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Stop and Frisk: Court decision pending on whether changes to police policy are needed
Policewoman frisking man. PHOTO/Hill Street Studios
A federal judge must now decide whether the New York police force has been unjustly stopping black and Hispanic men under a polarizing tactic known as “stop and frisk”, and whether changes are needed to department policy, training and supervision.
During a 10-week civil rights trial that ended Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Schiendlin heard testimony from 12 witnesses, all minorities, who said they were stopped by New York City police chiefly because of their race. She also heard from police who made the stops and from policy experts.
About 5 million stops have been made in New York by police in the past decade, with frisks occurring about half the time. In order to make a stop, police must have reasonable suspicion that a crime is about to occur or has occurred, a standard lower than the probable cause needed to justify an arrest. Only about 10 percent result in arrest or summonses and a weapon is recovered a fraction of the time.
The tactic has become a city flashpoint, with the mayor and police commissioner defending it as a necessary crime-fighting tool, and other city lawmakers calling for major change.
During the trial, minority witnesses told of frightening encounters with callous police officers they said were so bent on numbers that everyday New Yorkers were harassed. The toll has been massive, lawyers challenging the New York Police Department policy argued.
“They laid siege to black and Latino neighborhoods over the last eight years … making people of color afraid to leave their homes,” Gretchen Hoff Varner, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Monday during summations.
She said that blacks and Latinos make up a little more than 50 percent of the city population, but 85 percent of the people stopped by police as part of the tactic are black and Hispanic.
