Stop and Frisk

[lawbuff]

A federal Judge ruled NYC’s use of the TERRY stop was based on profiling. Bloomberg vows to appeal.

The decision is on her webpage, but LENGTHY.
Stop and Frisk

[Sicks_Ate]

Good. Blatantly unconstitutional.

Bloomberg whines that he’s afraid the crime rate will go up? I’m fine with that…again, the tradeoff between absolutely security and personal freedom.

[Czarcasm]

@lawbuff

A federal Judge ruled NYC’s use of the TERRY stop was based on profiling. Bloomberg vows to appeal.

The decision is on her webpage, but LENGTHY.
Stop and Frisk

And your opinion on this is…?

Here is a NY Times articlethat’s a bit more comprehensive, and I think I agree with the judge’s decision.

[lawbuff]

@Sicks_Ate

Good. Blatantly unconstitutional.

Bloomberg whines that he’s afraid the crime rate will go up? I’m fine with that…again, the tradeoff between absolutely security and personal freedom.

I saw this in the news, Bloomberg stated that because of this thousands of lives were saved???

The vast majority of those stopped were NON white.

[lawbuff]

@Czarcasm

And your opinion on this is…?

Here is a NY Times articlethat’s a bit more comprehensive, and I think I agree with the judge’s decision.

I just briefly glanced at the decision, over 180 pages, from what I read, she is legally correct, taken the facts as true.

[Bill_Door]

@lawbuff

I saw this in the news, Bloomberg stated that because of this thousands of lives were saved???

The vast majority of those stopped were NON white.

Although of those stopped, whites were twice as likely to be found carrying an illegal weapon. From an analysis of 2012 statistics:
The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.

I suspect that’s because the white were stopped for acting suspicious, and the minorities were stopped for being brown.

[Ravenman]

What I don’t really understand from the news coverage of the ruling is whether many/most individuals are actually being stopped for no reason to be questioned and perhaps frisked. This is implied in part of the NY Times story (“The judge found that for much of the last decade, patrol officers had stopped innocent people without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing.”), but it is still unclear in my mind if this is what the policy intended to happen.

If the policy was to more or less randomly (or for minimal cause like “furtive movements”) frisk people because they happen to be in an area, that’s just outrageous. If there is a reason why each person gets stopped (which other news articles seemed to state), it still boggles my mind on how so very many people (seems like hundreds of thousands per year in targeted parts of one big city, with the numbers seemingly increasing as crime was going down) could be seriously viewed as being so suspicious that they needed to be frisked.

[Jackmannii]

@Sicks_Ate

Bloomberg whines that he’s afraid the crime rate will go up? I’m fine with that…again, the tradeoff between absolutely security and personal freedom.

I guess it’s easy to be “fine with that” (the crime rate going up in New York) if you’re from Missouri.

I’m glad I don’t live in New York, especially in one of the high-crime areas where stop-and-frisk has been successful. The law-abiding residents of those communities will be the ones paying the price if the policy has to be discarded.

[camille]

Well, I’m a law abiding citizen living in NYC, and I can tell you that it hasn’t been successful. Not for the stated purpose anyway. Most of the arrests were for possession of marijuana, not guns or other weapons. If that is the real goal, why not target young white males on their way to work near Wall St. I’m sure you’d get a nice haul for cocaine possession.

[Little_Nemo]

@Jackmannii

The law-abiding residents of those communities will be the ones paying the price if the policy has to be discarded.

The law-abiding residents of those communities are also the ones paying the price if this policy is continued.

That’s the hidden cost. Sure some criminals are being caught who might otherwise have not been. But innocent people who have committed no crime are also being treated like they are criminals.

[camille]

Is this the definition of successful?

The police insist that stop-and-frisk prevents crimes. But the largest category of arrests are for marijuana possession, which is actually a non-criminal violation in New York City that is supposed to result in a ticket, not an arrest. That is, unless the marijuana is “publicly displayed.” So the way it works is that the cops demand you empty your pockets, and when they discover some pot along with your keys and change, they arrest you for publicly displaying it. That happened over 5,300 times in 2012.

And what about weapons? According to NYPD policy, a frisk is only supposed to take place when the officers believe the person has a weapon; about half of all stops end up involving a frisk. Suspicions end up being correct only two percent of the time. In other words, 49 out of 50 times that a New York City police officer frisks someone because they think the person has a weapon, they’re wrong.

[Rucksinator]

IANAL, and all I know about this is what I’ve read here and some that I’ve heard on the news.

It seems perfectly logical to say that this law is unconstitutional because it violates unlawful search.

What doesn’t seem to make sense is to say that a law is unconstitutional because statistics show that it is being implemented in a biased way. It seems to me that the judge’s ruling is based on that. Am I wrong on this? Did the judge imply that the law would be constitutional of the NYPD was less racist?

[tomndebb]

@Bill_Door

Although of those stopped, whites were twice as likely to be found carrying an illegal weapon. From an analysis of 2012 statistics:
The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.

I suspect that’s because the white were stopped for acting suspicious, and the minorities were stopped for being brown.

This point has actually been discussed on the SDMB, years ago. It is one classic argument against racial profiling, where the action alienates non-whites while failing to actually stop crime.

(Given that the original discussion of the logical error in the stop-and-frisk law were identified a decade or so ago, I was surprised when the court case came up that the NYPD was still engaged in that behavior. Not TOO surprised, I am afraid.)

[Marley23]

The NY Times story on the verdict. Courts have already found these types of searches constitutional; that’s why the OP referred to them as Terry stops (after the relevant case). The judge ruled that the NYPD needs to make big changes because there were huge racial disparities in the numbers of people being stopped, and it’s a violation of their civil rights.

But the stops were not the end of the problem, Judge Scheindlin found. After officers stopped people, they often conducted frisks for weapons, or searched the subjects’ pockets for contraband, like drugs, without any legal grounds for doing so. Also, she found that during police stops, blacks and Hispanics “were more likely to be subjected to the use of force than whites, despite the fact that whites are more likely to be found with weapons or contraband.”

About 83 percent of the stops between 2004 and 2012 involved blacks and Hispanics, even though those two demographics make up just slightly more than 50 percent of the city’s residents. Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Kelly have explained that disparity by saying it mirrored the disproportionate percentage of crimes committed by young minority men. But Judge Scheindlin dismissed the Police Department’s rationale.

It’s almost astonishing if you add the fact that Kelly and Bloomberg say that minorities, even though they are much more likely to be stopped and searched, are still underrepresented in the searches. They basically said the only reason the NYPD is not searching fewer whites and more black and Hispanics is bad publicity.

[Lakai]

@Rucksinator

IANAL, and all I know about this is what I’ve read here and some that I’ve heard on the news.

It seems perfectly logical to say that this law is unconstitutional because it violates unlawful search.

What doesn’t seem to make sense is to say that a law is unconstitutional because statistics show that it is being implemented in a biased way. It seems to me that the judge’s ruling is based on that. Am I wrong on this? Did the judge imply that the law would be constitutional of the NYPD was less racist?

In order to stop-and-frisk someone you must have reasonable suspicion that a crime is taking place. Courts have ruled that stopping someone only because of their race is not reasonable suspicion. The judge in this case ruled that NY’s stop-and-frisk policy was carried out in a “racially discriminatory manner,” and therefore it was unconstitutional.

Even if S&F does prevent crime, something needs to be done about the fact that 83% of the people being stopped are black and Hispanic, and 90% of stops do not lead to any arrests being made. This basically means that one segment of society is taking a huge hit to their privacy so that the rest of us can enjoy our safety.

[Der_Trihs]

@Little_Nemo

The law-abiding residents of those communities are also the ones paying the price if this policy is continued.

That’s the hidden cost. Sure some criminals are being caught who might otherwise have not been. But innocent people who have committed no crime are also being treated like they are criminals.

And in fact the number of criminals caught is lowered. If you spend your limited manpower of persecuting people by skin color instead of looking for criminals, that means the criminals get away. Or as Bill Door said:

@Bill_Door

Although of those stopped, whites were twice as likely to be found carrying an illegal weapon. From an analysis of 2012 statistics:
The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.

I suspect that’s because the white were stopped for acting suspicious, and the minorities were stopped for being brown.

Yes. Racial profiling makes it less likely that the police will target an actual criminal.

@Lakai

Even if S&F does prevent crime, something needs to be done about the fact that 83% of the people being stopped are black and Hispanic, and 90% of stops do not lead to any arrests being made. This basically means that one segment of society is taking a huge hit to their privacy so that the rest of us can enjoy our safety.

Nor does it work, unless you define the safety of non-whites as not counting. Being mistreated by the police isn’t any more fun than being mistreated by a criminal. I doubt that some black guy who is beaten, tased or shot by the cops feels “safe”.

[pkbites]

@lawbuff

The vast majority of those stopped were NON white.

So? You are aware that there is a crime problem among young black and Latino males, right? The social causes of that are for others to figure out and of no concern to the police.

This is a bad ruling because rather than judging each stop and frisk individually on it’s merits, it rules them all illegal which is nonsense.

The 4th Amendment does not protect against search and seizure, it protects against unreasonable search and seizure. It doesn’t define the term unreasonable as it’s impossible to think of all situations.

Stopping and frisking a 60 year old woman walking down main street River Hills at 2PM is unreasonable.

Stopping and frisking a young male loitering in a high crime neighborhood at 2AM is reasonable.

It has to do with context. I’m absolutely positive that some of the S&F NYPD did were unreasonable, but each case has to be judged individually. This is a blanket ruling and it sucks!

It does reveal the hypocrisy of liberals, though. They go on about wanting to stop violent crime, but their only method is to violate the Constitution (i.e. gun control) which only affects law abiding people. But a method that actually works, and actually affects law breakers, then they start showing concern for what the Bill of Rights says. And in this case it doesn’t say what they say it’s saying. More evidence of how completely full of crap the left is.

[tomndebb]

@pkbites

It has to do with context. I’m absolutely positive that some of the S&F NYPD did were unreasonable, but each case has to be judged individually. **This is a blanket ruling **and it sucks!

I have seen no indication that the bolded statement is accurate.

She did not forbid the NYPD from stopping anyone at any time. She declared that an independent monitoring agency needed to review the practices of the NYPD and ensure that the unconstitutional racial profiling ceased.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fixing-new-yorks-flawed-stop-and-frisk-policing/2013/08/14/956c5638-0382-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html

Despite the firestorm the ruling in Floyd v. City of New York has already ignited in City Hall — where, within hours of the decision, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, true to form, vowed to appeal— the judge didn’t outlaw New York’s use of stop and frisk, a tool the Supreme Court has supported. She merely found that the New York Police Department (NYPD), in its particular application of the practice, had violated both the plaintiffs’ Fourth and 14th Amendment rights — the first guarantees freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the second guarantees equal protection under the law to every person, regardless of race.

[Der_Trihs]

@pkbites

But a method that actually works, and actually affects law breakers, then they start showing concern for what the Bill of Rights says.

It doesn’t work, it just makes things worse, and it abuses the innocent.

[Bone]

I think the ruling is a long time coming. Unless the officers have articulable suspicion they should not be detaining anyone. In these examples, it’s clear that their suspicions were largely unfounded and any individual claim against a particular S&F would not be sufficient. A glimmer of hope at the deathbed of the 4th amendment.

“Am I being detained? Am I free to go? Go pound sand.” That’s about all the officers should be greeted with when they attempt this overreach.