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Stop-And-Frisk Simply Doesn't Work, Argue Yale Law School Professor And Student
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Apr 20, 2012
Modified Apr 20, 2012
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Apr 20, 2012
Modified Apr 20, 2012
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A law professor and a law student at Yale University wrote an op-ed piece in the Times this morning decrying the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program, a program which has come under quite a bit of fire this year. In a piece entitled "Better Ways to Police Than Stop-and-Frisk," James Forman Jr., a clinical professor at Yale Law School, and Trevor Stutz, a third year law student who is a member of Forman's Innovations in Policing Clinic, argued that stopping and frisking random selections of young, predominantly black men is not the only method to decrease violence in minority neighborhoods, nor is it the most effective one.
Forman and Stutz cited several studies conducted through the Innovations in Policing Clinic, noting the success of methods like "focused deterrence," in which police officers thoroughly investigate and prosecute those most responsible for violent crime in a particular neighborhood, instead of blindly frisking larger groups. They highlighted a particular incident in 2004, in which the method was used to combat drug-related crimes in a low-income neighborhood in North Carolina:
Rather than sweep through and stop large numbers of young black men, the police built strong relationships with residents, promising greater responsiveness if they took back the reins of their community and told their sons, nephews and grandsons that the violence and the over dealing must end. Meanwhile, the police identified the 17 mean driving the drug market and built solid cases against each. In one fell swoop, they arrested three with violent records...The city's most significant drug market vanished overnight, and it has not come back.
Forman and Stutz pointed out a few other successful strategies cities have used to address violence among their low-income and minority populations. In Seattle, for instance, the police department has been collaborating with groups like the public defender's office to put drug offenders in treatment rather than in jail. In Washington State and Illinois, officers are being trained to deal with offenders more fairly and transparently, in hopes that people will be more likely to follow the law.
The stop-and-frisk policies have been a source of contention between the NYPD and civil rights advocators for some time. In February, Councilmember Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) introduced legislation calling to limit discriminatory profiling during stop-and-frisks, noting that nearly 90 percent of the 684,330 New Yorkers who were stopped by the NYPD in 2011 were black or Latino. During his 2010 election campaign, New York's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pledged to review and reform the stop-and-frisk program; his recently compiled data on the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policies, but has yet to release a report.
But NYPD Chief Ray Kelly has repeatedly defended stop-and-frisks, claiming the practice has been an effective way to reduce crime and curb murders in the city, and that no other viable solution has been presented to him. "96 percent of the shooting victims in this city are people of color," Kelly told City Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito at a hearing about NYPD practices in March. "90 percent of the murder victims are people of color...What I haven't heard is any solution to the violence problem in these communities." But while Forman and Stutz note that stop-and-frisk has had a level of success, they might do more harm than good.
"New York has a moral imperative to address violence," they wrote. "But stop and frisk practices are harming the community in order to protect it, and the costs of those practices can no longer be justified by the claim that nothing else will work."
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