Scholars are attempting to study if New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk program, which targets minority residents, is effective. It comes ahead of a mayoral election that has seen candidates, as well as current lawmakers, condemn the policy.
Judge Schira Scheindlin ruled on August 12 that the “stop,
question and frisk” program instituted in 2002 by the New York
City Police Department (NYPD) is unconstitutional, agreeing with
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil liberty
groups that the program has clearly and wrongfully targeted
racial minorities.
A federal monitor will soon be appointed to oversee departmental
policies. On Thursday, city lawmakers will vote on whether to
create an inspector general position within the NYPD as a means
of opening communication lines for potential whistleblowers in
the future.
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who has been a steadfast defender of
stop-and-frisk along with departing Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
penned an opinion piece for the July 22 edition of The Wall
Street Journal titled “The NYPD: Guilty of Saving 7,383 Lives.”
The article cites a decreasing crime rate as justification for
stop-and-frisk.
“In the 11 years before Bloomberg took office, there were 13,212
murders in New York City. During the 11 years of his
administration, there have been 5,849,” Kelly wrote.
“That’s 7,383 lives saved – and if history is a guide, they are
largely the lives of young men of color. So far this year,
murders are down 29 percent from the 50-year low achieved in
2012, and we’ve seen the fewest shootings in two decades,” he
continued.
While he did not directly attribute the declining crime to
stop-and-frisk, Kelly was pressed on the matter during a later
appearance on MSNBC. “It is a component,” he stated flatly
before moving away from the question.
Bloomberg agreed with Kelly, criticizing Scheindlin’s decision by
refuting the entire trial, which saw young African-American men
and former police officers agree on the policy’s flaws.
“Throughout the trial that just concluded, the judge made it
clear she was not at all interested in the crime reductions here
or how we achieved them,” he said during a recent press
conference.
But as New York mayoral candidates work to separate themselves
from the unpopular program, researchers have wondered how exactly
the NYPD measures stop-and-frisk’s effectiveness – or if it does
at all.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, a politics writer at New York magazine,
reported that scholars are attempting to identify the regions
around New York where the most stops have taken place, then
determine whether crime has fallen there.
“This is a very complicated statistical undertaking, though.
First you have to control all the variables that have nothing to
do with policing that might account for some of that change in
crime (changes in the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood,
its levels of unemployment and home ownership, changes in its
demographic makeup),” Wallace-Wells wrote.
“Then, because escalation in stops in a particular
neighborhood often takes place together with more policing
efforts (more cops on the streets, more arrests and summonses
generally), you have to disaggregate the effects of each of those
efforts from the specific impact of each additional stop. So in
order to know what effect each additional stop has, you have to
control for the simple effect of having more police in the
neighborhood, and the effect of arresting more people, and the
effect of issuing more summonses.”
Other experts have asserted that understanding the true value, or
lack thereof, presented by stop-and-frisk is impossible because
of the extreme difficulty of measuring the mental effect that the
presence of a police officer has on would-be criminals.
In a recent Quinnipiac University pooll, an overwhelming number
of New Yorkers - 66 percent - said they were in favour of a
stop-and-frisk policy. However, a growing number of city
lawmakers oppose the policy.
Bloomberg has continued to advocate for police officers’ ability
to search a citizen without probable cause. In what some have
called an attempt to protect his legacy and credibility as mayor,
he has repeatedly stated that any intervention would seriously
threaten the NYPD’s ability to police effectively.
The New York City Council has, since last year, debated the
Community Safety Act, which is designed to protect against law
enforcement abuses. One idea included in the bill would appoint
an independent inspector general to oversee the police, while a
second aspect would enact an enforceable anti-profiling law that
already exists.
Bloomberg called the Community Safety Act “dangerous and
irresponsible,” vetoing the legislation last month. He
claimed the presence of an inspector general would only confuse
officers as to which orders to follow, despite inspector generals
being employed in departments throughout the US.
The council will vote on Thursday whether to override the mayor’s
veto and consequently determine whether the next administration
will be able to enforce stop-and-frisk.
“He’s afraid of someone saying ‘not everything you did in
policing worked,’” Councilmember Jumaane Williams told The
Nation. “A real leader can say, ‘Look, we tried a couple
things. They didn’t all work out. And the ones that didn’t work
out we tried to fix and work with the community on how to fix
it.’ But he just didn’t do that, which caused us to be where we
are now.”