NYPD Stop-And-Frisks Increase 13 Percent In 2011, 4 Million New Yorkers Patted Down Since 2004

Posted 11/30/2011 4:37 PM ET

2011’s seen a 13 percent increase in New Yorkers getting patted down by cops. As of September the NYPD has stop-and-frisked 514,000 people. And according to The New York Civil LIberties Union, a staggering 4 million people have been stopped since the controversial program started in 2004.

Despite a lawsuit against the department claiming the stop-and-frisks discriminate against minorities (in 2008, 80 percent of those stopped were black or latino) and a call from city officials, including Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, for the federal government to investigate the program, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne defended the practice this week as a success in curbing crime.

“Police stops comport proportionately with violent crime and save lives, most of young minority men who are disproportionately the victims of murder and other violent crime,” he said, according to The New York Daily News.

Donna Lieberman, the NYCLU’s executive director, is worried the searches are invasive. “Entire neighborhoods in NYC are turning into Constitution-free zones,” she said. “A walk to the subway or corner deli should not carry the assumption that you will be confronted by police, but that is a disturbing new reality for many New Yorkers.”

A NYCLU statement also notes that of the 152,311 times the NYPD stopped and interrogated New Yorkers between July 1 and September 30, 88 percent of those encounters did not result in arrests or tickets.

The NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk policy is one that has disenfranchised the minority citizens of this great city. The policy as drafted had the intention of providing a transparency, which should have lead to stronger accountability between the police department and the residents of this city. However, the incentivized belief that high numbers of stops lead to lowering of crime is, in my opinion, flawed. This incentivized structure is documented in two studies, one conducted at the NYPD’s expense through the RAND Corporation and another by the Columbia University Law School. Unfortunately the recognition of this incentive is not the fault of the policy, but the fault of NYPD’s executive management. A management that is micromanaged to the point that professional independent thought has been eliminated and will leave the NYPD unprepared in the wake of this current administration’s departure.