Stop-and-Frisk & Racial Minorities

 

            

On October 31, 1963, Officer Martin McFadden was patrolling an area of downtown Cleveland at approximately 2:30 p.m. McFadden noticed two subjects and observed them for several minutes. During his observations, he noticed that the two subjects would talk to each other, one would walk down the street, stop and look in a store window, and go back and resume talking to each other. The second man did the same thing. These walk-pasts the store repeated several times until a third subject approached and started talking to the two subjects. The third subject walked away and the two original subjects eventually followed in the same path where they al met up again. McFadden was very suspicious at this point that the subjects were planning a day-time robbery. He followed the subjects and approached them. He asked them for their names and subsequently patted down the outside of their clothing, suspecting that they had weapons on them. Hi suspicions were confirmed. He removed the weapons and the two subjects were charged with carrying concealed weapons. Terry, one of them men charged, brought his case all the way to the Supreme Court claiming that the officer unreasonably searched him for weapons. The Court ruled that, what we now call a Terry stop is permitted if the officer has reasonable, articulable suspicion that a crime may be afoot. It is also permitted for the safety of the officer, to make sure that the subjects they are inquiring about have no weapons that would put the officer in danger. 

New York City, apparently, is taking the stop-and-frisk to the next level of stopping minority men at a higher rate than anyone else. This is not just the experience of the citizens of New York City, but the lawmakers themselves. As a high-school student, Senator Kevin Parker was stopped by the police several times and patted down. He was even required to tell the officers his whereabouts. Assemblyman Karim Camara was also stopped by the police and asked whether he had any guns or drugs on him. When Sentaor Adriano Espaillat was 14, he said police stopped him, threw him up against a wall, and patted him down for no reason. (1)

In effect, the minority lawmakers are tired of this problem while the white lawmakers remain silent on the issue or just agree with the police. Not only is the racial divide among the law makers, it is among the citizens too. According to a poll released on March 13, 2012, 59% of white voters approve the stop- and-frisk laws while only 27% of black voters do. (1) Last year alone, the New York City Police Department conducted 684,330 stops last year, and 87% of those stopped were black or Hispanic (1). These are troubling numbers and it points to the fact that police rely heavily on racial profiling. 

I personally do not think that race by itself is a good enough reason to stop someone police think are acting suspicious. I firmly believe that police need to take into account other factors such as the area being patrolled, the amount of crime in that area (is it a hot spot?), the demeanor of the individual, and other extralegal factors. Race alone should not be a determining factor of whether someone gets stopped. In my opinion, the only reason that police should be conducting Terry stops is to make sure that a suspect does not have any weapons that could hurt the officer; I do not think that it is right that some officers are using Terry stops to conduct full blown searches of someone when they have no reason to. But how do we solve this issue? Sure, we can pass bills prohibiting racial profiling of subjects, but is that really going to help? I think that the culture of the police encourages the use of racial profiling and a law that is passed prohibiting it would not necessarily stop it; police would find other reasons why they stopped someone with race still being the underlying reason. 

To read more about racial profiling in New York City, here is the full article.

Works Cited:

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/nyregion/fighting-stop-and-frisk-tactic-but-hitting-racial-divide.html