Analysis of Racial Disparities in the New York Police Department's Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices


Book Description

89% of pedestrian stops by the New York Police Department involve non-white persons. The Dept. asked that a study be conducted by the RAND Center on Quality Policing (CQP) to help the New York City Police Department understand the issue of the predominance of pedestrian stops and identify recommendations for addressing potential problems.




The New York City Police Department's Stop & Frisk Practices


Book Description

Canvasses 3 different perspectives on "stop and frisk" (S&F) police activity in NY City. Provides the legal definition of, and constitutional parameters for S&F encounters. Considers S&F from the perspective of both the N.Y. City Police Dept. (NYPD) and minority communities that believe they have been most affected by the use of S&F. S&F is also examined as part of the NYPD's training regimen and from the point of view of officers who have used the technique. Provides an assessment of the S&F tactic from the perspective of persons who have been "stopped," and commentary from persons who have observed the tactic's secondary effects. Comprehensive!!




Racial Profiling and the NYPD


Book Description

This book analyzes New York City’s stop-and-frisk data both pre- and post-constitutionality ruling, examining the existence of both profiling and unequal treatment among the three largest groups identified in the database: Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics. The purpose for using these two time periods is to determine which group(s) benefited the most from the ruling. This research goes beyond standard statistics to identify the place that race holds in contributing to the stop disparities. Specifically, this research will adds a spatial element to the numbers by analyzing the determinants of stop location by race, applying a principal component analysis to a mixture of census and stop-and-frisk data to determine the influence of location on stops by race. The results present a way of determining the plausibility of stops being the product of racial profiling–or just a matter of happenstance.




Examining the Potential for Racial/ethnic Disparities in Use of Force During NYPD Stop and Frisk Activities


Book Description

Since the 1990s, stop and frisk activities have been a cornerstone of the New York Police Department (NYPD). The manner in which the NYPD has carried out stop, question, and frisks (SQFs), however, has been a focal point of discussion, resulting in public outrage and two major lawsuits. Recently, the Federal District Court Judge ruled that the NYPD was engaging in unconstitutional stop-and-frisk practices that targeted predominately Black and Latino New Yorkers. Questions surrounding the NYPDs SQF practices have almost exclusively focused on racial and ethnic disproportionality in the rate of stops without necessarily considering what transpired during the stop. This study will fill that void by examining the prevalence and nature of use of force during those stops, along with testing the minority threat hypothesis. By combining micro-level measures from the NYPDs 2012 "Stop, Question, and Frisk" database with macro-level variables collected from the United States Census Bureau, the current study examines police use of force in the context of SQF activities. The results should help judges, policy makers, police officers, and scholars understand the nature of police use of force in the context of SQFs.




Stop and Frisk


Book Description

Winner, 2019 Outstanding Book Award, given by the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Policing Section The first in-depth history and analysis of a much-abused policing policy No policing tactic has been more controversial than “stop and frisk,” whereby police officers stop, question and frisk ordinary citizens, who they may view as potential suspects, on the streets. As Michael White and Hank Fradella show in Stop and Frisk, the first authoritative history and analysis of this tactic, there is a disconnect between our everyday understanding and the historical and legal foundations for this policing strategy. First ruled constitutional in 1968, stop and frisk would go on to become a central tactic of modern day policing, particularly by the New York City Police Department. By 2011 the NYPD recorded 685,000 ‘stop-question-and-frisk’ interactions with citizens; yet, in 2013, a landmark decision ruled that the police had over- and mis-used this tactic. Stop and Frisk tells the story of how and why this happened, and offers ways that police departments can better serve their citizens. They also offer a convincing argument that stop and frisk did not contribute as greatly to the drop in New York’s crime rates as many proponents, like former NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have argued. While much of the book focuses on the NYPD’s use of stop and frisk, examples are also shown from police departments around the country, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Newark and Detroit. White and Fradella argue that not only does stop and frisk have a legal place in 21st-century policing but also that it can be judiciously used to help deter crime in a way that respects the rights and needs of citizens. They also offer insight into the history of racial injustice that has all too often been a feature of American policing’s history and propose concrete strategies that every police department can follow to improve the way they police. A hard-hitting yet nuanced analysis, Stop and Frisk shows how the tactic can be a just act of policing and, in turn, shows how to police in the best interest of citizens.




Understanding New York’s Crime Drop


Book Description

This book explores New York City’s historic crime drop over the past quarter of a century. New York City’s dramatic crime decline is a real brainteaser: no one predicted it and, as of yet, no one has explained it, at least to the satisfaction of most social scientists who study crime trends. Three strategic lessons emerge from the contributions to this volume on New York’s crime drop. It is suggested that future research should: • go wide by putting New York in comparative context, nationally and internationally; • go long by putting New York’s recent experience in historical context; • develop a strong ground game by investigating New York’s crime drop across multiple spatial units, down to the street segment. The contributors to Understanding New York’s Crime Drop aim to provoke expanded and sustained attention to crime trends in New York and elsewhere. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Justice Quarterly.




National Origin Disparities in the New York City Police Department's Stop-and-Frisk Practices Since 9/11


Book Description

In the last two decades, the New York City Police Department's (NYPD) practice of stop-and-frisk has been the subject of intense public debate and litigation for its disproportionate impact on minorities. In 2013, United States District Court Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled in Floyd v. City of New York that NYPD's stop-and-frisk policies violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. Judge Scheindlin's decision relied heavily on evidence of the disparate impact of stop-and-frisk on black and Hispanic pedestrians. Similarly, all academic and policy analysis of potential biases in NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices to date has focused on these two minority groups. This paper expands this body of research by evaluating the effect of stop-and-frisk on individuals from certain national origins. Specifically, my research focuses on nationalities that have been classified as "ancestries of interest" (AOI) by NYPD since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. According to media reports, NYPD has focused its post-9/11 counter-terrorism surveillance programs on neighborhoods in the city with concentrated populations of individuals from twenty-eight AOI. These AOI are comprised of national ancestries from predominately Muslim countries. Using NYPD stop-and-frisk data from 2003 through 2011, I test whether the AOI population in a police precinct is a statistically significant predictor of the annual number of stops in the precinct while controlling for crime rates, other demographic characteristics--including gender, age, race, and the foreign-born population--and socio-economic indicators. I find a positive, statistically significant relationship between the AOI population and the number of annual stops in a police precinct. These results suggest that NYPD's use of stop-and-frisk has disparately impacted AOI individuals and that the city should consider national origin, in addition to race, as it works to reduce the potential for bias in stop-and-frisk practices moving forward.




Racial Profiling


Book Description

In recent years, racial profiling has drawn the attention of state and federal governments. In this book, racial profiling is defined as the practice of targeting individuals for police or security interdiction, detention, or other disparate treatment based primarily on their race, ethnicity, or national origin in the belief that certain minority groups are more likely to engage in unlawful behaviour. Assertions that law enforcement personnel at all levels unfairly target certain racial and ethnic groups, particularly but not exclusively for traffic stops and searches, have raised concerns about violations of the Constitution. The major debate on racial profiling centres on whether the practice should be prohibited entirely and whether data on traffic stops and searches should be collected to determine if the practice is occurring. This book gathers presents the major issues, available data, and analyses important to understanding on the most dangerous and divisive practices of our time.




Proactive Policing


Book Description

Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term "proactive policing" to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing. Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.




Race, Ethnicity, and Policing


Book Description

From Rodney King and “driving while black” to claims of targeting of undocumented Latino immigrants, relationships surrounding race, ethnicity, and the police have faced great challenge. Race, Ethnicity, and Policing includes both classic pieces and original essays that provide the reader with a comprehensive, even-handed sense of the theoretical underpinnings, methodological challenges, and existing research necessary to understand the problems associated with racial and ethnic profiling and police bias. This path-breaking volume affords a holistic approach to the topic, guiding readers through the complexity of these issues, making clear the ecological and political contexts that surround them, and laying the groundwork for future discussions. The seminal and forward-thinking twenty-two essays clearly illustrate that equitable treatment of citizens across racial and ethnic groups by police is one of the most critical components of a successful democracy, and that it is only when agents of social control are viewed as efficient, effective, and legitimate that citizens will comply with the laws that govern their society. The book includes an introduction by Robin S. Engel and contributions from leading scholars including Jeffrey A. Fagan, James J. Fyfe, Bernard E. Harcourt, Delores Jones-Brown, Ramiro Martínez, Jr., Karen F. Parker, Alex R. Piquero, Tom R. Tyler, Jerome H. Skolnick, Ronald Weitzer, and many others.