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Bloomberg: Giant Stop & Frisk Spike May Be <em>Illusion</em> Created By... Record Keeping
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 14, 2012
Modified Jun 14, 2012
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 14, 2012
Modified Jun 14, 2012
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As Mayor Bloomberg, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, the two editorial boards of the city's tabloids, and anyone who loves Safety and Freedom have said many times, stop-and-frisk saves lives. This is why the number of stop-and-frisks have increased by 600% since Bloomberg took office, and why the city is on track to break last year's record number of stops. But could there possibly be another reason? "There’s a good argument to be made—nobody’s really sure—but that the number of stop-and-frisks really haven’t gone up very much," Bloomberg told reporters yesterday. "It’s that now we categorize them."
Wait, what? DNAinfo caught the mayor's explanation: “We have a form that the police officers fill out and we report that data. And so there’s more data. But we may have been doing exactly the same number going back for a decent amount of time."
So the same staggering amount of people have always been stopped for no reason all along? If the stops are so effective why didn't crime drop by 34% after Bloomberg's first year in office? There's a certain federal judge who should know about this.
And what about the mayor's assurance that stop-and-frisks would drop "significantly?" Is the NYPD just going to go back to sawing all stop-and-frisk reports in half?
Tagged
lies damned lies and statistics
mayor bloomberg
numbers
nypd
Ray Kelly
stop and frisk
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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