Stop and frisk

614 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Ethical violations within law enforcement

Looking back in history, crime has always been an ongoing issue for big states, as well as small communities. Law enforcement official have tried to implement several different approaches throughout time in order to try and deter crime. Recently a notable tactic that has come under a lot of scrutiny is referred to as ‘the stop-and-frisk Law.’ Under this policy, police officers have the right to stop, and if needed frisk, a suspect and ask him or her questions with reasonable cause. This policy was meant to prevent crime and criminals from reaching a level of being incarcerated or doing harm to others. Stop-and-frisk has been a method used in both big and small cities with high crime rates. With good intentions and safety of the community in mind, these methods seemed to be beneficial to communities. However, this process often turns out to be a failure. It has created uproar, especially in minority-stricken communities. Civilians are angry and feel targeted and discriminated. The use of stop-and-frisk is not an affected way to lower crime rates due to multiple reasons such as, but is not limited to discrimination, community and police relationship, and effectiveness.
There are multiple reasons why the stop and frisk law essentially needs to be amended or abolished. It has created a negative tension in areas of minority and low income between police officers and the very people they are trying to protect. The law has actually enhanced the tensions. The idea behind this originally began with the thought that if the law enforcement could prevent a crime from happening, all tactics would be worth it. The privileges of police power, arrests, and the use of their ‘on the street’ stopping and frisking is hard to condense, particularly ...

... middle of paper ...

... Stop-and-frisk Policies." Michigan Journal Of Race & Law 18.1 (2012): 131-187. Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.

TYNAN, SARAH. "Symposium Report: The Fourth Amendment And Modern Practices: Drug Sniffing Dogs And Stop-and-frisk." Criminal Law Brief 8.2 (2013): 74-78. Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.

WILEY, STEPHANIE ANN, LEE ANN SLOCUM, and FINN-AAGE ESBENSEN. "The Unintended Consequences Of Being Stopped Or Arrested: An Exploration Of The Labeling Mechanisms Through Which Police Contact Leads To Subsequent Delinquency." Criminology 51.4 (2013): 927-966. Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text. Web. 27 Apr. 2014

Younger, Evelle J. "Stop-and-frisk: "Say It Like It Is." Journal Of Criminal Law, Criminology & Police Science 58.3 (1967): 293-302. Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.

Show More
Related

  • The Stop and Frisk Policy of the NYPD is Not Justifiable

    2285 Words  | 5 Pages

    The judicial system in America has always endured much skepticism as to whether or not there is racial profiling amongst arrests. The stop and frisk policy of the NYPD has caused much controversy and publicity since being applied because of the clear racial disparity in stops. Now the question remains; Are cops being racially biased when choosing whom to stop or are they just targeting “high crime” neighborhoods, thus choosing minorities by default? This paper will examine the history behind stop and frisk policies. Along with referenced facts about the Stop and Frisk Policy, this paper will include and discuss methods and findings of my own personal field research.

    Read More

  • How Policing And Incarceration Affect Inequalities In Society?

    1802 Words  | 4 Pages

    The factor of racial profiling comes into play as federal grant programs award police for rounding up as many people as possible. This very tactic was demonstrated by the CompStat system in New York City and further expounded by Victor M. Rios’s analysis of the themes over-policing and under-policing. These themes focus on how officers, police certain kinds of deviance and crime such as, loitering, or disturbing the peace, while neglecting other instances when their help is needed . Rios also stresses how the accumulation of minor citations like the ones previously mentioned, play a crucial role in pipelining Black and Latino young males deeper into the criminal justice system. Rios implies that in order to decrease the chances with police interaction one must not physically appear in a way that catches the attention of a police or do anything behavior wise that would lead to someone labeling you as deviant . Unfortunately, over-policing has made it difficult even for those who actually do abide by social norms because even then, they have been victims of criminalization . However, since structural incentives like those that mimic CompStat are in place, police simply ignore constitutional rules and are able to get away with racial profiling, and thus interrogate, and search whomever they please. Since these targeted minorities acknowledge the fact that the police are not always present to enforce the law, they in turn learn strategies in order to protect themselves from violence that surrounds them. Young African American Americans and Latino youth thus become socialized in the “code of the street”, as the criminal justice system possesses no value in their

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Stop And Frisk

    1514 Words  | 4 Pages

    In 1990, there was a total of 2,245 murders in New York, but over the past nine years, this total has been less than 600 (NYCLU). However, there has not been evident proof that the stop-and-frisk procedure is the reason of the declination of the crime rate. Indeed, stop-and-frisk contributes to some downturn of crime but the number is not high enough for the citizen and police to rely on. Specifically, only 3% of 2.4 million stops result in conviction. Some 2% of those arrests – or 0.1% of all stops – led to a conviction for a violent crime. Only 2% of arrests led to a conviction for possession of a weapon (Gabatt, A., 2013). In other words, the decrease in crime due to stop-and-frisk is mostly due to the discovery of possessed of weapons. Therefore, stop-and- frisk is not an effective procedure to use because it does not represent a huge impact in people’s safety (Gabatt, A., 2013). The author has done research about how police base their initiation towards the procedure of stop-and-frisk. Researchers have found that stop-and-frisk is a crime prevention strategy that gives a police officer the permission to stop a person based on “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity and frisk based on “reasonable suspicion” that the person is armed and dangerous. This controversy is mainly because of racial profiling. “Reasonable suspicion” was described by the court as “common sense” (Avdija, A., 2013). Although, the

    Read More

  • The Stop and Frisk Program within New York City Police Department

    1527 Words  | 4 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • Racial Profiling in Today's Society

    1740 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Race-Based Traffic Stops in the US

    1225 Words  | 3 Pages

    “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...

    Read More

  • Stop-and-Frisk Policy

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Racial Disparity in the Correctional Population

    2356 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.... ...

    Read More

  • Racial Profiling: An Uncessary Injustice

    2224 Words  | 5 Pages

    Racial profiling is the most idiotic and arrogant thing you can ever do as a person. Usually the people who are affected by racial profiling are minorities, however, any person can be a victim of racial profiling. Some may think that racial profiling is non-existent, however, I would like to bring the situation into focus and show that it is still in existence and has been observed in the past and now in the current year. Although, more than fifty percent of the time racial profiling is conducted it is against a man or woman of color; an African-American in other words. There are instances where a white person can be a victim as well. Trying not to say that there isn't any person out there that is exempted from racial profiling, because there isn't a single person who is just exempted from this cruel method of decision making. In my essay I will talk about racial profiling and what it is, however, you can't forget about where it happens and of course why. Several resolutions will be discussed in this essay to alleviate this problem.

    Read More

  • Gangs in America

    2717 Words  | 6 Pages

    Bernburg, J., Krohn, M. D., & Rivera, C. J. (2006). Official Labeling, Criminal Embeddedness, and Subsequent Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of Labeling Theory. Journal Of Research In Crime & Delinquency, 43(1), 67-88. doi:10.1177/0022427805280068

    Read More

  • A Comparison of Conflict and Labeling Theory in the Context of Youth Gangs

    1544 Words  | 4 Pages

    5. Wiley, Ann Stephanie, Lee Ann Slocum, and Finn-Aage Esbensen. 2013. "The Unintended Consequences of Being Stopped or Arrested: An Exploration of the Labeling Mechanisms Through Which Police Contact Leads to Subsequent Delinquency." American Society of Criminology 51:927-966.

    Read More

  • An Argument Against Racial Profiling by Police

    831 Words  | 2 Pages

    This essay will bring to light the problem of racial profiling in the police force and propose the eradication of any discrimination. The Fourth Amendment states “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Despite this right, multiple minorities across the country suffer at the hands of police officers through racial profiling; the singling out of a person or persons as the main suspect of a crime based on their race. Many people have also suffered the loss of a loved one because police believed the suspect to be a threat based on their races therefore the officers use their authority to take out the “threat”. Although racial profiling may make sense to police officers in the line of duty, through the eyes of the public and those affected by police actions, it is a form a racism that is not being confronted and is allowing unjust convictions and deaths.

    Read More

  • Eras of American Policing and Their Origin

    1541 Words  | 4 Pages

    Walker, S., & Katz, C. (2012). Police in America: An Introduction (8th Edition ed.). New York:

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography On Police Brutality

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rutkin, Aviva. "Policing The Police." New Scientist 226.3023 (2015): 20-21. Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.

    Read More

  • The Implications of Labelling Theory and how It Affects Individuals

    1254 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lopes, G., Krohn, M. D., Lizotte, A. J., Schmidt, N. M., V'Asquez, B. E. and Bernburg, J. G. 2012. Labelling and cumulative disadvantage the impact of formal police intervention on life chances and crime during emerging adulthood. Crime & Delinquency, 58 (3), pp. 457 - 478

    Read More

More about Stop and frisk

Open Document