The stop-and-frisk policy could be considered a big controversy facing New York in recent times. The whole concept behind this stopping-and-frisking is the police officer, with reasonable suspicion of some crime committed or about to be committed, stops a pedestrian, questions them, then if needed frisks the person. This policy started gaining public attention back in 1968 from the Terry v. Ohio case. A police officer saw the three men casing a store and he believed they were going to rob the store; this led to him stopping and frisking them. After frisking them, he found a pistol and took the weapon from the men. The men then cried foul and claimed they were unconstitutionally targeted and frisked. One of the biggest reason stop-and-frisk should be abolished is in hopes to decrease such blatant racial profiling that has been going on under the name of “stop-and-frisk”. In 2007, 55% of the people stopped in New York were blacks and 30% were Hispanic (“Update: Crime and Race”). When checked again in 2011 a total of 685,000 people were stopped by the police of that 685,000, 52.9% were African Americans, 33.7% were Latino, and 9.3% were white (“Racial Profiling”). There is a story of an innocent victim of the stop-and-frisk policy, a man by the name of Robert Taylor. Police in Torrance stopped the elderly man and claimed he fit the description of a suspect that was linked to a robbery. But there was one simple problem; Taylor is a light complexioned, tall, 60 year-old man and the suspect was believed to be a short, dark complexioned, stocky man in his thirties; nothing like Taylor at all (Hutchinson). His shows that the police do not always stop people based on the right reasons, they tend to stop people based on the color of thei... ... middle of paper ... .... Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "California Police Stop Proves Racial Profiling Is Alive and Well." 2010. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. Mac Donald, Heather. "Stop the Killing, Keep "Stop-and-Frisk"" City-Journal. N.p., 23 July 2012. Web. 08 Nov. 2013. "Racial Profiling." Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 3 Sept. 2012. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. "Stop and Frisk." Gale Encyclopedia of American Law. Ed. Donna Batten. 3rd ed. Vol. 9. Detroit: Gale, 2010. 391-392. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. Sullum, Jacob. "When policing becomes harassment: why the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program is unconstitutional." Reason July 2013: 8. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. "Update: Crime and Race." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 25 May 2007. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
People of color are being pursued on the highways in the land of the free. In Bob Herbert’s “Hounding the innocent” acts of racial profiling are displayed flagrantly. Racial profiling should be illegal, since it is unfair to its victims, demoralizing, and it breaks the trust between the public and the police.
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.
Quinton, P., Bland, N., Miller, Joel (2000) Paper 130: Police stops, Decision-Making, and Practice. London: Home Office
For the past few years there has been an ongoing debate surrounding the issue of racial profiling. The act of racial profiling may rest on the assumption that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to commit crimes than any individual of other races or ethnicities. Both David Cole in the article "The Color of Justice" and William in the article "Road Rage" take stance on this issue and argue against it in order to make humanity aware of how erroneous it is to judge people without evidence. Although Cole and William were very successful in matters of showing situations and qualitative information about racial profiling in their articles, both of them fail at some points.
Holloway, Carson. "Profiling and the Constitution." Public Discourse. N.p., n. d. Web. 4 Mar. 2014. .
Before any argument can be made against racial profiling, it is important to understand what racial profiling is. The American Civil Liberties Union, defines racial profiling as "the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin"(Racial Profiling: Definition). Using this definition we can determine that racial profiling excludes any evidence of wrong-doing and relies solely on the characteristics listed above. We can also see that racial profiling is different from criminal profiling, which uses evidence of wrong-doing and facts which can include information obtained from outside sources and evidence gathered from investigation. Based on these definitions, I will show that racial profiling is unfair and ineffective because it relies on stereotyping, encourages discrimination, and in many cases can be circumvented.
Every day you see and hear about minorities groups complain about cops and their tactics against them stopping them while in traffic taking them in to custody or even getting kill over nothing. Racial Profiling is a common thing in this community and it is causing a lot of trouble. According to Minnesota House of Representatives analyst Jim Cleary, "there appear to be at least two clearly distinguishable definitions of the term 'racial profiling ': a narrow definition and a broad definition... Under the narrow definition, racial profiling occurs when a police officer stops, questions, arrests, and/or searches someone solely on the basis of the person 's race or ethnicity... Some ways to stop it is find out who is guilty of it, look at their
Crosley, Hillary. “How Data Took Down NYC’s Stop and Frisk” The Hour (2013) 1-3. Print.
tactics used in the world. Sometimes even though it may look like there was a reduction in crime, it is not always clear on if there was a sole explanation to an overall decrease in crime or if there were multiple justifications for the decline. In the case of stop and frisks, at least in New York City, the negatives outweigh the positives. “The New York City policy of aggressive stops and frisks had an extremely negative impact on its principle targets” which have “major implications for crime reduction.” (109) Those implications being the legitimacy of the criminal justice system itself.
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
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...
The U.S Census Bureau reports that over 13 percent of the total population were African American, 17 percent are Hispanic, and 61 percent are White. My report will center around police stops and searches. In recent years, the two common ways of police searching of citizens that were not involved in a crime are traffic stops and random searches known as Stop & Frisk. My reason for choosing this topic is to highlight facts that led to the inconsistencies in arrest rates among ethic groups demographically.
The police initiated 49% of these incidents. In this report by Langton & Durose, 2013, 25% of those who were stopped on the street, indicated that the behavior of the police was inappropriate. The report also brought out the fact that the percentage of people who file a complaint if they feel the police have not behaved properly was less than 5%. The report also examines the racial disparity in the number of drivers stopped by traffic. It was discovered that there were 13% more black drivers stopped that their white counterparts. Concerning the public’s perception of the behavior of the police during the stop and frisk incidences more blacks than whites reported that the officers displayed inappropriate behavior. Most of the drivers stopped by an officer of a different race believed that the search was illegitimate. The authors of the report also discovered that the rate of ticketing was higher in black drivers compared to the
In the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York ruled in David Floyd, Lalit Clarkson, Deon Dennis, and David Ourlicht, individually and on behalf of a class of all others similarly stated v. The City Of New York (2013), the rights of law enforcement to cease and desist the practices of “Stop-and-Frisk”. This practice was credited by Mayor Bloomberg for having a strong reduction in the amount of crime in New York City but at a cost of violating the 4th amendment rights of citizens but also especially against