This topic has been out of the news for a year, but a Memorial Day controversy at Casa de Rump leads me to see if anyone at the SDMB cares to take a swipe.
In June 2013, the NYC council passed a couple of measures governing the NYPD, including something called Introduction 1080 (linkto full text). The reporting on this was wide but pretty shallow, so it’s not actually clear to me how this measure departs from existing statutes, but it states among other things that race (and other characteristics) cannot be the determinative factor in initiating law enforcement action against an individual, although descriptions of race etc. can be used to a degree.
This was represented by certain politicians and media outlets as severely restricting NYPD officers’ ability to do their job, to a degree that verges on the absurd. For example, Mayor Bloomberg:
Now, I find all of this totally implausible–particularly given that in a debatewith the president of the NYPD Captains Endowment Association, councilman Jumaane Williams explicitly says that police ARE allowed and encouraged to describe suspects by race, and that this is not at all what the bill is about. But for all I know, Williams is spinning and being disingenuous.
My Memorial Day interlocutor said that he has spoken to NYC police officers, who complain that they’re not allowed to describe suspects by race etc. My response: I’m not going to say these people are lying per se, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and here you’re offering me one but not the other.
Given a lack of substantive reporting on this, I’m having trouble cutting through the clutter and spin and understanding what exactly this bill does and doesn’t do.
According to one of your links, the sponsor and one of the co-sponsors of the bill said
So you can chase them, but not stop and frisk them if you catch them (or someone who matches the description). Which makes no sense, and leads me to suspect that even the sponsors of the bill don’t know what they are trying to accomplish.
I find it implausible too. The plain text indicates that race can be a factor, just not “determinative”. So you can stop the 20-something white man as long as he is wearing a blue windbreaker.
I think you are misreading the phrase “chase leads that include descriptions”. That doesn’t refer to a foot chase through city streets or apartment building hallways; it refers to investigating and contacting people who may have knowledge or evidence of a crime.
My reading of it is that police can chase leads that include descriptions [of race, gender, age, etc.] but cannot stop and frisk people based solely on those descriptions. If I report to the police I was mugged by a black male, that does not give them license to stop and frisk every black male they come across. They need to take into consideration factors like suspicious behavior, physical proximity to the site of the crime, clothing or attributes like hair style, etc.
All of which, in practice, seems to give the police fairly broad license to do whatever the f they need to do. I remain mystified as to how Bloomberg could characterize it the way he did.
With their stop-and-frisk program the NYPD has demonstrated that they are so racist that given a chance they’ll “severely hamper” their own ability to do their job, ignoring likely white criminals to focus on harassing random non-white people. Given their history, letting them make race the “determinative factor” is just giving them license to let white criminals run wild while they persecute mostly-innocent non-white people.
They’ve proven that their judgment on the matter can’t be trusted, and that doing their job comes second to indulging their racism. And in that context, complaints that a law like this gets in the way of their job comes across more as complaints that it gets in the way of them harassing non-whites.They aren’t upset that the law will keep them from going after a black man in a blue windbreaker because he’s black; they are upset that it hampers them from ignoring the white suspect in a blue windbreaker while focusing on harassing every black man they see regardless of what they are wearing.
AIUI, police already need either the consent of the searched, or probable cause to arrest before they can search or arrest someone. How does this law change anything, therefore?
That is, before the law passed a racist cop says “looky there - a black guy. I think I will stop and frisk him!” He has no probable cause, so he makes something up. Now the law passes. The same cop does the same thing. What difference did the law make?
I actually agree with this assessment for the most part. It seems to me that this law is more symbolic than anything else. Basically the LAPD gets criticized for being racist, so in response the council passes a law saying they shouldn’t be. That way they can say they did something about it.
Still, its clear that those who are panicking about the police not being able to do their jobs are totally misrepresenting the legislation.
Seems clear to me. You can’t use race as the only determining factor. You can’t stop and frisk the “black guy” or the “white guy” or the “woman” or the “guy in a wheelchair” or the “homeless lady”. You need further identification, other information, like behavior, clothing, etc.
Race can be included in the description, but it can’t be the only descriptor.
This law is addressing a real problem. NYC has had a stop, question and frisk policy in place. Police have been directed to just pick random citizens and check to see if they’ve committed any crimes. The usual practice is to pat the person down and see if they’re carrying a gun without the proper permit.
So the issue is that the police aren’t investigating any particular crime when they stop these people. They’re just picking random people and conducting a low-level investigation on them without any prior reason to think those people are criminals. It’s a fishing expedition.
And, not surprisingly, when the police are told to pick random individuals to check out, they tend to disproportionately pick blacks and hispanics.
About 90% of the stop&frisk activity does not result in any sort of citation or arrest. I believe the frisk is justified based on safety purposes, the cops need to ensure the person stopped does not have a weapon. So, they stop someone for non specific questioning, then frisk them for safety purposes, and occasionally get evidence of a crime, most likely a joint in the guy’s pocket.
While I care that the application of the practice seemed to be motivated by race, that concern is dwarfed by the fact that there should not be a ‘stop and frisk’ practice at all.
Police need probable cause to search or arrest, but only “reasonable suspicion” that a crime is in process or imminent to stop an individual (“Terry stop”). Terry also said that officers could pat down detained persons if they had articulable reasons to believe that they were armed, but the NYC stop-and-frisk program went well beyond that.
As Bone notes, the practice would be legally objectionable even if it had no disparate racial impact.
It’s really as simple as this: if you give anyone any power, they will be extremely reluctant to give it up no matter how useless it is. They just never want to give up an option. Whether it’s because they fear the wrath of the voters if something goes wrong or because they think the power might come in handy later or they just don’t like being second-guessed, it’s pretty normal. You could compare it to the NSA and some of the data we’ve just learned they’re collecting: they can’t really do anything with it, they’ve admitted they have not stopped any terrorist attacks, but they insist they need to be able to go on collecting it. Bloomberg was insistent in saying that these stops were necessary, that they reduced crime, and that they were good for the people of color who were getting harassed. The statistics said otherwise, and I have no trouble believing that he would exaggerate the consequences in order to defend this policy or that the NYPD would do the same. The NYPD said that if they can’t question people at random based on race, then… crime, somehow.
In any event, Bloomberg is gone and the stop and frisk policy was sharply curtailed after a judge said it was an unconstitutional violation of the rights of minorities living in NYC. The policy has been “fixed,” according to the new police commissioner. I’m not sure where that leaves the law the OP asked about, but it may not be a live issue anymore.
Then I don’t see what the law accomplished. It was found un-Constitutional for the cops to stop people randomly and frisk them for weapons. This law said that it was illegal for the cops to stop black people and frisk them for weapons.
If the problem is that the police are acting un-Constitutionally, how does it help to try to curtail the actions only when it is affected by race? They need to pass a law that says “The cops can’t pat you down for weapons during a Terry stop unless they can give articuable reasons why they thought you to be armed”, not a law that says “The cops can’t pat you down for weapons during a Terry stop unless they can give articuable reasons why they thought you to be armed if you’re black”. Like Buck Godot says, this sounds more symbolic than practical.
If the stop and frisk policy were as has been described in this thread, the police weren’t investigating any leads solely on race. They weren’t investigating any crimes in particular. So again, this law doesn’t address the problem.
If the NYPD or city government has already changed the policy, so much the better, but I dont’ see how this law has much to do with it.
The change in law was aimed at racial qualities because the impact of the practice primarily affected minorities. The complaints were mainly from that angle. If you were a middle age white guy you probably didn’t have much to worry about, though theoretically under the practice as it was employed you could be searched for no reason as well.
The problem was condoning searches of this nature at all. One more step towards the death of the 4th amendment really. Nothing in the law changes that.
This law was proposed a couple of months before Judge Scheindlin’s ruling on stop and frisk. You may be correct that it was symbolic in intent, but I don’t know one way or the other.
Besides that, Scheindlin’s rulings have mostly been stayed and she has been kicked off the case because she (foolishly) gave interviews on related cases and her statements were taken out of context.