The Stop and Frisk Law- Background and Controversy

Introduction

The Stop and Frisk policy has been one of the most controversial issues of public policing in the US. While the makers of the law thought it would be useful in detecting crime that would otherwise be difficult to establish, opponents have emerged with an argument, which suggests that the policy is a failure. This essay reports the origin of the Stop and Frisk law in the US. It indicates that the New York Legislature enacted the law in 1964 out of a request from the New York Police Department. Since its enactment, the law has realized a significant rise in the numbers of people stopped and frisked but failed to lower the incidence of crime in the city. Therefore, most people have criticized the enactment by claiming that it has failed to realize its objective in addition to profiling African Americans and Hispanics. Therefore, the author recommends that policy makers in should review their approach to policing to ensure that the law is free of the flaws that the essay reports. 

Background

The duty and power of police to conduct investigations on crime in the US remains unchallenged for a significant amount of time. Nevertheless, the distinction between arrests and investigations, or the points that mark the completion of investigations and the commencement of arrest has never been defined adequately, especially by New York courts (Gelman, Fagan, & Kiss, 2007). The chances that investigations were in progress as opposed to arrests have been overlooked in a majority of criminal cases that entail challenges on the existence of probable causes for arrests (Ronayne, 1964). The legislature of the State of New York amended its Code of Criminal Procedure that would see the Code including a new section that allowed the police to question individuals in public places in 1964 (Ronayne, 1964). The new Code would also allow the police to search for weapons. The amendment also implied that the police were authorized to stop people and question them as long as they would reasonably suspect that such individuals might have or are about to commit criminal activities. The new law, which was enacted in July 1964 directed as follows:

“ A police officer may stop any person abroad in a public place whom he reasonably suspects is committing, has committed or is about to commit a felony or any of the crimes specified in section five hundred fifty-two of this chapter, and may demand of him his name, address and an explanation of his actions,” (Ronayne, 1964). 

The new law was fundamentally the same as two elements of the 1939 Interstate Commission on Crime’s Uniform Arrest Act (Warner, 1942). The legislative representatives of the City of New York submitted the enactment to the legislature following a request from the New York Police Department (NYPD) (Ronayne, 1964). The initial application entailed four subsections related to the Uniform Arrest Act, which included subsections two and three of section two. These two subsections permitted further detention of individuals for up to two hours if failed to identify themselves or to explain their actions during the stops. Nevertheless, the bill that both the Senate and the Assembly enacted after introduction did not include these subsections (Gelman, Fagan, & Kiss, 2007). 

Development of Rationale and Justification

Daily in the City of New York, as well as in other cities around the nation, police are involved in stopping, questioning, and frisking individuals as a part of their routine activities. Such stops happen in a variety of places, which include the subways, outside apartments, and on the sidewalks of the cities. Individuals are stopped while on their way to work, while coming back from school or work, during their lunch breaks, when in the company of others, or while alone. One might wonder why the nation adopted such a policy that would subject people to unwanted stops and checks. The answer is as simple as one might think. Specifically, from the viewpoint of the NYPD, such stops were critical in the sustenance of public safety (Long, 2009). However, from the public perspective, the stops are always unwanted and intrusive (Herbert, 2010). 

The Supreme Court founded a federal legal framework that provides a background for the stop and frisk law on the citizens of the US during a 1968 ruling in the case of Terry v. Ohio. According to the facts of the case, a veteran officer had seen three men engage in action he though would be indicative of casing a store so that they would rob it (del Carmen, 2010). He discovered that one of the suspects was incoherent after he approached them for questioning. He then grabbed one of the men before patting him down for the fear that they could be armed. Coincidentally, the pat down led the officer into discovering that the man was armed. Therefore, in the ruling of the case, the Supreme Court established that and permitted the police to stop and detain individuals on foundations of reasonable suspicion that they might be in line to commit crimes or that they are underway in committing such crimes (del Carmen, 2010). 

The ruling was challenged for the fact that some individuals argued that it contravened the provisions of the Fourth Amendment that protects people against seizures and searches that are unreasonable. However, before the adoption of the Terry Stops , the police were supposed to have higher levels of proof of probable cause for them to be legally allowed to intrude into the lives of unsuspecting individuals. The more extensive discretion that the Terry Stops granted the police required three things. The first one was that the police officers be in a position to articulate particular facts that would indicate the possibilities of involvement of someone in a criminal activity. The second concerns frisking and it directs that a police officer should only frisk an individual when the facts collected lend themselves to reasonable believes that individuals under question might be dangerous and armed. Lastly, the officers should only frisk the suspects in a manner that is limited to pat downs on their outer clothing that would be sufficient for them to discover weapons (Jones-Brown et al., 2013). 

The fact that the markers of the stop and frisk law visualized that it would be useful in dealing with the rising levels of crime in New York and the rest of America’s major cities means that the number of checks and arrests under this law have been significant. For instance, the number of people stopped and checked by the police in New York increased from less than 200,000 people in 2003 to more than one million in 2016 (NYPD, 2018). The documented stops refer to those in which the police officers recorded on departmental forms, most commonly called the UF-250, and stored in the database of the NYPD. Police officers in the city are required to prepare UF-250 forms for each individual they encounter if they fulfil any or more four conditions. The first of the four is when the police use force to stop the individual while the second involves circumstances in which the police engage in extensive search of the individual. The police may also prepare the form if the stop ends in an arrest of the affected individual. Lastly, the police could prepare and fill the UF-250 if such persons refuse to identify themselves as required by the enactment. 

It seems that the police officers are not mandated to complete the form if their interactions with the individuals do not meet the prescribed criteria. In addition, it apparent that some of the police officers do not complete the form on each occasion they are required to do so. Therefore, these considerations would mean that not all the cases involving police stops and checks are documented. In fact, only about seventy percent of all the cases involving stop and police checks are captured on the forms (Gelman, Fagan, & Kiss, 2007). It is also notable that some cases involve one individual being stopped more than once per year.

Criticism of the Stop and Frisk Law

To better understand the criticism that the stop and frisk law has been facing, it is imperative understanding the relationship between the number of stops and the levels of crime. Figure 1 is a visual comparing the number of stops that the police involve in and rates of crimes in the City of New York between 2008 and 2012 (note that the most recent data is not easy to come by since it is unavailable from the NYPD website). The crimes included in the comparison entail misdemeanor assaults, felonious assaults, shooting incidents, firearm arrests, robbery, rape, homicide, and murder. As figure 1 indicates, the number of stops initiated by the police are more than the rates of crime that the stops manage to intercept annually by a significant margin. Apart from misdemeanors, the NYPD only managed to report 51,000 cases of violent crime to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2011 (Matthews, 2013). The data, therefore, indicates that the number of stops in the City of New York is more than the rate of violent crime by approximately 1100 percent.

Figure 1 : the number of stops compared to the rates of crime under the stop and frisk law in New York City. Adapted from (Matthews, 2013) 

After developing the perspective of the effectiveness of the stop and frisk laws in New York, it is imperative noting that the law has been criticized for two issues. The first one is obvious; the law has not been effective in dealing with crime (James, 2015). Most people claim that the stops have been unnecessary and intrusive on their rights as provide by the Fourth Amendment. The debate takes a different twist when some pressure groups around the country argue that the law had been hard-hitting on the Hispanics and African Americans more than it has been on the Whites (Matthews, 2013). Of the reported number of stops made by the NYPD in the years included in the statistics, it is notable that the Hispanics and African Americans have been overrepresented. For example, despite making up only twenty-nine percent of the entire population of New York, Hispanics represent thirty-one percent of the total stops while the African Americans represent fifty-three percent of the same despite being only twenty-five percent of the population (James, 2015). Comparatively, the Whites are the majority in population (thirty-three percent) yet they make up only ten percent of the total stops as figure 2 indicates. 

Figure 2: the proportion of stops by race and the demographics of New York City in 2012. Adapted from (Mathews, 2013)

The statistics above could be indicators that the policy might have resulted in racial profiling of the African American and Hispanics compared to other groups in the population. The issue of racial profiling also extends to the regions in which most stops occur. Specifically, as figure 3 indicates, most of the incidents involving stop and frisk occur in regions within New York City that are have predominantly Black populations such as Harlem, Queens, Jamaica, Staten Island, Bronx, Flatbush, Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, Ocean Hills, Brownsville, Strarret City, and East New York. Contrastingly, regions, such as Greenpoint, Central Park Manhattan, Chelsea, Little Italy, and Midtown, which have predominantly White populations, have a lower rate of arrests. It appears that the two arguments have taken the better of the debates, which has caused people to claim that better approaches should be adopted to deal with crime. 

Figure 3: number of stops per region in New York City. Adapted from (Mathews, 2013) 

The Author’s Thought on The Stop and Frisk Law

The facts presented in this essay on the stop and frisk law in New York suggest a conflict between the policy makers and the people on whom the police enforce the law. Specifically, there is a conflict between what the policy hoped to achieve and what it has done so far. It is useful to weigh both sides of the argument. First, the law has managed to help the law enforcement officers to detect and possibly deal with crime that would have otherwise been difficult to detect in the absence of policies that would require police to stop and check people randomly. However, the trend is not clear enough to suggest if the Terry Stops have been useful in dealing with the occurrence of crime in New York considering that some other cities that have not adopted such policies also realized a drop in the incidence of crime (James, 2015). 

Any policy that governments of any level adopt should not affect a specific group of individuals more than it does to others. The author suggests that while the Terry Stops are a good idea, the fact that studies are consistent in reporting the fact that they have been racially profiling the Hispanics and African Americans means that the policy should be reviewed. What is important in informing this suggestion is that the City’s population is predominantly White yet the people overrepresented in the stops and arrests are predominantly minority groups. These statistics indicate that the police have to review the regions that they target most during their regular checks. The author would suggest that the police profile the regions with the highest incidences of crime and avoid the stereotype that some racial groups are more likely to break the law than others. For example, the policy makers in the NYPD might want to invest more on surveillance that would improve the likelihood that the individuals stopped during the random stops and frisks have higher accuracy levels. 

References

del Carmen, R. V. (2010). Terry v. Ohio.  Criminal Procedure and the Supreme Court: A Guide to the Major Decisions on Search and Seizure, Privacy, and Individual Rights , 57.

Gelman, A., Fagan, J., & Kiss, A. (2007). An analysis of the New York City police department's “stop-and-frisk” policy in the context of claims of racial bias.  Journal of the American Statistical Association ,  102 (479), 813-823.

Herbert, B. (2010).  Opinion | Jim Crow Policing .  Nytimes.com . Retrieved 1 April 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/opinion/02herbert.html

James, B. (2015).  Stop and frisk in 4 cities: The importance of open police data .  Sunlight Foundation . Retrieved 1 April 2018, from https://sunlightfoundation.com/2015/03/02/stop-and-frisk-in-4-cities-the-importance-of-open-police-data-2/

Jones-Brown, D. D., Stoudt, B. G., Johnston, B., & Moran, K. (2013).  Stop, question, and frisk policing practices in New York City: a primer . Center on Race, Crime and Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Long, C. (2009). Police stop more than one million people on street.  Seattle Times ,  8 .

Matthews, D. (2013).  Here’s what you need to know about stop and frisk — and why the courts shut it down .  Washington Post . Retrieved 1 April 2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/13/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-stop-and-frisk-and-why-the-courts-shut-it-down/?utm_term=.75c29bcdcf94

Ronayne, J. A. (1964). The Right to Investigate and New York's Stop and Frisk Law.  Fordham L. Rev. ,  33 , 211.

Warner, S. B. (1942). The Uniform Arrest Act.  Virginia Law Review , 315-347.