The New York City Police Department enacted a stop and frisk program was enacted to ensure the safety of pedestrians and the safety of the entire city. Stop and frisk is a practice which police officers stop and question hundreds of thousands of pedestrians annually, and frisk them for weapons and other contraband. Those who are found to be carrying any weapons or illegal substances are placed under arrest, taken to the station for booking, and if needed given a summons to appear in front of a judge at a later date. The NYPD’s rules for stop and frisk are based on the United States Supreme Courts decision in Terry v. Ohio. The ruling in Terry v. Ohio held that search and seizure, under the Fourth Amendment, is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and frisks him or her without probable cause to arrest. If the police officer has a “reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime” and has a reasonable belief that the person "may be armed and presently dangerous”, an arrest is justified (Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, at 30).
While the stop and frisk program ultimately seems like a great idea and that it will help residents of New York City feel safer while on the streets, there has been much controversy with this program. The issue of racial profiling is largely discussed when talking about NYPD’s stop and frisk program. Besides police officers targeting lower income neighborhoods, more stops are of African Americans or Latinos than of whites. These stops often end up with a higher arrest rate. Of the 685,784 stopped last year, 92% were male and 87% were African American or Latino (Devereaux, 2012).
When an officer stops a person in NYC, the officer ...
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...using the program, I feel that Bill de Blasio, who is preparing to fill Mayor Bloomberg’s seat as the mayor of New York City, has the right idea when it comes to New York City’s Police Department’s stop and frisk program. He plans not only to redevelop the stop and frisk program altogether, but he plans on focusing on making the program “racially color-blind”.
While making any program in the criminal justice system “color-blind” is not an easy concept, many regulations can be enacted to help ensure equality when finding a precinct and performing a stop and frisk among NYC civilians. The new policy can include regulations that make it necessary to use a higher form of discretion when stoping a person. Such as attempting to overlook the persons race and focus more on where they are coming from, how they are acting, and/or who they are surrounding themselves with.
The 4th amendment provides citizens protections from unreasonable searches and seizures from law enforcement. Search and seizure cases are governed by the 4th amendment and case law. The United States Supreme Court has crafted exceptions to the 4th amendment where law enforcement would ordinarily need to get a warrant to conduct a search. One of the exceptions to the warrant requirement falls under vehicle stops. Law enforcement can search a vehicle incident to an individual’s arrest if the individual unsecured by the police and is in reaching distance of the passenger compartment. Disjunctive to the first exception a warrantless search can be conducted if there is reasonable belief
Stop and Frisk is a practice that was put into play by which a police officer initiates a stop of an individual on the street supposedly based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity “Stop and frisk” and other discriminatory policing practices have spiraled out of control.
That did not seem to be sufficient in wanting the power to search people of color arbitrarily, hence the advent of stop and frisk. With the power of full discretion granted to law enforcement and no effort to stop the targeting of people of color, stop and frisk quickly became an implicit measure to spike up incarceration rates within the black community. Officially, stop and frisk can apply to anyone and is not exclusive to black men. Unofficially, it is commonly known that black men are the primary sought out target of stop and frisk procedures. Evidence of this is clearly shown in how stop and frisk is predominantly practiced in areas with a larger population of people of color. To demonstrate, a simple thought experiment can clearly show that even with full discretion, it would be imprudent and irreverent of any police officer to round up all the white women in an Orange County mall for a mass stop and frisk (Madva lecture 11/14/17), but the same would not apply for a group of young black men in a public
Stop and Frisk is a procedure put into use by the New York Police Department that allows an officer to stop and search a “suspicious character” if they consider her or him to be. The NYPD don’t need a warrant, or see you commit a crime. Officers solely need to regard you as “suspicious” to violate your fourth amendment rights without consequences. Since its Beginning, New York City’s stop and frisk program has brought in much controversy originating from the excessive rate of arrest. While the argument that Stop and Frisk violates an individual’s fourth amendment rights of protection from unreasonable search and seizure could definitely be said, that argument it’s similar to the argument of discrimination. An unfair number of Hispanics and
Racial profiling is the tactic of stopping someone because of the color of his or her skin and a fleeting suspicion that the person is engaging in criminal behavior (Meeks, p. 4-5). This practice can be conducted with routine traffic stops, or can be completely random based on the car that is driven, the number of people in the car and the race of the driver and passengers. The practice of racial profiling may seem more prevalent in today’s society, but in reality has been a part of American culture since the days of slavery. According to Tracey Maclin, a professor at the Boston University School of Law, racial profiling is an old concept. The historical roots “can be traced to a time in early American society when court officials permitted constables and ordinary citizens the right to ‘take up’ all black persons seen ‘gadding abroad’ without their master’s permission” (Meeks, p. 5). Although slavery is long since gone, the frequency in which racial profiling takes place remains the same. However, because of our advanced electronic media, this issue has been brought to the American public’s attention.
“From 2005 to mid-2008, approximately eighty percent of total stops made were of Blacks and Latinos, who comprise twenty-five percent and twenty-eight percent of New York City’s total population, respectively. During this same time period, only about ten percent of stops were of Whites, who comprise forty-four percent of the city’s population” (“Restoring a National Consensus”). Ray Kelly, appointed Police Commissioner by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of New York in 2013, has not only accepted stop-and-frisk, a program that allows law enforcers to stop individuals and search them, but has multiplied its use. Kelly argued that New Yorkers of color, who have been unevenly targeted un...
This is the police practice of stopping, questioning, and searching for potential criminal suspects in vehicles or on the street based solely on their racial appearance (Human Rights Watch, 2000). This type of profiling has contributed to racially disproportionate drug arrests, as well as, arrests for other crimes. It makes sense that the more individuals police stop, question and search, the more people they will find with a reason for arrest. So, if the majority of these types of stop and frisk searches are done on a certain race, then it makes sense that that race would have a higher arrest rate.... ...
Police justify carding as a general investigation to locate suspects and help people fight crime. Toronto Police Service says that “It does not purposefully target individuals because of their race” (SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN, Nov 24 2016). However that being said, racialized communities testify that they are being targeted for their race and ethnicity. The new rule doesn’t fully end the controversial practice and carding remains a major concern for the minority community. Sandy Hudson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto says “the new rule doesn’t make any great change” (Muriel Draaisma, Jan 02, 2017). “Where these rules apply- and where they don’t- doesn’t change anything about carding”, she also said “A police officer can always say they are
There have been many studies and case reports involving racial profiling, particularly racial profiling issues involving traffic stop and seizures. In a study done of reports on the stop-and-searches done on Interstate 95 in Maryland, it was found that 28.4 percent of black drivers and passengers and 28.8 percent of white drivers and passengers stopped were found with illegal contraband. (U.S. Department of Justice) The disparity between the two statistics is a mere .4 percent and shows that race is not an issue. Further reading into the seventy one page report written by the U.S. Department of Justice sho...
Reports have shown very little benefits from these stops, only one out of 10 yield any wrongdoing and only 1% of the incidents involve a subject carrying a weapon.** Yet NYPD’s officers continue with the stops and spend less time fighting crimes and more time violating a civilian’s Fourth Amendment rights. According the video, not all NYPD’s police officers agree with the harassment and damage Mayor Bloomberg’s policy has caused young people and their families. They are not happy with how these stop-and-frisks have tarnished their image, prohibiting them from doing the real work of protecting people and keeping crime off the streets. Unfortunately, the officers interviewed in the video revealed the reasons why stop-and-frisk numbers are so high and talked about the pressure from their superiors to “make the quota.” They claim that they are asked to “hunt” to meet a numeric goal of stops or face retaliation and penalties. They are promised promotions to the next rank for high numbers or disciplinary action for those with low numbers. Many are fed up with the top down demands to fill their quotas but don’t want to rock the boat and fear filing a complaint about police practice or the system in general, would not be
In the United States of America today, racial profiling is a deeply troubling national problem. Many people, usually minorities, experience it every day, as they suffer the humiliation of being stopped by police while driving, flying, or even walking for no other reason than their color, religion, or ethnicity. Racial profiling is a law enforcement practice steeped in racial stereotypes and different assumptions about the inclination of African-American, Latino, Asian, Native American or Arab people to commit particular types of crimes. The idea that people stay silent because they live in fear of being judged based on their race, allows racial profiling to live on.
Some issues with stop and frisk in some parts of New York they have to have practice of stop and frisk and there are some people have issues about it because they are ignoring the people's right of the
The new New York mayor is now wanting to reform the policy and include even MORE racial profiling enforcement then there was before, and that is all because it makes the NYPD look really good. But now that a good number of people know this, people now think the NYPD is even more corrupt and ruined than it was in previous years. In the end, it was not worth it. Not one bit. One step forward and two steps back.
Stop-and-frisk has been a contentious police practice since first approved by the Supreme Court in 1968. In Floyd v City of New York, the U.S District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that New York City’s stop-and-frisk practices violate both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. In New York City, stop-and-frisk practices have generated strong debate on the wisdom and legality of these procedures. From January 2004 through June 2012, the New York City Police Department made 4.4 million pedestrian stops, of which over 80 percent were African Americans or Latinos (Rudovsky & Rosenthal 2013). More than half of those stopped were also subjected to a frisk (Rudovsky & Rosenthal 2013). The number of stops per year rose sharply from 314,000 in 2004 to a high of 686,000 in 2011. 52 percent of all stops were followed by a protective frisk for weapons; a weapon was found in only 1.5 percent of these frisks (Rudovsky & Rosenthal 2013). 8 percent of all stops led to a search into the stopped person’s clothing because the officer felt an object during the frisk that he either suspected to be a weapon or immediately perceived to be other contraband. In 9 percent of these searches, the object was a weapon. 6 percent of all 4.4 million stops resulted in an arrest; 6 percent resulted in a summons. The remaining 88 percent resulted in no further law enforcement action. The officer used force in 23 percent of the stops of Blacks, in 24 percent of Hispanics, and in 17 percent of the stops in Whites. Weapons were seized in 1 percent of the stops of Blacks, 1.1 of the stops in Hispanics and 1.4 percent of the stops of Whites. Contraband other than weapons was seized in 1.8 percent of the stops of Blacks, in 1.7 percent of the stops of...
Even before the stop are made (add comma after made?) cops watch possible suspects of any suspicious activity even without any legal right. “Plainclothes officers known as “rakers” were dispatched into ethnic communities, where they eavesdropped on conversations and wrote daily reports on what they heard, often without any allegation of criminal wrong doing.” (NYPD Racial Profiling 1) This quote explains how even before a citizen is officially stopped by a cop, there are times when that they have already had their personal conversations assessed without their knowledge or without them having done any wrong acts. It was done, based solely on their ethnicity and social status alone. (you can add an example of what the people, who were being watched, were doing) Then (comma?) when police are out watching the streets, they proceed to stop people again simply based on racial profiling. In an article called Watching Certain People by Bob Herbert, stated that “not only are most of the people innocent but a vast majority are either black or Hispanic” (Herbert 1). Racism is happening before the suspect even gets a chance to explain themselves or be accused of any crime, and the rules of being able to do such a thing are becoming even more lenient so that police are able to perform such actions. “The rule requiring police to