Stop-and-Frisk: NYPD stands its ground while facing sharp criticism

Baltimore native Chris Bilal was walking through his adopted Brooklyn neighborhood when he was stopped by a police officer. The NYPD officer peppered the 24-year-old with questions about where he lived, requested Bilal’s ID and rummaged through his bag. “I was coming home from the Laundromat and I was stopped by the police officer. Asking me, ‘Let me see your ID. ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Do you live around here?’ ” The officer then proceeded to rummage through Bilal’s bag of freshly cleaned and folded laundry to see if he was carrying anything illegal. The search produced nothing, and the officer sent Bilal on his way. “They were searching for drugs. The funny thing was that it was a mesh laundry bag. I’m not sure what I could hide,” Bilal said. Bilal, who is African-American, came to New York to follow his dreams of being an artist, but has felt more suspicion than inspiration since arriving a little over a year ago. He is repeatedly stopped on the street, being asked what he’s doing, where he’s going and even, on occasion, being frisked. “I feel guilty all the time,” said Bilal, an artist and writer. “I feel like I’m being watched and targeted all the time.” Bilal has been affected by the NYPD’s policy of Stop, Question and Frisk, in which officers randomly stop a person to determine if they are up to any wrongdoing or possess weapons and contraband items. His experience is all too common, especially among minorities in low-income neighborhoods. In 2011, the New York City Police Department stopped 685,724 people of whom an overwhelming 88 percent were deemed innocent. Backers of the policy say it is an effective tool for deterring crime, which has dropped nearly 80 percent since the Giuliani administration enacted Stop, Question and Frisk in the mid-'90s. But critics say the price of living in what they consider a police state is too high. “[NYPD] Commissioner Kelly says he believes that the large number of Stop and Frisk prevents crime, but the data really doesn’t support that,” said Dr. Delores Jones-Brown, professor and director of the Center on Race, Crime and Justice at John Jay College in New York. “The overwhelming problem with Stop and Frisk is that many of the people stopped are innocent.”

www.foxnews.com...


I cant believe this is even allowed to begin with. This is clearly unconstitutional and needs to be stopped! To sit here and flaunt the fact that officers are allowed to do this on the news and only state that its drawing criticism is sick. The headline should be "no rights for anyone your constitution means nothing to us anymore". Giving officers the power to molest and harass anybody and everybody is just another sign of the times. I know this has been going on for a long time but it seems like tptb are just shoving it in our faces and saying what you going to do about it.

Yes, it is unconstitutional and should be stopped immediately but it won't.

Nazi Germany reborn.

Remember when people talked about when stuff like gun confiscation and martial law questions came up whether or not cops would actually go against the citizens......... I think this is proof they will, and have.

what happens if you refuse? or run? are you then a criminal?

why would our system WANT to create criminals out of law abiding citizens?
if the answer to that question is money, something needs to change.

Isn't this exactly what Arizona was trying to pass into law and the whole media jumped down their throat?

NY is basically the new training ground for the police state, has been for a long while.

Originally posted by mwood
Yes, it is unconstitutional and should be stopped immediately but it won't.

Nazi Germany reborn.

Remember when people talked about when stuff like gun confiscation and martial law questions came up whether or not cops would actually go against the citizens......... I think this is proof they will, and have.

Yeah but what I dont get is how people can just turn a blind eye to this. This is clearly gestapo style police work and its treated as if its hardly something debatable. thing about it is if it were more than just attacking poor people and minorities it would actually be considered an immoral act.

what happens if you refuse? or run? are you then a criminal? why would our system WANT to create criminals out of law abiding citizens? if the answer to that question is money, something needs to change.

If you refuse good luck finding a decent job or home after you get out of jail.

Originally posted by yourmaker
what happens if you refuse? or run? are you then a criminal?

This is what happens if you resist:



Any questions?

reply to post by six67seven


Im not sure how that one turned out but it would be pretty sad if american citizens were shown to have less freedom than immigrants. It isnt hard to tell an illegal from a legal and would be the lesser evil to profile though I dont see why any of it should be allowed to begin with

2010 Marijuana Arrests Top 1978-96 Total

More people were arrested last year in New York City on charges of marijuana possession than during the entire 19-year period from 1978 to 1996...

Last year, the sixth year in a row that marijuana possession arrests increased, 50,383 people were arrested...

From 1978 to 1996, there were 49,326 marijuana possession arrests...

The figure adds up to 140 arrests a day, making marijuana possession the leading reason for arrest in the city...

“Over the last 20 years, N.Y.P.D. has quietly made arrests for marijuana their top enforcement priority, without public acknowledgment or debate”

possession isn't illegal in new york. The cops trick people with their 'stop and frisks' into pulling it out of their pockets, and then they can arrest them for having it out in public. This is insanity and the police and whoever's telling them to do it belong in prison.

And they brag about doing more and more of these...

NYPD's Stop-and-Frisks Reach Record Highs

February 14, 2012

The NYPD conducted 684,330 stops in 2011, the highest number on record since the City Council started collecting stop-and-frisk data in 2002...


According to the police department’s own report analyzing the reasons for its stops in the fourth quarter of 2011, only 16.5 percent of individuals stopped were stopped because the individual fit “a relevant description.” ...

Police in New York City stopped and questioned a record-breaking 684,330 people last year. The figure represents an increase of over 600% since the controversial practice of stop, question and search – commonly known as stop-and-frisks – began in 2002.

www.nytimes.com...

May 13, 2012

Police officers stopped people on New York City’s streets more than 200,000 times during the first three months of 2012, putting the Bloomberg administration on course to shatter a record set last year for the highest annual tally of street stops.

Data on the 203,500 street stops from January through March — up from 183,326 during the same quarter a year earlier — was sent to the City Council

Its kinda eery going back to a comic of the 90s, judge dredd, about an overbearing law enforcement organisation and seeing the situation today.

Originally posted by lobotomizemecapin
This is clearly unconstitutional and needs to be stopped!

It is and it does.
How the deuce did they allow this "law" in the first place?

reply to post by this_is_who_we_are


Well my friend you have a bunch of yuppies that believe the safety of their money and persons is much more important than the rights and safety of those that are less fortunate than them. I sincerely doubt the police would molest someone who looks like they have money. So they set the dogs on the small guys because obviously if you live in certain areas or are of a certain race you must be a criminal.

reply to post by Cassius666


I'll have to look that up. Things are bound to get worse before this is stopped and I imagine if someone makes a comic today about how much worse things could get people will look back and be creeped out about the prophetic nature of it.

reply to post by lobotomizemecapin


I understand that, but how did something so ridiculously and blatantly un-4th amendment get passed into law? It boggles the mind.


ETA: And that the "law" still stands leaves me speechless. Where's the ACLU on this? No-one has challenged this yet? What the deuce??!!

reply to post by this_is_who_we_are


HAHA that is exactly what I wanted to know when I posted this. I dont understand how people can accept this law and not see the blatant disregard for our constitutional rights. They seem to not be able to see the progression that will eventually affect them as well as it does the rest of us.

reply to post by lobotomizemecapin

This is clearly unconstitutional and needs to be stopped!

Well, it has been ruled on by the Supreme Court.

Its called a Terry Stop. The Supreme Court ruled that an officer may briefly detain a person they reasonably suspect of being involved in criminal activity. During this stop, the Supreme Court ruled that an officer may conduct a limited search, or pat down, of a person's outer garments if they reasonably suspect they are armed.

The headline should be "no rights for anyone your constitution means nothing to us anymore".

This seems like an overreaction.

Giving officers the power to molest and harass anybody and everybody is just another sign of the times.

No, Terry V. Ohio was ruled on in 1968 establishing that this sort of action is required for police officers to be effective and ensure their safety.

The real question is how random are the stop and frisks? That is up to the articulation of the individual officer and is judged on a case by case basis.

One could argue that since most people stopped and fisked are found to be innocent means that the police are not exercising a prudent amount of "reasonable" suspicion.

But one could also argue that the amount of gun violence in a particular area of New York City at a certain time of day would lead an officer to have "reasonable" suspicion that people in that particular area in that time range are armed.

reply to post by mwood

Nazi Germany reborn.

Please explain to me how this is anything like Nazi Germany.

reply to post by yourmaker

what happens if you refuse? or run? are you then a criminal?

If a police officer has reasonable suspicion to detain you, they will use reasonable force to do so until they can confirm or dispell criminal activity.

why would our system WANT to create criminals out of law abiding citizens?
if the answer to that question is money, something needs to change.

How would this create criminals out of law abiding citizens? Are you saying that all of the law abiding citizens that were stopped have now become criminals because of the stop? I dont think this is accurate.

To make an investigative detention, there must be a set of articulable circumstances that would lead a reasonable officer to believe one is invovled in criminal activity.

reply to post by lobotomizemecapin

This is clearly gestapo style police work and its treated as if its hardly something debatable.

Again, how is this comparable to gestapo style police work?

It seems that standard operating proceedure for police related threads is to call the police nazis or gestapo without providing any correlation between the two.

Bilal, who is African-American, came to New York to follow his dreams of being an artist, but has felt more suspicion than inspiration since arriving a little over a year ago. He is repeatedly stopped on the street, being asked what he’s doing, where he’s going and even, on occasion, being frisked.

His experience is all too common, especially among minorities in low-income neighborhoods. In 2011, the New York City Police Department stopped 685,724 people of whom an overwhelming 88 percent were deemed innocent. Backers of the policy say it is an effective tool for deterring crime, which has dropped nearly 80 percent since the Giuliani administration enacted Stop, Question and Frisk in the mid-'90s.

Harassment and racist

Why don't they pay attention to the criminals on wall street? If they started frisking them, I'd liek to see how long the policy would last....

The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. It was adopted as a response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, which is a type of general search warrant, in the American Revolution. Search and arrest should be limited in scope according to specific information supplied to the issuing court, usually by a law enforcement officer, who has sworn by it

obviously you're skipping over the parts of the article talking about officers searching peoples bags and pockets. The fourth amendment was written to keep this from happening. It doesnt matter to you that innocent people are being harassed for no reason? What planet are you living on shill? Just because the supreme court says it is ok doesnt mean it is. are you going to argue that its ok when they strip us of the second? or the first? or when they just scrap the entire constitution all together? What about it isnt gestapo like? Use your brain for what its there for