A Brief Note On The Stop And Frisk

First let’s ask what does Stop and frisk actually mean legally? “It’s the situation in which a police officer who is suspicious of an individual detains the person and runs his hands lightly over the suspect's outer garments to determine if the person is carrying a concealed weapon.”

In Philadelphia stop and frisk is “a situation where a police officer who is suspicious of an individual stops and searches them for a concealed weapon or illegal substance.

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects one’s rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. It also states that no warrants shall be issued without probable cause. Probable cause can be defined as a person of reasonable caution who believes that a crime has been committed and the person accused has committed that crime. Modern law has afforded police officers an incentive to respect this amendment, known as the “stop and frisk” act. The Stop and Frisk law allows police officers to stop someone and do a quick search of their outer clothing for weapons: if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that a crime has or is about to take place and the person stopped is armed or dangerous. The reasonable

Although the original intent of the stop and frisk rule was to prevent crime, get guns off the streets, and increase public safety, the policy has turned into a racially bias program that stops innocent people and arrests those committing non-violent crimes by carrying marijuana. While the NYPD claims its stop and frisk policy is especially needed to get illegal guns off the street, just 0.15 out of each 100 stops over the last six years resulted in officers actually confiscating a firearm. That undeniably low figure is quite alarming when compared to the 40,000 New Yorkers who were arrested in 2008 for marijuana-related offenses, majority of them being black and Latino.

Imagine innocently walking down the street in a city you’ve lived in your whole life, when all of a sudden you hear the dreaded “woop woop” and see those flashing red and blue lights. The police. They interrogate you, ask your whereabouts, and finally, they “frisk” you. Of course, they find nothing; they rarely do when they search people. Although it’s wrong and demoralizing, you know it’s something you’ll have to get used to as an African American living in New York City.

Eighty-seven percent of stops in 2012, were Black and Hispanic people. Compare that percentage to the amount of water on Earth, only seventy percent. Now, imagine eighty-seven percent water covering the Earth. That would make the world unbalanced and difficult to live in, which is how life is for the minorities impacted by Stop and Frisk. One of the most debated and controversial topics in New York City is the Stop and Frisk policy, and the impact it has on police, Latinos, and African Americans. Stop and Frisk fails to promote justice and equitable society because it creates a society where one group is lesser than another. The Stop and Frisk policy was created in Ohio, 1968, because of the a Supreme Court case, Terry v. Ohio (US Courts).

One of the most controversial police procedures is the stop, question and frisk. This type of limited search occurs when police officer’s confront a suspicious person in an effort to prevent a crime from taking place. Police officer need to have reasonable suspicion or probable cause to person stop, question and frisk.

The stop, question, and frisk policy was implemented in the NYPD in an effort to make the city a safer place. With weapons becoming more easily accessible than ever, they are becoming more of a problem, and officers and the general public are now in more danger than ever of being killed by a firearm, knife, or a weapon. Although the policy is intended to prevent harm and protect society, it has been under major scrutiny in not only the past few years, but also the past few decades as well. Due to the fact that minorities are believed to be the main target of this policing tactic, many people have argued it is inherently corrupt should be abolished. On the other hand, it has shown to provide some positive outcomes and as a result, it is a necessary

This group has countless stereotypes of violence and racial inequalities thrown at them, making them a huge target for surveillance not just by peers, but by the government as well. The most notable types of surveillance towards African Americans come from the police, who frequently target them seemingly based on their ethnicity. In the article “Is Stop-and-Frisk Worth It?” written by Daniel Bergner, the author elaborates on the notorious surveillance practice, frisk searches, and how useful they may or may not be. The author explains how they are frequently used on African Americans, while not so much on other races like the Caucasian majority, which gives this surveillance method a bad reputation. A scientific article titled An Analysis of the New York City Police Department’s “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias, written by Andrew Gelman, Jeffrey Fagan, and Alex Kiss, further confirms this racial profiling issue through frisking, by concluding with sufficient evidence, that the New York Police Department “was stopping blacks and Hispanics more often than whites” (Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss, 821). For the majority of whites, frisking is never really a threat in the first place because of our skin color, thus giving us social privileges as opposed to blacks who seem to lack most of

The terms “stop-and-frisk” is used as one, then the reality is that its two separate acts. Stops are the first act with frisks being the second that requires the police officer to have two different legal justifications. When a police officer stops a subject that officer must have reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is in the act to commit a crime. To frisk a person by a police officer that officer must have reasonable suspicion to believe that the person who is stopped poses a threat to the officer’s safety which may include a concealed weapon ("Report on the NYPD 's stop and frisk policy," 2013).

Stop and Frisk started in New York City in the early 1990’s as a combined response to the “Broken Windows” sociological theory and the ruling in the Terry v. Ohio case. The initial prompt for this policy came from the ruling in the 1968 Supreme Court case of Terry v. Ohio. The court decided that fourth amendment rights are not violated when the police stop, detain, and search a suspect on the street. This ruling paved the way for early implementation of policies similar, but not as wide-spread, as stop and frisk. This ruling paved the way for early implementation of policies similar, but not as wide-spread, as stop and frisk. This theory alleges that by reducing petty crime you can also deter more major crime much in the same way as fixing broken windows (which are thought to invite potential thieves) will prevent future crime. Kelling’s theory combined with the Terry v. Ohio ruling eventually led to the implementation of full blown Stop and Frisk in the New York City area during the mayoral term of Rudi Giuliani. The idea behind stop and frisk initially was for police officers to patrol streets in order to stop those they suspected of carrying illegal goods and then frisk them to ascertain if they were indeed breaking any laws. This would serve duel purposes in that those found to be carrying illegal goods would be stopped while letting others in the area who may be participating in illegal activities know that there was an active police presence there, hopefully deterring

The issue with Stop, Question, and Frisk is that is causes Police Officers and other law officials to look at specific people in a certain way because they assume that they are doing something illegal. It has become a huge racial issue,people believe that Stop and Frisk is breaking their basic rights and is unconstitutional. It is breaking their basic rights because it’s invading people’s privacy and makes them feel violated. It especially feels that way for women because they are being frisked in the middle of a street or public area by a male officer. Many people may claim that, “This has resulted in policing that undermines public safety and trust including biased stop-and-frisk abuses, unconstitutional searches, racially disparate marijuana arrests and summonses, discriminatory profiling and harassment, and the use of excessive force”. Especially after the increase in police shootings and riots, people don’t feel safe anymore because they never know if an officer will just randomly stop them and get aggressive. This fear of being harassed or even worst being shot/kill like all of the other people that they have seen all over social media and in the news.

The stop-question-and-frisk program, also known as “stop-and-frisk” is a policy that was enacted in New York. In this policy, law enforcement has the right to stop and question a pedestrian and frisk them for weapons or other illegal items. Based off of statistics, personal statements, and the publics opinions, the stop and frisk policy has little to no effect on combatting and reducing crime.

According to the Supreme Court decision in Terry vs. Ohio, a police officer can frisk down an individual for his own safety (Libby, n.d.). Police who reasonably believe that a person that has committed a crime and is likely to be armed may stop and search that suspect for

Although there are benefits to the stop and frisk exception, the abuse of or inappropriate application of the practice calls into question the extent of the authority police exercise when their perception of “reasonable suspicion” exists. As Hall states, the officer is not required to advise the individual that they have the right to refuse to provide a consent to search (2014), and as a result, those individuals who have been lead to believe by coercion or lack of knowledge of the law; that they have no say in the search of their person, property, papers, or effects. As a result, searches of this nature may be deemed inadmissible or violations of the individual's rights.