years.

 One in five people stopped last year by the New York City police department was a teenager between the ages of 14 and 18, according to a WNYC analysis of recently released police data.

 Eighty-six percent of those teenagers who were stopped were either black or Latino, most of them boys.

 Last year, there were more than 120,000 stops of black and Latino kids between 14 and 18. The total number of black and Latino boys that age in the entire city isn’t much more than that – about 177,000 – which strongly suggests a teen male with dark skin in New York City will probably get stopped and frisked by the time he’s graduated from high school.

 The debate about stop and frisk’s racial disparities comes down to opponents who say it racially profiles and supporters who say the people stopped fit the descriptions of most suspects. The conversation, until now, has been dominated by lawyers, politicians, police officials and community leaders.

But ask junior high and high school students around the city, from affluent to low-income neighborhoods, and most appear to agree on one main premise: who gets stopped and frisked has everything to do with where you live and what color your skin is.

 A Tale of Two Cities

 Last year, the NYPD stopped teenagers more than 140,000 times.

But at Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan, which is 96 percent Asian and white, you would be hard pressed to find even one kid among the 3,300 students who has ever been stopped and frisked.

The students here, at one of the city’s most elite public high schools, are known to excel at academics. They are the eager students, the ones who raise their hands in class. But ask them how many of them have ever been stopped and frisked by police, and what you get back is a sea of blank stares....

 Cross over to Brownsville, Brooklyn, where there aren’t many skinny white kids, and the story of stop and frisk suddenly becomes “A Tale of Two Cities.”

Photo: Malik Small, 14, (left) said he has been stopped four times by police.  Tyari Jenkins, 14, (right) is an eighth grader at Teachers Preparatory High School in Browsville. Since getting stopped for the first time when he was 12, Tyari has wanted to become a criminal defense lawyer. Ailsa Chang/WNYC)

 The demographics of Teachers Preparatory High School in Brownsville are 99 percent black and Latino.  It takes only five minutes to find a group of 14-year olds here who say they have been stopped by police two, three, even seven times....

In this area alone, kids between 14 and 18 made up more than 2,700 of the nearly 8,000 people stopped by police in 2011. Within a three-block radius around Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, police stopped teens 7 times last year.

 Tyari Jenkins, a 14-year-old African-American student at Teachers Preparatory High School, said he has been stopped and frisked three times. 

 The first time was as a 12-year-old, when he was barely five feet tall, he said. He had been walking out of his home to his friend’s house across the street.

“When I looked up, I see the cop.  He was like, ‘You,’ and I was like, ‘Me?’  He said, ‘Yeah,’” Tyari recalled.  “He said, ‘Empty your book bag,’ and I was like, ‘Okay,’ and I was taking my time. Then he said, ‘You need to hurry up.’ And he started emptying my book bag and dropped my stuff on the ground.”

 The officers asked for an ID. Tyari said he left his at home, so the officers hauled him back home across the street and asked his mother to identify him. After a few minutes, they left.

Tyari said he’s never been arrested for anything. Neither have any of the other Brownsville kids who shared their stories. They are now 14 years old, and all of them have been stopped by police between two and seven times.    

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"Stop-and-frisk, Eviscerated:  A U.S. District Judge Exposes The NYPD's Harassment Strategy,  By Kristen Gwynne, Alternet and Salon, May 29, 2012

 This month, a federal judge in New York dealt a blow to “stop-and-frisk,” a policy that resulted in 685,000 recorded police stops in 2011. Eighty-five percent of those stopped were African American and Latino, mostly youths.  US district judge Shira Scheindlin granted class-action certification to a stop-and-frisk lawsuit against the city of New York... The plaintiffs allege that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy regularly violates the Constitution by illegally stopping and searching scores of people belonging to a particular demographic -- black and Latino....

The class-action ruling will put stop-and-frisk on trial.  Plaintiffs in Floyd et al. vs City of New York also argue that they were stopped by police who did not have the legally necessary "reasonable suspicion" that they had committed or were going to commit a crime. What's more, the suit alleges, police often performed frisks, but not because they saw a bulge they suspected to be a weapon, another legal requirement.

 In her written decision, Scheindlin said the alleged constitutional violations result not from the actions of rogue officers, but from a policy handed down from the very top. "The stop-and-frisk program is centralized and hierarchical," said Scheindlin, "Those stops were made pursuant to a policy that is designed, implemented and monitored by the NYPD's administration."  Scheindlin's ruling cites "overwhelming evidence" -- a spike in stop-and-frisks and the NYPD's own words -- indicating that at the "highest levels of the department," police are enforcing a policy that leaves behind a trail of daily injustices.

 For years, Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly have used distortions and misinformation to promote and justify a policy that violates the constitutional rights of those who were stopped. Now, the Scheindlin findings have exposed the NYPD game for what it is, an illegal system of quotas and racial profiling imposed on field police from the top of the NYPD.

 "Suspicionless stops should never occur," Scheindlin wrote in her decision, adding that, "Defendants' cavalier attitude towards the prospect of a'"widespread practice of suspicionless stops' displays a deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers' most fundamental constitutional rights." Stop-and-frisk, which the data shows is a form of racial profiling, violates not only the Fourth Amendment -- protection from unreasonable searches -- but also the 14th Amendment, which includes the equal protection clause, the plaintiffs charge.

 The Scheindlin decision was informative and comprehensive, including a number of important facts and observations. Here are eight important points from the decision.

 1. Soaring numbers. The rate of stops has grown exponentially under the Bloomberg administration...

 2. No reasonable suspicion. Reasonable suspicion that a person is involved in a crime is necessary for a legal stop. Eighty-eight percent of those stopped, however, are not charged with any crime. As Scheindlin noted, the data shows that "according to their own records and judgment, officers' 'suspicion' was wrong nearly nine times out of ten."

 3. Imaginary bulges.... A "suspicious bulge" was cited as a reason for about 10 percent of all [685,000] stops, but guns were seized in less than 1 percent. "For every 69 stops that police officers justified specifically on the basis of a suspicious bulge, they found one gun," the decision notes.

 4. Stops for no reason. "Overall, in more than half a million documented stops -- 18.4 percent of the total -- officers listed no coherent suspected crime," Scheindlin wrote...

 5. Unlawful stops. "According to their own explanations for their actions, NYPD officers conducted at least 170,000 unlawful stops between 2004 and 2009," Scheindlin wrote. Stops based on nothing more than "furtive movement" or a "high-crime area" were the justifications of at least 100,000 stops, but as Scheindlin says, [ such stops] are illegal due to the Fourth Amendment law protecting Americans from unreasonable searches.

 6. Racial profiling. The NYPD's stop-and-frisk program targets blacks and Latinos because of their skin color. Scheindlin admitted the testimony of Columbia University professor Jeffrey Fagan, who found that police stopped blacks and Latinos far more than white residents. Isolated from other factors like crime rates and neighborhood racial composition, racial disparity from racial targeting was statistically significant, strongly underscoring that skin color is the essential factor in determining who gets stopped...

Fagan's research also found that "the search for weapons is (a) unrelated to crime (b) takes place primarily where weapons offenses are less frequent than other crimes, and (c) is targeted at places where the black and Hispanic populations are highest." Cops are more likely to list no suspected crime category, or what Scheindlin called "an incoherent one," like "furtive movements," when stopping blacks and Latinos than when stopping whites. They are also more likely to use force against people of color.

 7. NYPD illegal quotas. Scheindlin links the rising number of stops and the targeting of black and Latinos to NYPD quotas, and to Commissioner Kelly's own admission that the NYPD has a quota policy, albeit disguised.... Former NYPD officers turned whistleblowers Adil Polanco and Adrian Schoolcraft have collected evidence documenting NYPD quotas in practice. From 2008 to 2009, Polanco, from the 41st Precinct, and Schoolcraft, from the 81st, recorded roll calls revealing supervisors' and other high-ranking officers' enforcement of quotas. In Scheindlin's own words, Schoolcraft's audio files expose supervisors "repeatedly telling officers to conduct unlawful stops and arrests and explaining that the instructions for higher performance numbers are coming down the chain of command."

 Similarly, Polanco testified that "his commanding officers announced specific quotas for arrests and summons (quotas that rose dramatically between early 2008 and 2009) and for UF-250s" (a term for the forms used in stops), said Scheindlin, "and threatened overtime and undesirable assignments for those who failed to meet them."

STOP WATCH NYC MAP OF 670,000 RECORDED STOP AND FRISKS IN NEW YORK CITY IN 2011

click on the map to go to the intereactive version where you can put in an address.

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"This Father's Day in New York City: 'A Silent March' against 'stop and frisk'"  by National Council of Churches, May 31, 2012

 Alarmed by legal sanctions that allow police to stop and search individuals -- mostly persons of color -- in public places, the NAACP is holding a "Silent March Against Stop and Frisk" on Father's Day.  The march, supported by the National Council of Churches and other faith, labor and civic groups, will begin at 1 p.m. June 17 at 110th Street between 5th Avenue and Lenox. 

"The arbitrary stopping and frisking of anyone -- especially persons of color -- is reminiscent of discredited police tactics of another era," said the Rev. Michael Livingston, director of the National Council of Churches Poverty Initiative and staff to the Council's Racial Justice Working Group....  Judith Roberts, director for Racial Justice Ministries, Congregational and Synodical Mission, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said the NCC Racial Justice Working Group is "focusing a great deal of attention on criminal justice in 2012."   "We recognize that people of color in the United States are disproportionately impacted by unequal sentencing laws, racial profiling and institutional racism within our criminal justice system," Roberts said. "As people of faith, we are called to stand up against injustice."

Organizers of the march said, "People of color should not be afraid to walk down the street in their own city. On June 17th, we will proudly walk with them to assert that right. Like thousands of activists before us, we will channel the power of our silence to bring public attention to the use of racial profiling by the New York Police Department." 

According to organizers, the tradition of silent marches for civil rights dates back to 1917, when the then 8-year-old NAACP held the first one in New York City to protest lynchings, segregation and race riots in the South. That march, led by NAACP founder W. E. B. DuBois, was the NAACP's first major public protest, and the power demonstrated by thousands of people marching silently through the streets of New York became an iconic symbol of strength in the face of injustice.   "Silence is a powerful force that, like other forms of non-violent protest, holds a mirror to the brutality of one's opponents." say the organizers. "On June 17, we will hold up a mirror to New York City's stop-and-frisk policy. It is not only discriminatory, it actively seeks to humiliate innocent citizens—particularly African American and Latino men—and criminalize otherwise legal behavior.

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"Arguments for Most Police Street Stops, and the Math, Don’t Hold Up"  By Michael Powel,  New York Times, May 28, 2012

To listen to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly — and their hallelujah chorus on the editorial boards of The Daily News and The New York Post — is to hear the same sad argument:

Our victory over crime is so tenuous that only the mass stopping and frisking of black and Latino men keeps a sea-tide of violence at bay. Two weeks ago, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of United States District Court declared this argument flatly unconstitutional. She found “overwhelming evidence” that top brass had put in place “a centralized stop-and-frisk program that has led to thousands of unlawful stops.”

The department’s lawyers argued that stopping and frisking was a time-honored “social institution.” The judge batted down that argument, too.

 “Defendants’ cavalier attitude towards the prospect of a ‘widespread practice of suspicionless stops,’ ” she wrote, “displays a deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional goals.”

 Stopping and frisking, done properly, is useful and legal. Officers can stop someone when they have reason to suspect that a crime has taken place or is about to take place. But that police favorite, “furtive movement”? No such legal animal exists.

 This is not just a fine point harped upon by federal judges. In the last few weeks I interviewed two officers in Bushwick who insisted that current policy required them to trespass across clear constitutional lines.

“You can’t catch innocent young men in your nets and just say, ‘Oh, that’s all right, I’m fighting crime,’ ” a veteran officer said. “You have to follow the law.”

Judge Scheindlin was withering on this question. She noted that many stops were illegal on their face and that even “according to their own records and judgment, officers’ ‘suspicion’ was wrong nearly 9 times out of 10.”

Last week, two police officers told me several colleagues were in heavily attended remedial classes for those who fail to record enough stops and arrests. “They want five arrests a month for marijuana for some units,” he said. “If you can do that, you either have X-ray vision or you are breaking the law.”

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 In 2001, then-former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told Time magazine that when his successor claimed responsibility for falling crime rates, it was “like trying to take credit for an eclipse.” 

More than a decade later, this same Ray Kelly, now in his second stint as NYPD commissioner, defends his over-the-top stop-and-frisk program as responsible for a plummeting murder rate.... This is demonstrably false....  In fact, the city’s murder rate started dropping long before Kelly’s current tenure as commissioner, and there’s no evidence stop-and-frisk had anything to do with it....  By 2001, the year before Bloomberg hired Kelly, the number of murders had dropped to 649. That total fell to 587 in 2002, the year before the commissioner initiated his aggressive stop-and-frisk regime.  From 2003 to 2011, a period that saw a 600% increase in street stops (from 97,296 to 685,724), there’s been an average of 544 murders per year. That amounts to about 430 fewer murders since the commissioner took office — a far cry from his claim of 5,600 saved lives. Sounds a little like taking credit for an eclipse....

 At bottom, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk regime represents a civil rights violation — one that disproportionally targets young black and Latino men. Though they make up only 4.7% of the city’s population, black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24 accounted for 41.6% of stops in 2011. The number of stops of young black men exceeded the city’s entire population of young black men.

 The commissioner contends that this happens only because officers go where the crime is. But last year, large percentages of blacks and Latinos were also stopped in overwhelmingly white neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, where 77% of people stopped were black or Latino.

 What’s more, “violent crime suspected” was a justification listed for only 10.5% of street stops in 2011. By far the most common reason listed was “furtive movement,” a catchall term that apparently applies to a wide assortment of innocent behavior.

 Discriminatory policing corrodes trust between police and communities, making everyone less safe. But don’t take my word for it. Again, listen to the old Ray Kelly, this time in 2000: “[A] large reservoir of good will was under construction when I left the Police Department in 1994. It was called community policing. But it was quickly abandoned for tough-sounding rhetoric and dubious stop-and-frisk tactics that sowed new seeds of community distrust.”  Sadly, the commissioner has changed his tune.

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Commissioner Raymond Kelly of the New York Police Department issued a weak statement last week on efforts to “increase public confidence” in the city’s abusive stop-and-frisk program, which ensnares hundreds of thousands of mainly minority New Yorkers every year. Mr. Kelly seems to believe that tinkering at the margins will cure the program’s constitutional flaws. It will not....

The implication in Mr. Kelly’s letter is that street-level officers are refusing to follow proper policy and are responsible for a growing number of illegal stops made without objective “reasonable suspicion,” as required by law.

But Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court demolished that argument last week in a ruling granting class-action status to a lawsuit filed against the department. She found the problem was the command structure itself and “the department’s policy of establishing performance standards and demanding increased levels of stops and frisks.” Stops increased from under 100,000 in 2002 to nearly 700,000 last year.

By pointing out the vague and unlawful criteria used to justify stops in New York, the court decision suggested a kind of road map to reform. In tens of thousands of cases, for example, officers reported “furtive movement.” They reported that other stops had taken place in “high crime areas,” when, in fact, some had not. And, in more than 10 percent of all stops, officers reported a “suspicious bulge” — suggesting a gun — in the clothing of people they stopped, but seized guns only 0.15 percent of the time. New York needs to stop these practices, which may have infected Philadelphia’s program.

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“Jumaane Williams Calls Michael Bloomberg, Ray Kelly 'Ass-Backwards' On Gun Violence”  By Christopher Mathias, Huffingtonpost May 23, 2012

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/23/stop-and-frisk-jumaane-williams-michael-bloomberg-ray-kelly-gun-violence_n_1538520.html

City Councilman Jumaane Williams thinks Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration is "ass-backwards" in its approach to gun violence, and that the mayor and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly are wrong to continue the "racist official policy" of NYPD stop and frisks.

Williams, who has been one of stop and frisk's most outspoken critics, told The Huffington Post Monday that he saw a "glimmer of hope" in Kelly's announcement last week that the department would be making some changes to the controversial program. Williams added, however, that "none of it was substantial reform."...

In February, Williams launched a legislative effort aiming to increase NYPD accountability, including a measure that would require cops to hand out business cards after an interrogation. The bill is still in committee.

Another bill soon to be put forth by Williams and Councilman Brad Lander would create an independent inspector general to oversee the NYPD.

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“NYPD's Zero Tolerance Stop-and-Frisk Policy Lands Seminary Student in Cell” By Murray Weiss, DNA Info Columnist, May 21, 2012

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120521/new-york-city/nypds-zero-tolerance-policy-lands-ohio-seminary-student-cell#ixzz1wZEPu6m4

A college student got an unpleasant taste of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program during a first-time visit to the Big Apple, DNAinfo.com New York has learned.

Clayton Baltzer, 19, who is studying to become a Christian minister at Baptist Bible College and Seminary in Clarks Summit, Penn., came to the city on March 27 to see the sights.

Instead, he got a tour of the city's criminal justice system after his one-inch pocket knife was spotted by cops.

Enacting the NYPD's strict zero tolerance frisk policy, those cops not only went through Baltzer's belongings, but arrested him and slapped him with weapons possession charges. A hearing on those charges is scheduled for Monday.

Baltzer told On the Inside that it all started as he passed through the Times Square subway station on his way to see the opera at Lincoln Center, ending a day-long field trip to view the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Discovery Museum, Ground Zero and the Metropolitan Museum of Art....

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“Scott Stringer Panel In Harlem Stop And Frisk Policy Not Working Criminal Justice Experts Say”  By Jeff Mays, DNA Info, May 18, 2012

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120517/central-harlem/stop-frisk-policy-not-working-criminal-justice-experts-say#ixzz1vcl7Oz00

A panel of criminal justice experts said the city needs to develop alternatives to the controversial stop and frisk policing strategy because it is alienating entire neighborhoods.

The panel, organized by Manhattan Borough President and mayoral hopeful Scott Stringer, said the number of guns recovered as a result of stop and frisk doesn't justify the damage the tactic inflicts upon police and community relations.

"Stop and frisk has become a defining civil rights issue of our time," Stringer said during opening remarks of the forum, which was held at Touro College on 125th Street....

Panelist David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said there are much more effective ways to reduce crime than stop and frisk. He said a small subset of young men in dangerous neighborhoods are responsible for the violent crime....  "It's amazing how far away from common sense we've gotten on this issue," Kennedy said.

Michael Hardy, executive vice president and general counsel for the National Action Network, said the solution lies in using the power of the ballot to elect a person willing to change the policy.
"Many communities would not tolerate this. They would use their vote to make a change," Hardy said. "The next administration will have an opportunity to change policing."

Lieberman said the decision by a federal judge Wednesday to allow a lawsuit challenging stop and frisk to become a class action suit is indicative of the type of efforts it would take to change the policy....

Terrell Trip, who lives in Wagner Houses in East Harlem, said he has been stopped and frisked and arrested multiple times for minor infractions such as trespassing while trying to visit a friend. "I sometimes feel like I'm living in Uganda. It doesn't make sense that this occurs in America," said Trip.

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Anthony Goldstone, who was stopped and searched in November 2011 and arrested: 

"He [the police officer] pulled a blunt out of my pocket, and he asked me, where's the weed? And I'm like, just because I have something that involves weed doesn't mean I have the weed with me or on me. I was going to the store to get that so I could smoke one, whatever the case may be. And he was like, well next time I see you, I might just lock you up for it."
link to brief recording of Anthony Goldstone:
http://thenewyorkworld.com/public/2012/may/nyw-hotspots-map/media/Anthony-Goldstone.ogg

"The NYPD’s Hottest Stop-And-Frisk Spots" by Alice Brennan, New York World, May 18, 2012
http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/2012/05/18/nypd-stop-frisk-hotspots/
See which six blocks in New York City had the most NYPD stops in 2011 

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“Bloomberg Continues Tone-Deaf Support Of Stop-And-Frisk Policy”  By Ben Yakas, Gothamist, May 18, 2012

http://gothamist.com/2012/05/18/bloomberg_continues_tone-deaf_suppo.php

Yesterday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly promised more scrutiny and oversight for the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy, outlining several changes to the policy in memos to the NYPD and City Council. But as far as Mayor Bloomberg is concerned, everything is working just fine, and there's nothing controversial about stop-and-frisk, and he can't hear any complaints nah nah nah: "We're going to keep doing this...We're not going to walk away from tactics that work and we're not going to walk away from bringing crime down," he said on his radio show this morning.

The Daily News seems to agree with Bloomberg—they published two pieces today in favor of stop-and-frisk. In one, columnist Mike Lupica calls stop-and-frisk an "imperfect" policy that works for an imperfect city. The other focuses on Judge Shira Scheindlin's opinion on the lawsuit, claiming it could send the city back to the bad old days: "This is extreme and perilous judicial overreaching. Based on nothing more, really, than numbers and an academic opinion that suited her beliefs, Scheindlin has moved menacingly toward restricting the NYPD’s tactics."

____________

"Plaintiffs to Ask for Federal Oversight of NYPD if Stop and Frisks Found Unlawful" By Ailsa Chang, WNYC, May 17, 2012

A jury may ultimately decide whether the New York Police Department has made improper stops. A federal judge has granted class action status to a 2008 lawsuit accusing the New York Police Department of discriminating against blacks and Hispanics with its stop-and-frisk policies aimed at reducing crime.

 U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan said in a written ruling that there was "overwhelming evidence" that a centralized stop-and-frisk program has led to thousands of unlawful stops. She noted that the vast majority of New Yorkers who are unlawfully stopped will never file a lawsuit in response, and she said class-action status was created for just these kinds of court cases....

 By certifying the lawsuit as a class action now, Scheindlin widened the lawsuit from a case about four men alleging they were unlawfully stopped to a case where the NYPD’s entire stop-and-frisk program is now before the court.

 Plaintiffs lawyer Darius Charney of the Center for Constitutional Rights said, in the event a jury agrees that the NYPD is unlawfully stopping people and racially profiling blacks and Latinos, class members will likely request oversight of the NYPD by a federal court monitor. They also intend to ask for an end to what they describe as a “quota” system, which they argue pressures commanders and officers log a certain level of arrests, summonses and stops every reporting period.  Finally, Charney said class members will request re-training and tightened supervision over stop-and-frisk practices.

 Scheindlin said she found it "disturbing" that the city responded to the lawsuit by saying a court order to stop the practice would amount to "judicial intrusion," and that no injunction could guarantee that suspicionless stops would never occur or would only occur in a certain percentage of encounters.

 "First, suspicionless stops should never occur," Scheindlin wrote. She said the police department's "cavalier attitude towards the prospect of a `widespread practice of suspicionless stops' displays a deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers' most fundamental constitutional rights."

 She added that if the police department was engaging in a widespread practice of unlawful stops, then an injunction seeking to curb that practice is not the "judicial intrusion into a social institution" that the city claims it would be but "a vindication of the Constitution and an exercise of the courts' most important function: protecting individual rights in the face of the government's malfeasance."

 ... When asked to comment on the judge’s class certification decision on Wednesday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, “It is what it is.”

 ____________

A federal judge on Wednesday granted class-action status to a lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics, saying she was disturbed by the city’s “deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional rights”....  Over the weekend, the police disclosed that they had made more than 200,000 such stops in the first three months of 2012, placing the Bloomberg administration on course for the largest number of annual stops in the 10 years the department has been measuring them.

In granting class-action status to the case, which was filed in January 2008 by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of four plaintiffs, the judge wrote that she was giving voice to the voiceless. "The vast majority of New Yorkers who are unlawfully stopped will never bring suit to vindicate their rights,” Judge Scheindlin wrote. The judge said the evidence presented in the case showed that the department had a “policy of establishing performance standards and demanding increased levels of stops and frisks” that has led to an exponential growth in the number of stops. But the judge used her strongest language in condemning the city’s position that a court-ordered injunction banning the stop-and-frisk practice would represent “judicial intrusion” and could not “guarantee that suspicionless stops would never occur or would only occur in a certain percentage of encounters." Judge Scheindlin said the city’s attitude was “cavalier,” and added that “suspicionless stops should never occur.”

Despite the judge’s ruling and her pointed language, the city is unlikely to change its course. Asked about the decision at a news conference at Police Headquarters, Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, would say only, “It is what it is.”

Darius Charney, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, pointed to a part of the decision in which the judge noted that there was “indisputable evidence” that the department’s street-stop program stemmed in design and implementation from the highest levels of the agency.

“This is not just about five or six bad officers; this is about a whole department’s policies and practices,” Mr. Charney said. “Which is why the best way to proceed with this case is as a class action, because it affects hundreds of thousands of people in the city.”
 

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“Stop And Frisks Do Not Always Drive Homicides Down, Data Shows”  By Bob Hennelly, WNYC, May 15, 2012

http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2012/may/15/city-murder-rate-down/

The NYPD credited citywide declining homicide rates to its increasing reliance on the controversial practice of stop-and-frisk last week.

But in the 13 precincts citywide where homicides were trending up so far this year, a WNYC analysis of the data found that an increase in stop-and-frisk in the first quarter of this year did not always result in fewer homicides so far this year....

Of the 13 precincts where homicides were up, stop and frisks increased in six over the same reporting period last year. And in the remaining seven, stop and frisks were down.

“There is no evidence that stop and frisk is lowering or suppressing the murder rate in New York City,” said Chris Dunn, spokesman for the NYCLU, in a statement. “Murders have dropped steadily since 1990.”

The counter-trend of higher murder numbers is most pronounced in parts of North Brooklyn in the cluster that includes the 77th, 81st, 83rd, 88th and 90th precincts where the number of homicides this year to date doubled to 20 over the same period last year.

In the case of the 83rd precinct, stop and frisks dropped significantly from 2,991 in the first quarter last year to 2,096 this year – but homicides were up from one to three.

Queens South, which includes the 101st, 105th and the 113th precincts where murder is up, had 17 homicides so far this year compared to 11 over the same period last year. In two of those precincts – the 101st and 105th – stop and frisks were up by more than 10 percent year over year.

“If you talk to people who live in neighborhoods like Brooklyn North, there are lots and lots of people who will tell you they don't feel so safe,” said Professor Gene O’Donnell from John Jay College, a former police officer and prosecutor. “It is a tale of many different cities."

Meanwhile, Staten Island reported an impressive 85 percent drop in the homicide rate year to date with just a single homicide. But the number of stop and frisks remained roughly the same – 6,912 in the first quarter this year compared to 6,827 last year.

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“Even Police Brass Question Escalating Stop and Frisk Numbers” By Murray Weiss, DNA Info, May 15, 2012

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120515/new-york-city/even-police-brass-question-escalating-stop-frisk-numbers#ixzz1v6d00fDP

The number of people stopped and frisked under the NYPD's controversial crime-fighting tactic has increased seven-fold since Police Commissioner Ray Kelly took charge 10 years ago — and even police officials are asking why.

As the practice draws heavy fire from concerned public officials and civic leaders, numerous current and former police officials — some directly involved in establishing operational strategies and overseeing Compstat during the Kelly era — want to know why it's grown from fewer than 100,000 stops when Kelly took over in 2002 to nearly 700,000 last year.

These are not civil liberty union officials claiming the program smacks of racial profiling. They are not cop-haters or politicians using the issue to seek higher office. And they are not former police officials turned academics criticizing from outside the department.

These are smart, veteran police officials who love the city, the NYPD and cops. They are the types who believe there are few callings in life better than fighting crime.

"If we are throwing 700,000 people against the wall, what are the criminal profiles of the people being stopped?" one ex-official asked. "Why are we stopping them? And if there are no summonses issued or arrests made, why not?"

Another cop boss added, "And who is doing all this stopping and frisking?"
If the majority of the stops are being done by experienced anti-crime cops, "I have more confidence in their ability to police and make proper choices on who to stop," he said.

"The ends do not always justify the means," one of the officials recently told me as he described, "Stop, Question and Frisks" as a program that should perhaps be re-named "Rousting Minorities."

__________

A report released yesterday by the NYCLU uses the NYPD's own numbers on stop-and-frisk to reveal the depth of racial disparities and ineffectiveness of the policy. The report constitutes the most comprehensive analysis of NYPD stop-and-frisk activity ever conducted....  Using the NYPD's full electronic database on 2011 stop-and-frisk activity—which was obtained by the NYCLU after a successful lawsuit filed in 2007—Data and Policy Analyst Sara LaPlante closely examined different aspects of stops across the city including the use of force, race, weapon recovery, location, and the treatment of hundreds of thousands of innocent people stopped last year....

Despite mounting evidence that the policy is ineffective, the NYPD attempts to justify stop-and-frisk on the grounds that it recovers a large number of guns. In 2003, police recovered 604 guns as a result of 160,851 stops. In 2011, the Department conducted an additional 524,873 stops (for a total of 685,724), yet only 176 additional guns were recovered. Of the 685,724 stops in 2011, only 1.9 percent resulted in the recovery of a weapon. And while blacks and Latinos were more likely to be stopped, whites were almost twice as likely to be found carrying a weapon. Even in neighborhoods without a majority black or Latino population, black and Latino young men were still stopped at a rate disproportionate to their white counterparts.

The single most common form of force was "hands on suspect" which accounted for about 70 percent of the use of force within the department. "I want to emphasize, however, that the notion that 'hands on suspect' is a de minimus form of force is a notion that should not be accepted," said NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn, "When a police officer puts his of her hands on someone who gets stopped that qualitatively changes the experience."

Other noteworthy findings in the NYCLU's report:
 - In 70 out of 76 precincts, blacks and Latinos accounted for more than 50 percent of the stops. 

- In 10 precincts with black and Latino populations of 14 percent or less (such as the 6th Precinct in Greenwich Village), blacks and Latinos accounted for more than 90 percent of the stops.
- Of the 685,724 stops, 605,328 were of people who had engaged in no unlawful behavior as evidenced by the fact that they were not issued a summons nor arrested.
- The 75th Precinct in East New York had the most stops with 31,100 (27,672 innocent), while the 94th Precinct - in Greenpoint had the fewest with 2,023 (1,843 innocent).
- While the NYPD recovered one gun for every 266 stops in 2003, the additional 524,873 stops conducted in 2011 yielded only one gun for every 3,000 people stopped.

Donna Lieberman blasted Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly for the 600 percent increase in stop-and-frisks since the mayor's first year in office. "Under this administration, we have come to see a two-tiered system of policing in New York," she said, "There's the kinder, gentler policing that we see on the Upper East Side or in Park Slope and the up-against-the-wall policing we see in Brownsville and Harlem." While the NYCLU maintains that a 2007 report commissioned by the NYPD and conducted by Rand Corporation glossed over racial disparities, the report did conclude that a city the size of New York should be conducting roughly 250,000-330,000 stops annually. Lieberman, reluctant to cite the report, noted that the NYCLU would not suggest what the "right number" of stops would be. "That leads us into a conversation about quotas," she said. "Quotas are antithetical to the constitutional standard for stop-and-frisk."

“Stop-and-Frisks Target Minorities Regardless of Neighborhood, NYCLU Says” By Jill Colvin, DNA Info, May 9, 2012

New York has a moral imperative to address violence. But stop-and-frisk practices are harming the community in order to protect it, and the costs of those practices can no longer be justified by the claim that nothing else will work. There are other ways.

Representatives of the New York Civil Liberties Union and other officials gathered at the steps of City Hall Tuesday to criticize the New York City Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy, which reached record heights in 2011 according to a recent report.

Officials at the New York City Police Department say last year, police officers officially recorded over 684,000 stop and frisks—a 14 percent increase from the year before....

"Innocent New Yorkers who on 600,000 separate occasions this past year were stopped, frisked and maybe thrown up against the wall. Barely six percent of these terrorizing encounters resulted in arrest," said Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union. The NYPD says last year, blacks were 53 percent of the stop subjects, Hispanics were 34 percent, and whites made up 9 percent of those stopped....

Activists warn that sort of policing turns black and Latino communities against the NYPD. "How dare anyone say these policies are good for our neighborhoods when we are telling you that they are not," said City Councilman Jumaane Williams. They say there's a better way for police to work with the community.

"If you have a professional police force that is interacting in a professional and respectful way,” said Michael Harding, an attorney at the National Action Network, “you are going to have more people participating in gun buyback programs.”

The NYPD stopped and questioned a record number of people last year, mostly minority-group members who were not charged with any wrongdoing, newly released numbers show.

There were 684,330 stops in 2011, more than six times the 97,296 stops in 2002, the first year of the Bloomberg administration.  Blacks and Hispanics were the targets of 87% of all stops, while whites were involved in only 9%.

“This is not a problem that impacts New Yorkers equally,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Little wonder that to many, policing in New York City is a tale of two cities.”....

In Harlem, where some men sport buttons that read “Stop and Frisk” with a red line through the words, Dominick Sanchez, 20, said he was stopped Monday and questioned about robberies on the block.

“If you’re not white, you’re going to get stopped,” said Sanchez, who is black. “I want to talk back to them, but they threaten you.”

"Jazz Hayden and the Fight Against Stop-and-Frisk: An unlikely activist's battle with the NYPD's frisky business"  by Graham Rayman. Village Voice, February 08, 2012

In 2010, the NYPD, in a campaign touted by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as a key element in the war on crime, stopped more than 600,000 people throughout the city. From 2004 to 2009, police stopped 2.8 million people; the largest age group is males 15 to 19, following by males ages 20 to 24. Just 9 percent of the stops resulted in an arrest. And in 2011, the police were on pace for 686,000 stops—a new record.

 In the 2010 [Village] Voice series "The NYPD Tapes," police supervisors in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant order cops to make a quota of one or two stops per tour. Police Officer Adil Polanco, who was assigned to a Bronx precinct, said similarly that there was a stop-and-frisk quota there. If those orders are typical for most precincts—and that appears to be the case from the tapes and Polanco's statements—then quotas are a key factor in fueling the rise in stops...

 In the month of January [2012] alone, more than three dozen lawsuits alleging improper stop-and-frisks were filed, based on a Voice reading of the complaints. Extrapolated, that means that the city could be sued more than 400 times this year alone just on improper stops.

 The people who filed suit last month appear to come from all walks of life—an auto mechanic, two high school students, a commuter, a Transit Authority worker, a guy walking home with a bag full of dog food. In all of the cases, the criminal charges, if any, were dismissed.

 Take Francis Destouche, for example. Destouche, a 53-year-old auto mechanic with a clean record, was walking home in the Bronx in October 2011 when he was stopped for no apparent reason by police. They searched him, found nothing, and then accused him of "throwing something away." He was arrested, held for 20 hours, and missed his granddaughter's birth. The charges were dismissed. Destouche's lawyer, Paul Mills, alleges that the stop and the arrest were a result of the NYPD's "quota policy"....

 Or consider the case of "M.S.," a 16-year-old Staten Island youth who says he was stopped for walking down the street, detained, and searched. His backpack was searched. He was physically restrained. Charges were eventually dismissed. The lawsuit goes on to quote at length from stop-and-frisk studies, which suggest a bias against young black and Hispanic males.

 Scott Joyner was waiting for a bus in Brooklyn in June 2011 when he saw cops arresting two other people. An officer walked over and grabbed his arm but released him when he realized Joyner was just standing at the bus stop. Joyner walked to a pay phone to file a 311 complaint, and there he was arrested, he alleges, for trying to make a complaint. Charges were dismissed.

 In January 2011, Jamie Jarrett was walking down a Brooklyn street when a van of cops rolled up and began searching him. They found no weapons or drugs. The officers refused to explain why they were placing him under arrest. The charge of marijuana sale was dismissed, but not before Jarrett spent 48 hours in custody....

 Likewise, Jarrett Savage claims he was illegally stopped and frisked in October 2010 in Brooklyn. He was pushed against a wall, searched, and taken to the precinct, where he was strip-searched in front of another prisoner. The charges were dismissed eventually...

 Ramon Morales says he was cleaning his car outside his sister's house on Cabrini Boulevard in Manhattan in August 2009 when cops stopped him for no apparent reason, accused him of drug possession, and searched him and the car. They found no drugs but charged him with a DWI, even though he wasn't driving. Eighteen court appearances and nearly two years later, the charges were dismissed. And Morales claims someone stole stuff from his car while it was in police custody.

 Daryl George, a 36-year-old transit worker who had never been arrested, sued this month following a questionable stop in January 2011. George says he was talking with a friend about buying an iPod in the lobby of a Brooklyn building when police came in, ordered everyone against the wall, and searched them. George didn't have any contraband, though someone else in the lobby did. George was arrested anyway, and though the charges were dismissed and the case was sealed, he was suspended by the Transit Authority and lost five months' pay and benefits.

 Kevin Adams claimed he was illegally searched and arrested in February 2010 in the lobby of the Brooklyn building where he lives with his mother. Later that day—the arrest took place at 10 a.m.—they released him because the district attorney declined to prosecute, but not before he was roughed up and strip-searched in a police van.

Gregory Pope also sued last month. He claims he was walking on Coney Island in August 2011 when he was jumped by four plainclothes officers. They searched him. He told them they couldn't just search him for no reason. After that, they arrested him and strip-searched him at the precinct. The police also took his car to the precinct, where they searched it and caused a range of damage. Pope was held in the precinct for a day and then, inexplicably, released without charges.

Schedrick Campbell was walking home with a bag of dog food in March 2011 in Brooklyn when three plainclothes officers grabbed him, accused him of swallowing drugs, and tackled him. Despite a strip search in the precinct and a series of forced and invasive medical tests over two days at Interfaith Hospital, no contraband was found. The hospital billed Campbell $9,500 for the concocted arrest. 

And in April 2011, while Keenan Baskerville was walking down a Brooklyn street, he was stopped by police, accused of smoking marijuana, which he denied, and arrested. He was strip-searched, but no contraband was found. Baskerville also sued. 

Monique Williams sued as well. She says that when she asked why she was stopped, a police sergeant said to her, "Because I can," a statement that doesn't appear in the NYPD's official stop-and-frisk policy....

* * * *

 Meanwhile, the endless saga that is Floyd v. City of New York continues to lumber through federal court. Floyd is a class-action lawsuit filed in 2008 by four citizens and the Center for Constitutional Rights that alleges that the NYPD's massive stop-and-frisk campaign routinely violates the civil rights of New Yorkers. (One citizen is the first named plaintiff, David Floyd, of the Bronx.) 

In the latest legal maneuvering in nearly four years of litigation, the plaintiffs have asked the judge for "class certification," which would open the door for hundreds of thousands of additional plaintiffs. The city, on the other hand, is trying to block expert testimony from Jeffrey Fagan, a Columbia University professor who wrote a study of the strategy.... Darius Charney, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, says the city has refused to engage in any substantive settlement talks, despite the fact the issue is "of great public concern," the judge in the case wrote... 

As for the NYPD's claim that the campaign acts as a deterrent to crime—the city uses the Orwellian term "pre-emptive policing"—even though it produces relatively few convictions, Charney says there is "no empirical proof" of that. "There's no study that shows that aggressive stop-and-frisk deters crime," he says. "And you have to have reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment. If they did 700,000 stops a year legally, we wouldn't have a complaint. But we contend the vast majority are illegal."

 The Floyd case actually suffered a blow earlier this year, when U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that police had enough reasonable suspicion to frisk Floyd himself.... Scheindlin based the decision on the city's claim that officers were acting on an ongoing pattern of burglaries in the area. 

The CCR lawyers, however, went back and looked at the crime statistics for the preceding two months and found, instead, that there had been just one burglary in that area during the period. They filed a new motion based on that.In November, Scheindlin granted the motion. She noted the new evidence was "deeply concerning to the court." "Shockingly," Scheindlin wrote, police use the justification of "high-crime area" in stops even in low-crime areas. Fifty-five percent of stops are justified with that notation. The city justified its stop of Floyd with the high-crime notation. "Plaintiffs have now raised severe doubts about the existence of that [burglary] pattern," Scheindlin wrote, adding that "it would be a miscarriage of justice" to deny Floyd's legal claim as a result.

WHEN I was 14, my mother told me not to panic if a police officer stopped me. And she cautioned me to carry ID and never run away from the police or I could be shot. In the nine years since my mother gave me this advice, I have had numerous occasions to consider her wisdom.

One evening in August of 2006, I was celebrating my 18th birthday with my cousin and a friend. We were staying at my sister’s house on 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan and decided to walk to a nearby place and get some burgers. It was closed so we sat on benches in the median strip that runs down the middle of Broadway. We were talking, watching the night go by, enjoying the evening when suddenly, and out of nowhere, squad cars surrounded us. A policeman yelled from the window, “Get on the ground!”

I was stunned. And I was scared. Then I was on the ground — with a gun pointed at me. I couldn’t see what was happening but I could feel a policeman’s hand reach into my pocket and remove my wallet. Apparently he looked through and found the ID I kept there. “Happy Birthday,” he said sarcastically. The officers questioned my cousin and friend, asked what they were doing in town, and then said goodnight and left us on the sidewalk.

 Less than two years later, in the spring of 2008, N.Y.P.D. officers stopped and frisked me, again. And for no apparent reason. This time I was leaving my grandmother’s home in Flatbush, Brooklyn; a squad car passed me as I walked down East 49th Street to the bus stop. The car backed up. Three officers jumped out. Not again. The officers ordered me to stand, hands against a garage door, fished my wallet out of my pocket and looked at my ID. Then they let me go.

 I was stopped again in September of 2010. This time I was just walking home from the gym. It was the same routine: I was stopped, frisked, searched, ID’d and let go.

 We need change. When I was young I thought cops were cool. They had a respectable and honorable job to keep people safe and fight crime. Now, I think their tactics are unfair and they abuse their authority. The police should consider the consequences of a generation of young people who want nothing to do with them — distrust, alienation and more crime.

 Last May, I was outside my apartment building on my way to the store when two police officers jumped out of an unmarked car and told me to stop and put my hands up against the wall. I complied. Without my permission, they removed my cellphone from my hand, and one of the officers reached into my pockets, and removed my wallet and keys. He looked through my wallet, then handcuffed me. The officers wanted to know if I had just come out of a particular building. No, I told them, I lived next door.

One of the officers asked which of the keys they had removed from my pocket opened my apartment door. Then he entered my building and tried to get into my apartment with my key. My 18-year-old sister was inside with two of our younger siblings; later she told me she had no idea why the police were trying to get into our apartment and was terrified. She tried to call me, but because they had confiscated my phone, I couldn’t answer.

 Meanwhile, a white officer put me in the back of the police car. I was still handcuffed. The officer asked if I had any marijuana, and I said no. He removed and searched my shoes and patted down my socks. I asked why they were searching me, and he told me someone in my building complained that a person they believed fit my description had been ringing their bell. After the other officer returned from inside my apartment building, they opened the door to the police car, told me to get out, removed the handcuffs and simply drove off. I was deeply shaken.

Letter To the Editor, New York Times, December 29, 2011

 In “Why Is the N.Y.P.D. After Me?” (Sunday Review, Dec. 18), Nicholas K. Peart illustrates how the lives of young black men are violated regularly by the police, usually without any merit.

 Our analysis of 2009 stop-and-frisk data for the New York police shows that 94 percent of stops in 2009 did not lead to an arrest. The analysis also showed that there were 132,000 stops of black men 16 to 24. This is particularly striking since according to Census Bureau data that we examined, only 120,000 black men of that age lived in New York City in 2009. So on average, every young black man can be expected to be stopped and frisked by the police each year.

 We cannot accept that so many young people experience their lives this way, particularly at such a formative stage. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s recent Young Men’s Initiative made little attempt to address stop-and-frisk policy. We must stop treating young black men like criminals and start thinking of them as potential assets to our recovering and growing economy and society. Until we do, our efforts to improve their education and employment prospects will be hollow.

 Lazar Treschan,  Director of Youth Policy, Community Service Society of New York

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New York Times Editorial, "Civil Rights and Resisting Arrest," October 18, 2011

 The arrest of a New York City police officer, who was accused of violating the civil rights of an African-American man during a stop-and-frisk arrest, provides good reason for Justice Department officials and state lawmakers to investigate whether others on the force are engaging in similar practices. Federal prosecutors on Monday charged the officer, Michael Daragjati, with violating the man’s constitutional rights by falsely accusing him of resisting arrest. The criminal complaint suggests how easily that charge can be abused. Nearly 6,000 New Yorkers were taken into custody last year with resisting arrest as the most serious charge against them, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services has reported.

The African-American man was walking in a residential area of Staten Island when he was stopped, shoved against the side of a parked van and searched by Officer Daragjati, who is white. The officer found no drugs or weapons, but grew angry when the man complained about his treatment and asked for the officer’s name and badge number. Prosecutors say that Officer Daragjati arrested the man, who put up no struggle, and falsified a police report, charging the man with resisting arrest, a misdemeanor.

 The officer’s conduct might easily have escaped notice had he not been under surveillance for alleged extortion and insurance fraud, with which he has also been charged. Civil rights lawyers have long complained about trumped-up arrests of mainly minority citizens who are dragged into the criminal justice system.

 Commissioner Raymond Kelly recently directed the police not to arrest people with small amounts of marijuana unless the drug is in open view. Low-level marijuana offenses have contributed to the arrests of hundreds of thousands of people since the mid-1990s. We need to know whether bogus charges of resisting arrest are widespread.

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Letter to the Editor, New York Times, Oct 23, 2011

 Re “Civil Rights and Resisting Arrest” (editorial, Oct. 19):

 We support the call by your editorial board and several public officials for a federal investigation into the stop-and-frisk policies of the New York Police Department. The recent allegation that a Staten Island police officer fabricated charges against a person of color after he protested being stopped for no reason, together with the disturbing statistics that the vast majority of those stopped by the N.Y.P.D. are black or Hispanic, continues to raise troubling questions about the fairness of these policies.

Too many young men of color are being needlessly brought into the criminal justice system, only to come out with a criminal record, thereby limiting their future prospects. It is time for an in-depth investigation of this situation, which can be done only by the federal government.

 KEVIN D. O’CONNELL

President, New York State Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers

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"Borough President Seeks Limits on Stop-and-Frisk" by By Kate Taylor, New York Times, September 23, 2011

The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, arguing that Police Department practices are creating a “wall of distrust” between officers and minorities, plans to call this weekend for a major re-examination of the department’s stop-and-frisk policy.

Mr. Stringer plans to argue at a symposium that the spiraling use of the practice — stopping and searching people who officers believe may be armed and dangerous — is disproportionately directed at blacks and Latinos, constituting harassment and making those demographic groups less likely to assist the police in investigations. There were about 600,000 stop-and-frisk encounters in New York City last year.

“We cannot wait a minute longer to have an honest examination of stop-and-frisk and the collateral damage it inflicts on our city every day,” Mr. Stringer says....

Mr. Stringer proposes several changes, including establishing “clear behavioral triggers” to justify a stop-and-frisk; currently, he said, the police often cite “furtive movement” as their only justification. Mr. Stringer suggests trying alternate policing techniques, which he said have been used successfully in other cities. He cited a Boston program called Operation Ceasefire, which sought to deter gang violence...

Criticism of the practice has grown recently. Early this month, a black city councilman and a city aide were arrested while walking in a restricted area along the route of the West Indian Labor Day parade in Brooklyn, in what the arrested men have alleged was a case of racial profiling. The episode prompted several city officials, including Mr. Stringer, to argue that the increasing use of the stop-and-frisk practice had contributed to a culture of racial bias in policing.

The practice is also the subject of a legal challenge brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Last month, a federal judge rejected the city’s effort to have the case dismissed.

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"Study Finds Street Stops by N.Y. Police Unjustified," By Al Baker And Ray Rivera, New York Times, October 26, 2010

 Tens of thousands of times over six years, the police stopped and questioned people on New York City streets without the legal justification for doing so, a new study says. And in hundreds of thousands of more cases, city officers failed to include essential details on required police forms to show whether the stops were justified, according to the study written by Prof. Jeffrey A. Fagan of Columbia Law School.

The study was conducted on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is suing the New York Police Department for what the center says is a widespread pattern of unprovoked and unnecessary stops and racial profiling in the department’s stop-question-and-frisk policy.... The study examined police data cataloging the 2.8 million times from 2004 through 2009 that officers stopped people on the streets to question and sometimes frisk them...

 Professor Fagan found that in more than 30 percent of stops, officers either lacked the kind of suspicion necessary to make a stop constitutional or did not include sufficient detail on police forms to determine if the stops were legally justified. The study also found that even accounting for crime patterns in the city’s various neighborhoods, officers stopped minorities at disproportionate rates. 

 Nearly 150,000 of the stops — 6.7 percent of all cases in which an officer made a stop based on his own discretion, rather than while responding to a radio call in which some information had already been gathered — lacked legal sufficiency, the study concluded. Stops were considered unjustified if officers provided no primary reason articulating a reasonable suspicion for the stop.

For example, if an officer conducted a stop solely because a person was in a high-crime area — without listing a primary reason, like the person “fits a description” of a crime suspect or appeared to be “casing” a store — the stop was considered unjustified.  If an officer cited only “other” as the reason for the stop, with no other details, it was deemed unjustified in the study.  An additional 544,000 cases, or 24 percent of all discretionary stops, did not have enough information on the forms that officers are required to fill out after such encounters.

The United States Supreme Court has held that in order for police officers to stop someone, they must be able to articulate a reasonable suspicion of a crime. To frisk them, they must have a reasonable belief that the person is armed and dangerous. Darius Charney, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the study ... "confirms what we have been saying for the last 10 or 11 years, which is that ... it is really race, not crime, that is driving this,” Mr. Charney said....

Force was 14 percent more likely to be used in stops of blacks and 9.3 percent more likely for Hispanics, compared with white suspects. Guns were not often found (they were discovered in 0.15 percent of all stops). And weapons and other contraband were seized nearly 15 percent less often in stops of blacks than of whites, and nearly 23 percent less often in stops of Hispanics. If stops that resulted in some form of sanction, blacks were 31 percent more likely than whites to be arrested than issued summonses.
 
 

Police stop a man in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in the lobby of his apartment building   / NY Times

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"A Few Blocks, 4 Years, 52,000 Police Stops"  By  Ray Rivera, Al Baker and Janet Roberts, New York Times, July 11, 2010

When Night falls, police officers blanket some eight odd blocks of Brownsville, Brooklyn. Squad cars with flashing lights cruise along the main avenues... On the inner streets, dozens of officers, many fresh out of the police academy, walk in pairs or linger on corners. Others, deeper within the urban grid, navigate a maze of public housing complexes, patrolling the stairwells and hallways. This small army of officers, night after night, spends much of its energy pursuing the controversial Police Department tactic known as “Stop, Question, Frisk,” and it does so at a rate unmatched anywhere else in the city.

The officers ... stop and question people who merely enter the public housing project buildings without a key; they ask for identification from, and run warrant checks on, young people halted for riding bicycles on the sidewalk....

Between January 2006 and March 2010, the police made nearly 52,000 stops on these blocks and in these buildings, according to a New York Times analysis.... These encounters amounted to nearly one stop a year for every one of the 14,000 residents of these blocks. In some instances, people were stopped because the police said they fit the description of a suspect. But the data show that fewer than 9 percent of stops were made based on “fit description.” Far more — nearly 26,000 times — the police listed either “furtive movement,” a catch-all category that critics say can mean anything, or “other” as the only reason for the stop. Many of the stops, the data show, were driven by the police’s ability to enforce seemingly minor violations of rules governing who can come and go in the city’s public housing.

 The encounters ... yield few arrests. Across the city, 6 percent of stops result in arrests. In these roughly eight square blocks of Brownsville, the arrest rate is less than 1 percent. The 13,200 stops the police made in this neighborhood last year resulted in arrests of 109 people. In the more than 50,000 stops since 2006, the police recovered 25 guns....

New York is among several major cities across the country that rely heavily on the stop-and-frisk tactic, but few cities, according to law enforcement experts, employ it with such intensity. In 2002, the police citywide documented 97,000 of these stops; last year, the department registered a record: 580,000....

The United States Supreme Court established the legal basis for stops and frisks — reasonable belief that a person is armed and dangerous — in the 1968 case of Terry v. Ohio. But the officer in that case had a far different level of experience than many of the officers walking the streets of Brownsville. He had patrolled the same streets of downtown Cleveland for 30 years looking for pickpockets and shoplifters. By comparison, the nearly 200 officers who operate in the neighborhood as part of Mr. Kelly’s “Impact Zone” program ... are largely on their first assignment out of the academy.

The data show the initiative is conducted aggressively, sometimes in what can seem like a frenzy. During one month — January 2007 — the police executed an average of 61 stops a day. The high number of stops in this part of Brooklyn can be explained in part by the fact that police can use violations of city Housing Authority rules to justify stops. For instance, the Housing Authority, which oversees public housing developments, forbids people from being in their buildings unless they live there or are visiting someone.

And so on a single Friday in January 2009, the police stopped 109 people in this area, 55 of them inside the project buildings, almost half for suspicion of trespassing. The show of force resulted in two arrests for misdemeanor possession of marijuana and misdemeanor possession of a weapon.

Inside the project buildings and out, males 15 to 34 years of age, who make up about 11 percent of the area’s population, accounted for 68 percent of the stops over the years. That amounted to about five stops a year each, though it was impossible to tell how often someone was stopped or if that person lived in the neighborhood, because the data did not include the names or addresses of those stopped. Police officials say the age figures sound right, since most crime suspects fit that description.

Young black men get stopped so often that a few years ago, Gus Cyrus, coach of the football team at nearby Thomas Jefferson High School, started letting his players leave practice with their bright orange helmets so the police would not confuse them with gang members.  “My players were always calling me saying ‘Coach, the police have me,’ ” Mr. Cyrus said....

Almost everyone in the projects has a story. There is Jonathan Guity, a 26-year-old legal assistant with no criminal record, who, when asked how many times he had been stopped in the neighborhood where he grew up, said, “Honestly, I’d say 30 to 40 times. I’m serious.” ....

Oddly, years ago when crime was higher, relations with the police seemed better, several residents said. The officers seemed to show a greater sense of who was law abiding and who was not, they said. Now, many residents say, the newer crop of officers seem to be more interested in small offenses than engaging with residents. “Rookies,” said Sandra Carter, 60, as she sat on a bench outside 372 Blake Avenue.

------

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
July 28, 2010:  An article on July 12 about the New York Police Department’s tactic known as “Stop, Question, Frisk” and its application in eight blocks of Brownsville, Brooklyn, referred imprecisely to the legal standard that governs when police officers are permitted to frisk someone. The United States Supreme Court has held that in order for the police to frisk someone they must have a reasonable belief that the person is armed and dangerous. The standard cited in the article — reasonable suspicion of a crime — is enough to justify a stop, but not enough to make a legal frisk.

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Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Police officers stopped a man in Brownsville, Brooklyn after he was seen spitting on the sidewalk and entering an unlocked door.
After a check for warrants, he was let go.

From 2004 through 2009, in a policy that has gotten completely out of control, New York City police officers stopped people on the street and checked them out nearly three million times, frisking and otherwise humiliating many of them. Upward of 90 percent of the people stopped are completely innocent of any wrongdoing....

 Not only are most of the people innocent, but a vast majority are either black or Hispanic. There is no defense for this policy. It’s a gruesome, racist practice that should offend all New Yorkers, and it should cease. 

Police Department statistics show that 2,798,461 stops were made in that six-year period. In 2,467,150 of those instances, the people stopped had done nothing wrong. That’s 88.2 percent of all stops over six years. Black people were stopped during that period a staggering 1,444,559 times. Hispanics accounted for 843,817 of the stops and whites 287,218.

 While crime has been going down, the number of people getting stopped by the police is going up. Last year, more than 575,000 stops were made — a record. But 504,594 of those stops were of people who had done nothing wrong. They had committed no crime, were issued no summonses and were carrying no weapons or illegal substances.

Still, day after day, the cops continue harassing and degrading these innocent New Yorkers, often making them line up against walls, or lean spread-eagled on the hoods of cars, or sprawl face down in the street to be searched like criminals in front of curious, sometimes frightened, sometimes giggling, sometimes outraged onlookers.

 If the police officers were treating white middle-class or wealthy individuals this way, the movers and shakers in this town would be apoplectic. The mayor would be called to account in an atmosphere of thunderous outrage, and the police commissioner would be gone. But the people getting stopped and frisked are mostly young, and most of them are black or brown and poor. So Police Commissioner Ray Kelly could feel completely comfortable with his department issuing the order in 2006 that reports of all stops and frisks be forwarded and compiled “for input into the Department’s database”....

 So the department is collecting random information on innocent, primarily poor, black and brown New Yorkers for use in some anticipated future criminal investigation. But it is not collecting and storing massive amounts of information on innocent middle-class or wealthy white people. Why is that, exactly?

_______________

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"Police Report Far More Stops And Searches" By Al Baker And Emily Vasquez,  New York Times, February 3, 2007

The New York Police Department released new information yesterday showing that police officers stopped 508,540 individuals on New York City streets last year [2006] — an average of 1,393 stops per day....  The number was up from 97,296 in 2002, the last time the department divulged 12 months' worth of data.... 

 [The police] department delivered four bound volumes of statistics to the Council in midafternoon. The raw data showed that more than half of those stopped last year were black...  At the same time, the average number of people arrested per quarter as a result of such stops almost doubled....

 Until yesterday, the most recent information released by the Police Department about how and why it stops people to search them, sometimes looking for illegal guns, was from 2003... Some officials have said that lag put the department at odds with a pair of legal requirements that sprang from public outrage at the 1999 fatal police shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black street peddler....  [Many] contended that there was a pattern of racial profiling in stop-and-frisks. A state study later in 1999 confirmed racial disparities in such stops.

 The guidelines to monitor stop-and-frisks in detail were set forth in a city law signed in 2001, and in a federal court case settled by the Bloomberg administration in 2004. Both called for the Police Department to release to the City Council, four times a year, basic data about the people who are stopped and questioned by officers, and the reasons for such encounters. But until yesterday, it had been a year since the department reported its stop-and-frisk activity, and those numbers dated from a three-month period ending in September 2003.

In the meantime, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent city agency that investigates charges of police misconduct, found that complaints involving stops and searches have more than doubled in recent years...  Complaints involving police stops now account for 33 percent of all complaints, up from 20 percent in 2003....

Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, said later that ... aggressive street enforcement was partly responsible for the increase in stop-and-frisks. Also, he said, ''careful accounting'' of such encounters by the department in recent years made the increase seem greater....

________________

 
“As Officers Stop and Frisk, Residents Raise Their Guard,” by Trymaine Lee, New York Times,  February 4, 2007.

 At 14, Rocky Harris knows the routine: You raise your hands high, you keep your mouth shut and you don’t dare move a muscle.... When they don’t find guns or drugs, Rocky said, they let you go.

He said that he had been searched, fruitlessly, at least three times since last summer, and that he had friends who had been searched repeatedly.  They tell you that you’re selling drugs. But I don’t do nothing wrong. I just play ball,” he said, walking through the Red Hook East housing development in Brooklyn yesterday morning, headed to a community center for a game of basketball.

 On Friday, the New York Police Department released a report showing that police officers stopped 508,540 people on city streets in 2006, an average of 1,393 a day and quintuple the number from 2002.... [It] was not hard yesterday in Red Hook to find a handful of that number walking around....  More than half of those stopped, and sometimes frisked, by the police were black.

 Anthony James, 28, who works for a large sanitation company and, as such, often keeps late hours, said the police frequently stop him as he leaves or comes home. He said that the stops had become such a problem that he has taken to carrying his work identification badge home to prove to the police that he has a job and is not selling drugs. 

"You see where you’re standing. This is the Red Zone,” he said, mapping with his hands a section of the projects from Columbia Street to Clinton Avenue. “This is the war zone. If they catch you in here alone they’re going to stop you.

 _______________

New York Times / November 18, 2007

________________

U.S. Says City Has Failed To Release Data on Frisks, By William K. Rashbaum, New York Times, January 31, 2001

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/nyregion/us-says-city-has-failed-to-release-data-on-frisks.html

Federal prosecutors investigating whether the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department are discriminatory have told a judge that the city stopped turning over data late last year that the prosecutors needed to finish the investigation.

The city's action has prevented prosecutors in the office of Mary Jo White, the United States attorney in Manhattan, from reviewing police documents and information concerning people stopped or frisked by officers since April 1999. The situation was disclosed in a recent letter from her office to Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court, who is hearing a separate civil rights lawsuit brought against the city and the Police Department by people who say they were illegally or improperly stopped and searched.

City lawyers have also stopped negotiating with the prosecutors over the stop-and-frisk practices, said a lawyer who has been briefed on the talks. The inquiry was undertaken to determine whether the Police Department's aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics discriminate against blacks and Hispanics. City and police officials have adamantly denied that their practices are discriminatory.

________________

"The Broken-Windows Myth" By Bernard E. Harcourt, New York Times Op-ed, September 11, 2001

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/opinion/11HARC.html

There is little, if any, evidence that the crackdown on squeegee men and graffiti scribblers has played much of a role in reducing crime in New York. Since the early 1990's, most major American cities have seen their crime rates drop significantly, in some cases even further than New York's has. Many of these cities did not undertake anything like New York's crackdown on small-time offenses.

A 1999 study of the 17 largest cities compared each city's most recent drop in homicides. New York's rate of decline was the fifth-largest, behind those of San Diego, Washington, St. Louis and Houston. San Diego, seated along a major drug smuggling corridor close to the Mexican border, is particularly interesting. In the late 1980's, its police department began adopting a very different style — a problem-solving, community-oriented approach. While recording impressive drops in crime between 1993 and 1996, the city also posted a 15 percent drop in arrests and an 8 percent decline in complaints of police misconduct.

Criminologists say a number of other factors have contributed to declining crime rates in New York — among them, the sharp increase in the police force. Former Mayor David Dinkins hired more than 2,000 new police officers, and Mr. Giuliani hired another 4,000. From 1991 to 1998 the force grew by almost a quarter, giving New York the highest ratio of officers per civilian of the nation's large cities.  A fall in the crack cocaine trade, a strong economy, new computerized police tracking systems, more prisoners and an aging population have also contributed to lower crime rates.

The best social-scientific evidence has shown that a neighborhood's graffiti, litter or public drunks do not necessarily point to a serious crime problem. The research suggests that rather than leading to serious crime, disorder — like crime — is caused by conditions like poverty and a lack of trust between neighbors.  The most rigorous research to date, a 1999 study by Robert Sampson of the University of Chicago and Stephen Raudenbush of the University of Michigan, concludes that "the current fascination in policy circles on cleaning up disorder through law enforcement techniques appears simplistic and largely misplaced, at least in terms of directly fighting crime."

Whatever effect the quality-of-life campaign has had on serious crime in New York is, in all likelihood, not a result of fixing broken windows or cleaning the city of squeegee men. It is because of the increased surveillance afforded by Giuliani-style policing. The broken-windows policy has made possible a 66 percent jump in misdemeanor arrests from 1993 to 1998 and sharp increases in stop-and-frisks that allow more searches for guns, more checks for outstanding warrants and more fingerprint collection.

This enhanced surveillance has come with a big price tag: a 37 percent increase in complaints of police misconduct from 1993 to 1999, significant racial disparities in enforcement, illegal strip searches and many traumatic encounters — some of them deadly — for ordinary citizens. It has also aggravated racial divisions.
So do we need a broken-windows type of policing? Not for combating serious crime. This approach to law enforcement diminishes trust between the police and the community, violates basic rights and scapegoats the homeless and other people we deem disorderly. Clearly, there still needs to be a mayoral debate on whether New York City wants to bear that cost.

Bernard E. Harcourt is a professor of law at the University of Arizona and the author of "Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing."

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"The Fallacy of Racial Profiling" By David Cole and John Lamberth, New York Times Op-ed, May 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/opinion/the-fallacy-of-racial-profiling.html?pagewanted=print

It is no longer news that racial profiling occurs; study after study over the past five years has confirmed that police disproportionately stop and search minorities. What is news, but has received virtually no attention, is that the studies also show that even on its own terms, racial profiling doesn't work. Those who defend the police argue that racial and ethnic disparities reflect not discrimination but higher rates of offenses among minorities. Nationwide, blacks are 13 times more likely to be sent to state prisons for drug convictions than are whites, so it would seem rational for police to assume that all other things being equal, a black driver is more likely than a white driver to be carrying drugs.

But the racial profiling studies uniformly show that this widely shared assumption is false. Police stops yield no significant difference in so-called hit rates -- percentages of searches that find evidence of lawbreaking -- for minorities and whites. If blacks are carrying drugs more often than whites, police should find drugs on the blacks they stop more often than on the whites they stop. But they don't. In Maryland, for example, 73 percent of those stopped and searched on a section of Interstate 95 were black, yet state police reported that equal percentages of the whites and blacks who were searched, statewide, had drugs or other contraband. In New Jersey, where police have admitted to racial profiling, searches in 2000 conducted with the subjects' consent yielded contraband, mostly drugs, on 25 percent of whites, 13 percent of blacks and only 5 percent of Latinos. A study of stop-and-frisk practices in New York City in 1998 and 1999 found that while police disproportionately stopped young black men, the hit rates were actually marginally higher for whites than for blacks or Latinos. And while 43 percent of those searched at airports by the Customs Service in 1998 were black or Latino, illegal materials were found on 6.7 percent of whites, 6.3 percent of blacks and 2.8 percent of Latinos....

Other studies corroborate that drug use and dealing are equal opportunity offenses.... A National Institute of Justice study found that most users report getting their drugs from dealers of their own racial or ethnic background; so dealing rates are likely to track user rates. These figures suggest that race and ethnicity are simply not useful criteria for suspicion.

The Customs Service's experience is illustrative. In late 1998, the service adopted reforms designed to eliminate racial and gender bias in its searches. In 2000, it conducted 61 percent fewer searches than in 1999, but seizures of cocaine, heroin and Ecstasy all increased. From 1998 to 2000, hit rates for whites and blacks increased by about 125 percent, from less than 7 percent to 15.8 percent, while hit rates for Latinos increased more than fourfold, from 2.8 percent to 13.1 percent.

Perhaps most important is that every year the vast majority of both blacks and whites are not arrested for anything. A generalization linking race or ethnicity to crime will therefore inevitably sweep in many innocent people. And police will miss guilty people who don't fit their stereotypes. As cities from New York to Cincinnati have seen, reliance on race corrodes the legitimacy of the criminal justice system by reneging on its promise of equality. But that's old news. The new news is that racial profiling just doesn't work.

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 New York Daily News, “Minority Men: We Are Frisk Targets. News Poll Finds 81 Of 100 Have Been Stopped By Cops,” By Leslie Casimir, Austin Fenner And Patrice O'Shaughnessy, March 26, 1999.

For minority males across the city, the stop and frisk has become routine, experienced by every class in every neighborhood. In street interviews this week with 100 black and Hispanic males between the ages of 14 and 35, a startling number of them – 81 – said they had been stopped, patted down and questioned, without being arrested…. The respondents were asked to detail their experiences with police and their attitudes toward cops. Many offered candid accounts of incidents that left them feeling demeaned....  

In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gordon Ward called the experiences a blistering rite of passage for young minority males. The 25-year-old Medgar Evers College student estimated he has been stopped by cops 50 times. One night, he said, he was stopped three times.... “They touch you and go through everything you have, and you can’t say anything unless you want to end up the way you don’t want to be,” said Edward Charles, 18, a messenger who lives in the Bronx.... When it first happened, I felt like I was raped, but now I’m getting used to it,” said Charles.

Not so for Alimany Yatteh, 18, an immigrant from Sierra Leone who is still traumatized by his first brush with the police. He said he was 16, walking down St. Nicholas Ave., when two cop cars cut him off and officers jumped out and pushed him against a wall. “Four of them aimed their guns at my head and ordered me to freeze,” said Yatteh, who lives in Harlem. Cops searched his pockets and took his identification, he said. “Everyone in the neighborhood was looking at me like I was a drug dealer…."

Of the 100 males interviewed ... only seven said they view the police as protectors of the community, while 53 said cops are a controlling force and 40 see them as both. The number of stop and frisks increased dramatically in 1994.... Police Commissioner Howard Safir tripled street crime unit staffing in 1997... “It’s not racial profiling, it’s dealing with the population of a community in which there is crime,” Safir said....

But legal predicates are little comfort to men and boys who feel as if they live in a police state. Dereck Henry, a stocky 15-year-old from Washington Heights, offered one of the ways he deals with it. “I walk straight down the street with my head held high….  I show them that I am somebody and not what they think I am,” he said.

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Video

"Stop and Frisk in Brownsville, Brooklyn: Residents Question a Police Tactic

Seven-minute video from NY Times by Mathew Orr, Ray Rivera, Al Baker

Stigma: Yale Law School Stop and Frisk synopsis

“Stigma” explores the dynamic between the community and the police through the eyes of three people who grew up on the streets of New York City.