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Deconstructing Stop and Frisk

-- By ChrisMendez - 13 Mar 2015

I. The Reasonable Suspicion Standard

The United States Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio affirmed the constitutionality, under the Fourth Amendment, of stop and frisk encounters where a police officer “observes unusual conduct which leads him to reasonably to conclude in light of his experience” that dangerous criminal conduct may be in progress. The officer is entitled to conduct a “limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons” if his or her reasonable fear is not dispelled quickly during the encounter. New York City is one of several cities in the United States to adopt a stop and frisk program. Per the New York City Police Department Patrol Guide in 1999, some of the factors used to establish the required reasonable suspicion to conduct a stop have included the time of day, the suspect’s demeanor, and the area where the stop occurs.

The reasonable suspicion standard, which makes no overt reference to the race, ethnicity, or the individual’s background, plays out in ways that disproportionately affect minorities. Officers’ subconscious, and even conscious, biases are seemingly validated through the reliance on the officers’ personal experience and his or her fear. The data published in "‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Is All but Gone From New York" demonstrates that, as of 2010, 83% of the people stopped are African American or Latino even these groups only represent 51% of the population in New York City. Given the vacuous nature of the reasonable suspicious standard, it is essential that we turn to the social realities of stop and frisk to better deconstruct the program.

II. Breading Resentment in Predominately Minority Communities

A recent study by the New York Times indicates that minority respondents believe that non-minorities are substantially favored in police interactions. “Stop and Frisk in Brownsville, Brooklyn” is demonstrative of the effects that the program has in minority communities. Even though the residents interviewed generally supported the police presence in the community, they felt that the police officers go too far in their stops. Residents are oftentimes stopped for petty offenses such was discarding a cigarette or spitting on a sidewalk. One resident received a ticket for trespass before actually entering the building where his cousin resided. Furthermore, officers routinely enter the lobbies of public housing buildings and stop residents for entering without a key even though the vast majority of the locks are broken.

The net effect of these stops is that minorities are discriminately burdened with arrests and citations for offenses that go unnoticed in the more privileged areas of New York City, especially when perpetrated by non-minorities. The individuals least able to seek adequate representation and pay citations for trivial offenses, particularly those who reside in public housing, are being used as a funding mechanism to support the government’s inefficient use of resources.

Furthermore, these searches have a deep psychological impact on the individuals being searched. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg has argued that “Scaring the kids not to carry guns is one of the integral parts” of stop and frisk. Mayor Bloomberg overlooks the fact that the vast majority of stops do not result in the discovery of illegal objects. Rather then leading teenagers and young adults to believe that the police are present to protect them, they are subjected to humiliating interactions with officers where they are treated as criminals.

III. Creating Feelings of Security Through the “Other”

"The New York Police: A Dangerous Moment" describes a scene where dozens of tourists stepped out of their luxury buses to attend the Abyssinian Baptist Church in a gentrifying Harlem. Supporters of the stop and frisk program argue that police tactics have resulted in the decrease in crime in neighborhoods such as Harlem. In defense of the program, Mayor Bloomberg pointed out that minorities are disproportionately stopped because they are more likely to commit crimes.

Many individuals are stopped and frisked on the basis of petty violations at an enormous expenditure of resources. Rather than being aimed at confiscating guns, which are seized in only 0.15% of stops, the purpose of these stops is to create and perpetuate a feeling of safety in New York City where the “Other” is being kept in control. Perhaps this feeling of security created through controlling the “Other” is why the tourists were willing to visit a late 1990s Harlem in luxury buses. As Gilberto Gerena Valentin, president of the Congress of Puerto Rican Home Towns commented in 1964, “The police do not protect us. They try to keep us in line. They run the West Side like a plantation.” In this matter, stop and frisk serves as a mechanism of social control aimed at minorities.

IV. Looking Forward

The assumption underlying stop and frisk, along with other forms of broken windows policy, is a dangerous one: incredibly minor transgressions from individuals pertaining to an underserved segment of the population must be ruthlessly pursued to prevent future criminality. The effect of such programs is that young individuals from underprivileged backgrounds are burdened with arrest records and citations for the same behavior that is overlooked in more prosperous areas. Even though the number of stops has dropped in New York City from 337,410 during the first six months of 2012 to 33,699 stops during the last half of 2013, stop and frisk is representative of the far-too-common leveraging of the criminal justice system to prevent society from learning about crime. Rather, the system is being used to perpetuate feelings of security through acts of social control against the “Other.”

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