Stop-And-Frisk NYPD Program Is Ineffective And Violates Rights, Says NYCLU Study

A study by the New York Civil Liberties Union, released today, analyzed the NYPD's 2012 stop-and-frisk data and found that nine out of 10 people stopped were innocent -- meaning they were neither arrested nor ticketed.

Executive Director Donna Lieberman denounced the NYPD policy, saying it "remains a tremendous waste of resources, sows mistrust between police and the communities of color and routinely violates fundamental rights" and calling for the city's next mayor to "make a clean break from the Bloomberg administration's ineffective and abusive stop-and-frisk regime."

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is nearing the end of his third term in office, during which the city has seen record-low crime rates. He defends the policy, saying it is a necessary strategy in keeping the streets safe, and in the past has blasted critics of stop-and-frisk for putting concerns about the tactic over the lives of victims of gun violence like Alphonza Bryant, a 17-year-old who was shot to death in the Bronx in April.

In 2012, according to the study, the NYPD recovered 729 guns through stop-and-frisk and made 4,061 weapons-related arrests. Blacks were 55.2 percent of the total people stopped and Latinos were 31.5 percent, as opposed to 9.7 percent who were white. 89 percent of the stops turned up nothing, while two percent of frisks resulted in the discovery of a weapon.

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But marijuana possession was the top stop-and-frisk offense, with 5,307 arrests logged. The Huffington Post noted that this would seem to be in contradiction with recent gestures toward liberalization by Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Both have come out in support of changing New York state law to make possession of small amounts of marijuana a violation rather than a misdemeanor, and the NYPD has adopted the policy of releasing marijuana arrestees instead of holding them in custody overnight.

But the study indicates that the stop-and-frisk policy has led to an explosion of street stops - 532,911 times, a 448 percent increase since 2002, Bloomberg's first year in office.

Two City Council members, Jumaane Williams and Brad Lander, commented in an article about the study posted on the NYCLU's website. Williams called the practice "utterly divisive and corrosive to the essential relationship between historically disenfranchised communities and the police charged with protecting them". And Lander said the policy had a "disparate impact on young men of color" and added that "Even in Park Slope, where 67 percent of the population is white, 84.8 percent of the stops in 2012 were of black and Latino people. So this is not a matter of simply going where the crime is."

A federal class-action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights which challenges the practice, Floyd v. City of New York, concluded on Monday. The judge has yet to rule.