Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
Stop and frisk in NYC a decade after historic court ruling
By
Samantha Max
Published Aug 12, 2023
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
rblfmr/Shutterstock
By
Samantha Max
Published Aug 12, 2023
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of a landmark federal court decision that found the NYPD’s use of a controversial policing tactic known as “stop and frisk” routinely violated people’s constitutional rights and discriminated against people of color.
Judge Shira Scheindlin ordered the police department to implement sweeping changes in order to prevent illegal stops and searches of pedestrians. She also ordered the city to hire an independent monitor to keep an eye on the NYPD’s practices and policies. A decade later, that monitor is still in place.
As New York City marks this historic anniversary, here’s what you should know about the case and where things stand today.
What is stop and frisk?
Stop and frisk, sometimes called stop, question and frisk, is a tactic that police use to stop someone they think is committing a crime. They might also question the person or search them to see if they’re carrying weapons, drugs or other criminal evidence.
This practice is also known as a Terry stop, after a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court case called Terry v. Ohio determined that police are allowed to stop and frisk someone they walk past on the street if they have reasonable suspicion to believe that person has committed or is about to commit a crime.
What prompted the court decision ordering the police department to change how it uses stop and frisk?
A series of class-action lawsuits were filed during then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration arguing that the NYPD’s widespread use of stop and frisk was routinely violating New Yorkers’ rights.
Ligon v. City of New York pertained to stops in private apartment buildings, while Davis v. City of New York focused on stops in public housing. But perhaps the best-known case was Floyd v. City of New York, which was named for its lead plaintiff David Floyd, a Black man who said he had been stopped and frisked without justification in the Bronx.
At the height of stop and frisk in 2011, the NYPD recorded 685,724 pedestrian stops, according to data obtained by the New York Civil Liberties Union. Nearly 90% of stops did not turn up evidence of a crime and 87% of people stopped that year were Black or Latino.
Data points like these, as well as testimony from people who had been stopped and frisked, law enforcement officials, and even then-state Sen. Eric Adams convinced Judge Scheindlin that police were illegally targeting certain neighborhoods and demographic groups.
“What happened was these stops were essentially drilling in a dry well,” Scheindlin said in an interview. “The stops did not produce drugs, did not produce guns, did not produce evidence of crimes. It was just an intrusion into people's freedom to walk about without being harassed by police.”
Scheindlin said the tactic alienated many New Yorkers and made them distrustful of police as well as less likely to help officers solve crimes in their communities.
In a court order, Scheindlin said the NYPD did not need to stop using proactive strategies to address crime but added that stops and frisks needed to be constitutional — meaning that police would have to be able to clearly articulate an objective reason for their suspicions.
She also mandated that the police department write a formal policy laying out when officers are allowed to conduct pedestrian stops, do a better job of recording stops in official paperwork, and equip officers with body cameras. An independent monitor was tasked with overseeing these changes.
How often are people being stopped and frisked now?
Pedestrian stops have decreased substantially since their height in 2011. In 2021, the NYPD recorded fewer than 9,000 stops.
But the numbers have begun to creep up again under Adams, who ran on a tough-on-crime platform. Last year, according to NYPD data, police stopped about 15,100 pedestrians. Watchdogs believe this is likely an undercount, because police often don’t fill out paperwork after they stop someone, which makes it difficult to accurately track the numbers.
According to a Gothamist analysis of last year’s pedestrian stop data, more than 90% of those stopped were people of color. But even though police have been relying more on pedestrian stops as a crime-fighting tool, data show that weapons were rarely recovered during these stops.
The NYPD found a weapon in 1 in 6 pedestrian stops in 2022. Guns were rarer — they turned up in just 1 out of every 13 stops. Only about a third of stops resulted in an arrest.
In an emailed statement, an unnamed NYPD spokesperson called pedestrian stops and frisks “an essential tool” to reduce violence and attributed the rise in police activity to a pandemic-related crime spike. The spokesperson said measures are in place to ensure officers follow the law, including training, supervision and oversight.
“The NYPD uses this tool with increasing levels of precision, stopping individuals based on organic, specific observations,” the statement said. “The NYPD does not direct officers to conduct a certain number of stops.”
What does the mayor think about stop and frisk?
During the Floyd v. City of New York trial, Adams testified about his concerns that police were disproportionately stopping Black and Latino New Yorkers. He also recounted a meeting he attended with then Gov. David Paterson and then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who he said had admitted that the NYPD was targeting young Black and Latino people “because he wanted to instill fear in them, every time they leave their home, they could be stopped by police,” according to court records.
Adams said in a statement to Gothamist that he still “vividly” remembers testifying at trial. He cited his own experiences being beaten by police as a young Black man, which inspired him to create “100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care” while serving in the NYPD.
“Protecting New Yorkers and protecting their civil rights are not competing interests,” he said in the statement. “As I stated 10 years ago, the unlawful use of stop and frisk was not helpful in preventing crime and it ultimately set us back in strengthening police and community partnerships, an essential part of making real, lasting progress on crime.”
But Adams has made no secret of his commitment to drive down crime and gun violence, even with tactics that police reform advocates call outdated and overly aggressive. Pedestrian stops have also increased under his watch. And earlier this year, the federal monitor appointed in response to the stop-and-frisk case found that the NYPD’s new Neighborhood Safety Teams — created at Adams’ urging — are regularly conducting pedestrian stops without legal justification.
A decade after this historic decision, what’s next?
Police watchdogs say car stops are the new frontier to watch.
Until last year, the NYPD wasn’t even keeping track of these stops. That changed when the City Council passed a law requiring the department to fill out paperwork after every traffic stop, including demographic data, location, whether police found contraband and whether the stop resulted in an arrest.
The first batch of data from 2022 revealed the NYPD conducted about 670,000 car stops. When they searched the car or made an arrest, the driver was Black or Latino about 90% of the time.
NYCLU Legal Director Christopher Dunn said his organization is closely watching the data.
“The big concern about car stops is they present the exact same sorts of problems that we saw in pedestrian stops: people being stopped without justification, and race playing a huge role in who is getting stopped or after a stop takes place, what is happening to people in conjunction with a stop,” he said.
Dunn noted that vehicle stops also pose a potential for danger. Many shootings by police start with a traffic stop, including several recent cases in New York City.
In addition to more data on traffic stops, police watchdogs have also recently gained greater access to the records of officers accused of racial profiling and biased policing. The City Council recently passed legislation allowing the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates claims of police misconduct, to create a new team devoted to investigating allegations of profiling and bias.
Darius Charney, the civil rights attorney who spearheaded the Floyd lawsuit, is leading the team. After months of staffing shortages and disputes with the NYPD, the unit has worked out an agreement with the department to access the police records it needs to conduct investigations.
Tiffany Hanssen contributed reporting.
Tagged
public safety
Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Deer are all over New Jersey roads looking for sex, state officials warn
Mid-October through mid-December is deer mating season, which can be a danger to drivers as the sex-seeking creatures cross roadways throughout the Garden State.
By
Rosemary Misdary
Published Oct 16, 2026
Man messaged 'I got straight poison' before giving NYC college students fentanyl, feds say
A transcript from an April court hearing sheds new light on what transpired at Fashion Institute of Technology.
By
Samantha Max
News
Man messaged 'I got straight poison' before giving NYC college students fentanyl, feds say
A transcript from an April court hearing sheds new light on what transpired at Fashion Institute of Technology.
By
Samantha Max
Inside the plan to fix the nearly collapsed Pfizer Building, 1/64th of an inch at a time
By
David Brand
School bus carrying autistic students got lost in Brooklyn for 4 hours last year
By
Jessica Gould
NYC’s bridges can last 'forever,' if we take care of them
By
Clayton Guse
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .