In most instances, laws are meant to address the various challenges that affect people within a certain community or country. Even though laws are required for the easy governance and management of societies, there are instances where the laws that are enacted do not serve the purposes that they were meant to serve. There are many examples in history where laws have been used to oppress a section of society at the expense of the other. For example, the anti-Jew laws in Nazi Germany were only meant to trample on the rights and freedom of the Jewish people in Germany. According to various scholars, never has the United States ever come close to being a police state than when New York passed the Stop-and-Frisk policy into law. The proponents of the law at that time argued that it gave police officers the ability to fight the rising crime rates in the state actively. The opponents to the law, however, raised their concerns claiming that the law could be used as a tool for indirect racial profiling thus exposing more African Americans and Latinos to the wrath of law enforcement agencies in the United States ( Ryan, 2016 ). A discussion of the Stop-and-Frisk policy in the United States is not complete unless its implementation, the reason behind the law, and the various stakeholders that were affected by the law are discussed.
A court decision in the Terry v. Ohio case in 1968 gave law enforcement officers the powers to stop and frisk any citizen upon suspicion that a crime had been committed and that the citizen was about to commit a crime. Though faced by widespread criticism on its constitutionality, Governor Nelson Rockefeller went ahead and signed it into law meaning that the police had legal powers to stop citizens and frisk them at their own will (Bump, 2016). The law had several statutes within them. One of the statutes made it possible for police officers to break into buildings or apartments without providing any warning to search. The statute was developed based on the argument that giving suspects warning of impending police searches gifted them the time to destroy or hide evidence. The other statute which was well known among the American public permitted police officers to stop, search and ask for identification whenever they suspect that a suspect is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a crime ( Ryan, 2016 ). After being signed into law, the policy was instrumental in reducing crime rates, especially in New York. Despite its successes, there were many critics of the law. They argued that the law was used to promote racial discrimination in the United States as statics showed that the police mainly targeted African Americans and Latinos in the implementation of the policy. Bump observes that the height of the implementation of the law was in 2011 when approximately 685,724 stops were made. Out of the number of stops made in 2011, 90 percent of the people stopped were African Americans and Latinos aged between 14 and 24 years. To further demonstrate that the law was used as a tool for racial profiling, out of the people stopped, 70 percent were later confirmed to be innocent (2016). Even though there have been measures which have been implemented over the years to ensure that the law is applied equally to all the citizens, there are still critics who think that the law should be done away with.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Several reasons led to the introduction of New York's Stop and Frisk Policy. The main purpose of the law was to reduce the high crime rates that were experienced in New York at the time. The supporters of the law held the belief that if law enforcement officers are given the powers and authority to stop and interrogate any suspicious individual, then most crimes would be stopped before they happened. Even though the law was not ill-intended at the beginning, the newfound power and authority among police officers made them promote racial profiling by randomly stopping Latinos and African Americans. It was confirmed that African Americans and Latinos were unfairly targeted by the law when Michael Bloomberg who was once the mayor for New York argued that nonwhites were not targeted enough. He stated, “I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It is exactly the opposite of what they say” (Bump, 2016). This is evidence that the law had been politicized and was not therefore able to achieve what it was intended to achieve.
Bump (2016) notes that in every year since the law was passed, about 80 to 90 percent of those were flagged down by law enforcement officers were found not to be guilty. This was after they had wasted their time going through the humiliating process of being searched and interrogated by police officers whose main aim is to find an offense, they can pin on someone. A report released by DeBlasio who was the city’s public advocate stated that the stops of white were twice as likely to lead to the finding of weapons while the stops of blacks and Latinos were only two-thirds as likely as whites to be carrying illegal things. The report concluded that most of the people who were stopped were innocent, but the whites who were stopped were more likely to be breaking the laws on contraband and weapons. In 2013, a federal judge ruled that the stop-and-frisk policy in New York was unconstitutional and discriminatory. The city went ahead to challenge the ruling, but the transition process to the new mayor in 2004 led to the dropping of the appeal. Most communities in New York still view the policy negatively further frustrating its implementation.
The implementation of New York's Stop and Frisk Policy has affected some stakeholders. Foremost, the citizens of New York are the most affected. Most of the citizens think that New York is increasingly developing the characteristics of a police state due to the powers given to police officers which allow them to trample on the rights of people. The privacy and freedom of movement of the people are heavily affected if they live in fear of their properties being stormed by law enforcement without any concrete reasons. Freedom of people to freely move is also affected by the random stops made by law enforcement officers. The police officers are also affected by the stop and frisk policy. Most of the stops that they make end up in a lot of lawsuits targeting them. The police officers are often stuck between a rock and a hard place because on the one hand they are supposed to implement the policy and on the other, there is a high possibility that they may violate the rights of people, resulting to numerous lawsuits (Bump, 2016).
In summation, the stop and frisk policy is one of the most controversial policies in the United States’ history based on its implementation and the various people that it affects. The policy became law after a court decision in the Terry v. Ohio case in 1968 gave law enforcement officers the powers to stop and frisk any citizen upon suspicion that a crime had been committed and that the citizen was about to commit a crime. The law had several statutes within them. One of the statutes made it possible for police officers to break into buildings or apartments without providing any warning to search. The statutes were developed based on the argument that giving suspects warning of impending police searches gave them the time to destroy or hide evidence. The other statute which was well known among the American public permitted police officers to stop, search and ask for identification whenever they suspect that a suspect is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a crime. The policy continues to affect most people in the United States. Most of the citizens think that New York is increasingly developing the characteristics of a police state due to the powers given to police officers which allow them to trample on the rights of people. Police officers are also affected by the stop and frisk policy because most of the stops that they make end up in a lot of lawsuits targeting them.
References
Bump, P. (2016, September 26). The facts about stop-and-frisk in New York City . The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- fix/wp/2016/09/21/it-looks-like-Rudy-Giuliani-convinced-Donald-trump-that-stop-and- frisk-actually-works/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5c74cc0a8d17
Ryan, M. E. (2016). Frisky business: Race, gender and police activity during traffic stops. European Journal of Law and Economics, 41 (1), 65-83. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10657-015- 9493-0
