NEW YORK — A teenager trying to get into his apartment after school is confronted by police. A man leaving his workplace chooses a different route back home to avoid officers who roam a particular street. These and hundreds of thousands of other Americans in big cities have been stopped on the street by police using a law-enforcement practice called stop-and-frisk that alarms civil libertarians but is credited by authorities with helping reduce crime.

Police in major U.S. cities stop and question more than a million people each year — a sharply higher number than just a few years ago. Most are black and Hispanic men. Many are frisked, and nearly all are innocent of any crime, according to figures gathered by The Associated Press.

And the numbers are rising at the same time crime rates are dropping.

Ronnie Carr's experience was typical: He was fumbling with his apartment door after school in Brooklyn when plainclothes officers flashed their badges.

"What are you doing here?" one asked, as they rifled through his backpack and then his pockets. The black teenager stood there, quiet and nervous, and waited.

Carr said the officers told him they stopped him because he looked suspicious peeking in the windows. He explained that he had lost his keys. Twenty minutes later, the officers left. Carr was not arrested or cited with any offense.

"I felt bad, like I did something wrong," he said.

Civil liberties groups say the practice is racist and fails to deter crime. Police departments maintain it is a necessary tool that turns up illegal weapons and drugs and prevents more serious crime.

Police records indicate that officers are drawn to suspicious behavior: furtive movements, actions that indicate someone may be serving as a lookout, anything that suggests a drug deal, or a person carrying burglary tools such as a slim jim or pry bar.

The New York Police Department is among the most vocal defenders of the practice. Commissioner Raymond Kelly said recently that officers may stop as many as 600,000 people this year. About 10 percent are arrested.

"This is a proven law enforcement tactic to fight and deter crime, one that is authorized by criminal procedure law," he said.

The practice is perfectly legal. A 1968 Supreme Court decision established the benchmark of "reasonable suspicion" — a standard that is lower than the "probable cause" needed to justify an arrest.

But in the mid-1990s, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and NYPD Commissioner William Bratton made stop-and-frisk an integral part of the city's law enforcement, relying on the "broken windows" theory that targeting low-level offenses helps prevent bigger ones.

Street stops started to go up, and overall crime dropped dramatically in a once-dangerous city.

Last year, New York police stopped 531,159 people, more than five times the number in 2002. Fifty-one percent of those stopped were black, 32 percent Hispanic and 11 percent white.

Not all stops are the same. Some people are just stopped and questioned. Others have their bag or backpack searched. And sometimes police conduct a full pat-down.

David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on street stops, said few searches yield weapons or drugs. And the more people are searched, the more innocent people are hassled.

"The hit rate goes down because you're being less selective about how you're doing this. That has a cost. It's not free," Harris said.

When officers make a stop, they are required to fill out a form, including the time and location of the stop and why police were suspicious. Age, race and whether the person was frisked are also recorded.

In Philadelphia, stops nearly doubled to more than 200,000 from 2007 to 2008. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter deployed an "aggressive" stop-and-frisk policy in the year since his election in November 2007 and overall crime has dropped.

In Los Angeles, where Bratton recently stepped down as police commissioner, pedestrian stops have doubled in the past six years to 244,038 in 2008. The number of people stopped in cars is higher.

About 15 percent of the stops resulted in arrests in 2002, compared with about 30 percent in 2008, according to an analysis of the data by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Several other major police departments do not keep street-stop statistics or do not release them. Chicago police refused to release numbers to the AP. Boston police say they do not keep the records. The New Orleans department is not required to keep statistics on race and pedestrian stops.

RAND, an independent research agency hired by the New York Police Department to analyze street-stop data in 2007 after public outcry, found little racial profiling. It said the raw statistics "distorted the magnitude and, at times, the existence of racially biased policing."

The NYPD continues to monitor the issue, but after the RAND analysis, officials agreed that large-scale restructuring was unnecessary.

Kelly has warned against more simplistic data reviews.

"There are 8.4 million people in New York City. That number swells to more than 10 million every work day. Police are responsible for more than 800,000 summonses and arrests annually based on the higher standard of probable cause," Kelly said.

"Under the circumstances, it's not surprising that we make 500,000 or even 600,000 stops based on the less stringent standard of reasonable suspicion."

Civil liberties groups also complain because New York police keep a database of everyone stopped — innocent or not. That makes them targets for future investigations, said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Los Angeles was forced by federal mandate to release data on street stops — including the race of those stopped — starting in 2000 after a series of scandals. The city government promised to adopt scores of reform measures under federal court supervision.

The LAPD was released from the federal decree in July, but a report last year by the ACLU in Southern California showed that blacks were still nearly three times more likely to be stopped by police than whites.

"The initial defense was: 'Because we're over-policing higher crime neighborhoods, they're predominantly populated by people of color, and that's why,'" said Peter Bibring, an ACLU attorney in Los Angeles.

But an analysis done for the ACLU in 2008 by Yale law professor Ian Ayres accounts for differences in crime rates and still shows minorities are stopped much more.

Some people who are stopped file lawsuits against the city and speak out publicly. Most just accept it.

In Harlem, George Lucas changed his route home from work to avoid a stretch of Seventh Avenue, because he kept being stopped by the police.

"The inconvenience of walking out of my way still saves me the worry and frustration about being stopped," said Lucas, 28, director of a nonprofit.

It's so common in some areas that community groups have begun offering classes on how to behave when stopped.

Courtney Bennett of the nonprofit New York City Mission Society says he regularly hosts groups of 30 men, of all ages, who feel powerless because they are stopped routinely for what they say is no reason. Carr recently attended a similar meeting for teens at another nonprofit called The Door.

Bennett is also a member of the Order of the Feather, a black fraternity that mentors young men and promotes community service. At a recent initiation ceremony in Harlem, it did not take long to find dozens of people who said they were stopped by police.

"You see these guys? They're normal guys, you know? Regular dudes," said Paul Hawkins, 22. "They've all been affected by it somehow. They were stopped, or someone they knew, or their dad or whatever. And they're not, you know, criminals."

Link!

Police stop more than 1 million people on street
Colleen Long
AP
10.09.09
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Sickening. Always let cops know you know your rights.
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Thanks for the post. ^^ Sickening ^^
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I had no idea they could legally search you for just standing around. Sigh... I would hope most of these cases are dismissed via competent lawyer.
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Yeah man, in my neighborhood its pretty common, I'm sure they stop black kids, but my friend who is white (my friends and I dress with sagging pants and shit like that) simply crossed the street and a cop car came out of nowwhere and the cop started yelling at him, so my friend laughed and rolled his eyes. Then the guy yelled at him not to give him an attitude and my friend said "I ain't giving you no attitude" then the cop pulls over and takes his name down and searches him for no fucking reason. He was pretty lucky since he carries brass knuckles alot. The cop also threatened to arrest him if he seen him again and told all of us to leave the trolley stop yet there's benches there meant for sitting there.

I don't feel safer with these dickhead cops in my neighborhood, I have to worry about carrying weed on me and getting frisked lol. There's always mad fights in my hood and the cops never catch nobody. This racist dude called my black friend a nigger for crossing the street in front of his car and his car was kicked and punched by my black friend and another friend (also black). My other friend told the dude to get out of his car and he did and got all in his face lol. Then he yelled "Get the fuck out of my face" and shoved the dude. After that he kicked him and got punched in the face at the same time by both of my friend and got knocked to the fucking ground! It was the funniest shit I seen lol
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If a cop wanted to search me and I knew I wasn't doing anything suspicious, I'd say Fuck You and walk away. If I was arrested or detained...simple excuse/reason: "You don't look like a normal cop and I've been sexually abused in the past...blah blah blah. Plus I wasn't doing anything suspicious." Plus freedom of speech, as long as you're not provoking anyone, walking away for example wouldn't provoke someone.
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Ive had this happen a few times....

So i was picking up a friend of mine up from the suburban neighborhood i used to live in one night.... I was standing outside of my car on the road smoking a cigarette and waiting for my friend....

Cop drives by me, turns around in the cul de sac and drives off, i think very little of it.

So eventually i leave with my friend, we make it about a mile down the road before i see the blue lights in my mirror. So i pull over. and this is the conversation that ensued...

Cop: Lisense and Insurance
Me: Here you go sir.
Cop: Well i pulled you over for two reasons, the first being the recent string of break ins in that neighborhood you were in and two, your tag light is "dim" (yea that one pissed me off a bit).
Me: Well i am fully aware of the break ins conisdering the fact that one of those robberies happened to us and we called you guys... And i really wasn't aware that my tag light was "dim" or that you could even pull me over for a light being "dim"....
Cop: Mind if i search you?

Knowing he has the full right to pat me down for his own saftey so he knows that im not about to pull out a knife and stab a piggie, i let him search me... I didn't even really said anything, just sort of assumed the position of my hands on the side of the car... All the while telling the cop stories of how officers just like him have profiled and searched me in the past.

Cop: Mind if we search the car?
Me: Yea i mind a little, like i was saying despite not having any drugs or anything illegal or being under the influence of anything while being pulled over for some reason i am always profiled as a drug user and you guys want to search me every time.
Cop: Well if you don't we are just going to be sitting her for around an hour waiting for the drug dogs.

I ended up just letting him search my pig sty of a car.... It was still in festival hell mode, camping shit and trash.... I told him it was messy as hell and he gave up after about 2 minutes....

Although i was told like every other time "Well i did smell a faint odor of marijuana"..... The next time a cop tells me that i really really just want to go off on a rant along the lines of "I have probably smoked more marijuana in my life than you have confinscated, so trust me when i say that i would smell marijuana in my car if there was any to be smelt... It might just be a brain tumor or something....
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I've heard most of the time, they never send a dog, but it is bullshit if you refuse a search they just try sending a dog to search you anyways, and they usually lie and say the dog signaled even though they didn't.

Also walking away when a cop is questioning you is now REASONABLE CAUSE to search you lol, no matter how bullshit it may seem. Its impossible to refuse a search, fuck I hate cops so bad.

I guess that's why the took my friends name, do they always write your name down if you are frisked?
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It happens a lot in predominantly black neighborhoods where a lot of heroin distribution takes place.
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Where the fuck did that damn fourth amendment go?
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fuck the cops. nothing but a gun and a badge
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I think this is a fucking joke. On a normal day basis I'm one to have a thing or two of questionable legality on me ..as Ason Unique said,,definately don't feel safer with some of these goofs around .(I do respect some cops,some take way too much advantage of that damn badge)
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That's disgusting. Dare I say non-constitutional?
Where I live, cops must have permission at the very least to search, and if you refuse they still have to get court order.
There have been a couple times I, as a white female, have been stopped for NO reason what so ever. "What are you doing here?!"
Walking to the store- it's a nice day. What's wrong with that?

Crooked cops. >:P
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That's fucked up.

A cop gave my friend a cigarette ticket because he knew he wasn't 18. The kid didn't know he could refuse to be searched or whatever, so the cop found some drugs on him, is going to go to court and will soon get fucked. He'd'a been fine if he just said he wasn't going to get searched.
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and good ol white oxycodone loving suburbia....
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Lesson learned: Dress like a normal kid, and pull up your pants !
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I have been arrested for trying to show an officer my rights. Apparently I was standing where he searched me too long then arreted me for obstruction. He was a cunt. Lol

I'm UK :-)
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I have discovered that, at least in Baltimore County, you can tell the cops to fuck off when they ask to search your car. they will bring drug dogs, however unless the dog alerts on a simple sweep of the outside of your car, they still cannot search the interior.

good advice for anyone who is holding something, but that doesn't have a strong smell. (pills, dope, works, etc)
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Oh but it's making the crime rate go down!!!!!11~1!!

Yeah, so why don't they search everyone everywhere?! Then there would be no crime!!!!!! :-)


I suggest legalizing drugs and providing job skills training in poor neighborhoods. Probly work better...
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this summer I was living in Baltimore. my friend and I went running and forgot to bring keys, so we were locked out. We lived near Johns Hopkins, probably the nicest place in Baltimore (all asians, indians... we're white). I hoisted him up and he broke the screen on the window to get in. Cops drove by maybe 5 times while we were doing this, no problems.

If we were black, I bet they'dve hassled us big time.

Sort of off-topic, but hey.
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Not if you dressed like Carlton


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Lol, I'm not gonna change the way I dress, I'm just gonna shove my weed behind my balls. I don't think they do anything but jiggle your pants, which will do nothing especially if you wear tight underwear (which I do)

I bet if cops find cigs, they'd try to write me a ticket.
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Wow. This just ratcheted my paranoia up a few notches. I've already got a pretty serious police phobia, and until now, I've always considered myself unsafe carrying anything illegal in a car, but basically safe on foot or bicycle. There have been many times I've been walking or biking around NYC, and would not have been in a good position to be frisked. Might be worth it to dress conservatively and invest in a decent hiding device next time I'm roaming the big apple core baked.
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Had a 'stop n' frisk' after first week in southern California, while driving. The officer said I appeared to be on narcotics and he had a right (probable-cause?) to search me and my vehicle; "Am I under arrest?", I asked, but he gave no answer. I stated: "I respectively decline you searching me or my vehicle without court order/warrant [based on the Fourth Amendment]." He went on and searched everything, then after an hour, let me go without any further action. Weird little Bitch
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I think it would of been void if he searched regardless, that's messed up, they're supposed to ask, also does the dumbfuck know what a narcotic is?
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