Federal Judge Rules NYC "Stop and Frisk" Violated Rights

In a mixed ruling for Fourth Amendment rights, a federal judge today ruled that NYC's Stop-and-Frisk program violated constitutional rights due to disproportionately targeting minorities. However, despite the program being unconstitutional in its current form, it will not stop. From the New York Times: " Judge Scheindlin also ordered a number of other remedies, including a pilot program in which officers in at least five precincts across the city will wear body-worn cameras in an effort to record street encounters. She also ordered a 'joint remedial process' — in essence, a series of community meetings — to solicit public input on how to reform stop-and-frisk. ... The Supreme Court had long ago ruled that stop-and-frisks were constitutionally permissible under certain conditions, and Judge Scheindlin stressed that she was 'not ordering an end to the practice.' But she said that changes were needed to ensure that the street stops were carried out in a manner that “protects the rights and liberties of all New Yorkers, while still providing much needed police protection.' ... The judge found that the New York police were too quick to deem as suspicious behavior that was perfectly innocent, in effect watering down the legal standard required for a stop. " The ruling itself (PDF). Bloomberg is furious about the decision, and the city, naturally, intends to appeal.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

"During police stops, she found, blacks and Hispanics "were more likely to be subjected to the use of force than whites, despite the fact that whites are more likely to be found with weapons or contraband."

So is it racist? Blacks and Hispanics are subject to more force, despite being less likely to carry arms/contraband. So shouldn't white people be the ones being stopped an frisked more than anyone else?

Re:I don't understand

[BlueStrat]

I've always wondered how something can be racist if it is true.

Because complaints of "racism" is now how you stop people from telling the truth.

13% of the U.S. population is black but they commit 50% of all murders and 55% of all robberies. But that's just the national average. In some areas it's much worse. In Chicago for example, blacks and hispanics combined are responsible for 96% of all murders. In St. Paul, Minnesota the population is 13% black but they are responsible for 70% of all crimes.

And so on, and so on . . . . . . .

When minorities stop committing a disproportionate amount of crime the police will leave them alone.

1. Blacks commit violent crimes four to eight times the white rate. Hispanic commit violent crimes at approximately three times the white rate, and Asians at one half to three quarters the white rate.

2. Blacks are as much more violent than whites (four to eight times) as men are more violent than women.

3. Of the approximately 1,700,000 interracial crimes of violence involving blacks and whites, 90 percent are committed by blacks against whites. Blacks are 50 times more likely than whites to commit individual acts of interracial violence. They are up to 250 times more likely than whites to engage in multiple-offender or group interracial violence.

4. There is more black-on-white than black-on-black violent crime. Fifty-six percent of violent crimes committed by blacks have white victims. Only two to three percent of violent crimes committed by whites have black victims.

5. Blacks are twice as likely to commit hate crimes.

*Sources

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Victimization

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics
----

An "inconvenient truth"?

Strat

Re: I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

So I wondered what the actual statistics where the other day and here's the lose results of what I found, it took all of like 5 minutes of googling to find it, so basically anyone with a strong opinion on the subject against it is being intellectually dishonest.

BUT!
Firstly, the density and locations of stop and frisk (properly termed terry frisks after ohio v terry, a SCOTUS case that made this legal) fairly accurately map NYCs violent crime locations, particularly their homicides. The same places you're most likely to be terry frisked are also the places where you're most likely to be shot (as guns account for the majority of homicides there). Moreover, statistically speaking, sans grand larceny where the victim is most likely to be white, if you're a victim of basically any crime in NYC, you're probably black, or potentially hispanic. This holds especially true with homicide et cetera, with greater than 50% of the victims being black IIRC. Furthermore, if you're the victim of such a crime, your attacker is generally black.. or hispanic. With blacks making up 61% of the perpetrators of homicides from 2003 to 2011.

  So, stop and frisk occurs largely where the crimes, particularly homicides occur. The target and the perpetrator are statistically black or hispanic. So yes, if you don't consider what legitimate purposes the police might have, it could seem racist. However, once you look at the data, you're pretty much forced to recognize why they seem 'targeted'

Left is crime rates, darker is more crime. Right is stop and frisk data, notice the correlation:
http://i.imgur.com/Dztosey.jpg

The same thing, but looking up towards harlem and the upper east side and such, where we see again the pattern of violent crime and incidence of stop and frisk occurs:
http://i.imgur.com/nJ6K7z9.png

Here we have murders plotted out 2003-2011 in NYC by race, blue dots are black perpetrators and gold are hispanic. Again cross-reference this with the stop and frisk data and you'll find the pattern again holds:
http://i.imgur.com/lpaYmPU.png

That isnt to say that NYPD isn't biased however, its just not against blacks and hispanics, its against gays. We find that the terry stop data when cross-referenced shows pretty clearly that the places with high volumes of violent crimes, particularly homicides, have high terry stop counts as well, UNLESS you're in an area that also shares a high volume of homosexuality, then the volume of stop and frisks drops:
http://i.imgur.com/gqmDI3m.png

So yeah, reality shows a pretty objective picture, its just that people dont want the truth, they want to show that cops and the government are racist institutions as justifications for doing whatever it is people want to do.

Re:It is about maintaining fear

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop and frisk indeed has one aim: to reduce crime in areas historically high in violent crime. Unlike your innuendo and speculation, I come with facts.

Firstly, the density and locations of stop and frisk (properly termed terry frisks after ohio v terry, a SCOTUS case that made this legal) fairly accurately map NYCs violent crime locations, particularly their homicides. The same places you're most likely to be terry frisked are also the places where you're most likely to be shot (as guns account for the majority of homicides there). Moreover, statistically speaking, sans grand larceny where the victim is most likely to be white, if you're a victim of basically any crime in NYC, you're probably black, or potentially hispanic. This holds especially true with homicide et cetera, with greater than 50% of the victims being black IIRC. Furthermore, if you're the victim of such a crime, your attacker is generally black.. or hispanic. With blacks making up 61% of the perpetrators of homicides from 2003 to 2011.

    So, stop and frisk occurs largely where the crimes, particularly homicides occur. The target and the perpetrator are statistically black or hispanic. So yes, if you don't consider what legitimate purposes the police might have, it could seem racist. However, once you look at the data, you're pretty much forced to recognize why they seem 'targeted'

Left is crime rates, darker is more crime. Right is stop and frisk data, notice the correlation:
http://i.imgur.com/Dztosey.jpg

The same thing, but looking up towards harlem and the upper east side and such, where we see again the pattern of violent crime and incidence of stop and frisk occurs:
http://i.imgur.com/nJ6K7z9.png

Here we have murders plotted out 2003-2011 in NYC by race, blue dots are black perpetrators and gold are hispanic. Again cross-reference this with the stop and frisk data and you'll find the pattern again holds:
http://i.imgur.com/lpaYmPU.png

That isnt to say that NYPD isn't biased however, its just not against blacks and hispanics, its against gays. We find that the terry stop data when cross-referenced shows pretty clearly that the places with high volumes of violent crimes, particularly homicides, have high terry stop counts as well, UNLESS you're in an area that also shares a high volume of homosexuality, then the volume of stop and frisks drops:
http://i.imgur.com/gqmDI3m.png

So, now that a tyrannous government and racism is obviously not the case, who are you going to blame?

Re:What's really sad

[__aaltlg1547]

Read the opinion, not the press release. Section B concerns the 4th Amendment and states that stops must be based on reasonable suspicion. Section C concerns the fact that race was substituted for reasonable suspicion.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

What happen to those statistics when you change black and white to poor and well off? How about the density of poor black people near wealthy white people? Also, how about listing links to the statistics you offer? I did a cursory search for the stats that you claim, and basically you are completely full of it:
You: "Blacks are twice as likely to commit hate crimes"
Fact: "Whites are more than twice as likely to commit hate crimes"

See link:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2011/narratives/offenders
"In 2011, the races of the 5,731 known hate crime offenders were as follows:

59.0 percent were white.
20.9 percent were black."

You: "Blacks commit violent crimes four to eight times the white rate."
Fact: "White individuals were arrested more often for violent crimes than individuals of any other race, accounting for 59.4 percent of those arrests."
See link:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-43

Basically you are a racist who is making up statistics. If you are racist, well there's nothing I can do about it, but don't spread lies to try to make others racist.

Re: I don't understand

[TubeSteak]

So yeah, reality shows a pretty objective picture, its just that people dont want the truth, they want to show that cops and the government are racist institutions as justifications for doing whatever it is people want to do.

Either you haven't looked very hard for data, or you've done an interesting job cherry picking information to reflect the reality you want to portray.
Here's the results of what I found, it took all of like 5 minutes of googling to find it, so basically anyone with a strong opinion on the subject supporting the NY Police is being intellectually dishonest.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/22/2046451/white-people-stopped-by-new-york-police-are-more-likely-to-have-guns-or-drugs-than-minorities/ [thinkprogress.org]

• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded a weapon was half that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.
• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out every 43 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and 61 stops of African Americans to find contraband.

It's unlikely that the appropriate lesson to take from these findings is that stops of white people should increase because they are more likely to carry weapons and drugs. Rather, they suggest that police are excessively targeting minorities. Officers may be netting more successful stops of white New Yorkers because they are only likely to stop a white person when they actually suspect that person of committing a crime

89% of stops result in no action.
That's hundreds of thousands of people who are harassed by the NYPD for no reason other than being young and not-white.

Judge says your argument is a logical fallacy

[Camael]

And I think the Judge was right. If you read the Judgment, your argument is the same one the NYC police made.

Right at the start, the Judge said that even if racial profiling is effective at combating crime, being unconstitutional it cannot be used :-

I emphasize at the outset, as I have throughout the litigation, that this case is not about the effectiveness of stop and frisk in deterring or combating crime. This Court’s mandate is solely to judge the constitutionality of police behavior, not its effectiveness as a law enforcement tool. Many police practices may be useful for fighting crime — preventive detention or coerced confessions, for example — but because they are unconstitutional they cannot be used, no matter how effective.

The Judge also found as a fact that the stops were not effective. The uncontested facts are :-

Between January 2004 and June 2012, the NYPD conducted over 4.4 million Terry stops.

In 98.5% of the 2.3 million stops where frisks for weapons were conducted, no weapon was found.

88% of the 4.4 million stops resulted in no further law enforcement action.

In 52% of the 4.4 million stops, the person stopped was black, in 31% the person was Hispanic, and in 10% the person was white. In 2010, New York City’s resident population was roughly 23% black, 29% Hispanic, and 33% white.

Weapons were seized in 1.0% of the stops of blacks, 1.1% of the stops of Hispanics, and 1.4% of the stops of whites.

Contraband other than weapons was seized in 1.8% of the stops of blacks, 1.7% of the stops of Hispanics, and 2.3% of the stops of whites.

The key point to note is that although whites were stopped with much less frequency than blacks or Hispanics, the percentage of them found to be carrying weapons or contraband were higher compared to blacks or Hispanics. So you can't even make the argument that black or Hispanics ought to be stopped more than whites because they were more likely to carry weapons or contraband, because this is untrue.

The Judge also disagreed that it was fair to look at crime rates :-

The City and its highest officials believe that blacks and Hispanics should be stopped at the same rate as their proportion of the local criminal suspect population. But this reasoning is flawed because the stopped population is overwhelmingly innocent — not criminal. There is no basis for assuming that an innocent population shares the same characteristics as the criminal suspect population in the same area.

To put it in simple terms, if you happen to be black or Hispanic and have been clean all your life, you wouldn't like it if you were stopped simply because you are black or Hispanic.

My gut reaction was originally the same as you, but having read the judgment in more detail I cannot say that the decision was wrong or unjust. I hope Bloomberg will at least read the same judgment.

 

Re:You need to interpret figures based on context

[nbauman]

Read the memorandum in the case.

Many of those stops were on Broadway. I've walked down those very same streets many times. I'm white and I've never been stopped, even when I was walking home late at night. Black guys get stopped.

The thing that impressed me about their testimony is that they sound like really cool guys. They're black law students, medical students, teachers, social workers, etc. They're getting hassled by cops all the time, they're tired of it, and they're responding in reasonable ways. The cops are unreasonably arbitrary and rude, and according to the judge's decision, the cops repeatedly broke the law. These guys filed protests with the police department, complained to the ACLU, and finally took the cops to court. They've got balls. They're complaining that they're being singled out all the time because they're black, and if you read the court documents, they made a pretty good argument.

DAVID FLOYD, et al. vs. THE CITY OF NEW YORK,
David Floyd, et al. vs. The City of New York.

OPINION AND ORDER
08 Civ. 1034 (SAS)
Case 1:08-cv-01034-SAS-HBP Document 373
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/12/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-decision.html [nytimes.com]
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/750446/stop-and-frisk-memoranda.pdf [documentcloud.org]

Re:You need to interpret figures based on context

[nbauman]

This is from the memorandum in the case. There are many other accounts like this.

DAVID FLOYD, et al. vs. THE CITY OF NEW YORK,
David Floyd, et al. vs. The City of New York.

OPINION AND ORDER
08 Civ. 1034 (SAS)
Case 1:08-cv-01034-SAS-HBP Document 373
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/12/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-decision.html [nytimes.com]
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/750446/stop-and-frisk-memoranda.pdf [documentcloud.org]

1. Unconstitutional Stop and Frisk

a. Leroy Downs

i. Findings of Fact

Leroy Downs is a black male resident of Staten Island in his mid-thirties. On the evening of August 20, 2008, Downs arrived home from work and, before entering his house, called a friend on his cell phone while standing in front of a chain link fence in front of his house. Downs used an earpiece connected to the phone by a cord, and held the cell phone in one hand and the black mouthpiece on the cord in the other.

Downs saw a black Crown Victoria drive past and recognized it as an unmarked police car. The car stopped, reversed, and double-parked in front of Downs’s house, at which point Downs told his friend he would call back. Two white plainclothes officers, later identified as Officers Scott Giacona and James Mahoney, left the car and approached Downs.

One officer said in an aggressive tone that it looked like Downs was smoking weed. They told him to “get the [fuck] against the fence,” then pushed him backwards until his back was against the fence. Downs did not feel free to leave.

Downs explained that he was talking on his cell phone, not smoking marijuana, that he is a drug counselor, and that he knows the captain of the 120th Precinct. Without asking permission, the officers patted down the outside of his clothing around his legs and torso, reached into his front and back pants pockets and removed their contents: a wallet, keys, and a bag of cookies from a vending machine. The officers also searched his wallet.

After the officers failed to find any contraband, they started walking back to the car. Downs asked for their badge numbers. The officers “laughed [him] off” and said he was lucky they did not lock him up. Downs said he was going to file a complaint, and one of them responded by saying, “I’m just doing my [fucking] job.” Charles Joseph, a friend of Downs who lives on the same block, witnessed the end of the stop. After the officers drove away, Downs walked to the 120th Precinct to file a complaint.

Downs told Officer Anthony Moon at the front desk that he wanted to make a complaint and described what had happened. Officer Moon said that he could not take the complaint because Downs did not have the officers’ badge numbers, and that Downs should file a complaint with the CCRB. As Downs left the station he saw the two officers who stopped him driving out of the precinct in their Crown Victoria, and he wrote down its license plate number on his hand.

Downs then returned to the station. He tried to give Officer Moon the license plate information, but Officer Moon said that he should give the information to the CCRB instead. Downs waited at the station until he saw the two officers come through the back door with two young black male suspects.

Downs pointed out the two officers to Officer Moon and asked him, “Can you get their badge numbers?” Officer Moon talked to the officers and then told Downs “maybe you can ask them.” At that point, Downs went outside again and took a picture of the license plate on the Crown Victoria, which was the same number he had written on his hand.

Eventually, Downs spoke with a supervisor, who said he would try to get the officers’ badge numbers and then call Downs. The call never came. Having spent a few hours at the station, Downs went home.

Re:What's really sad

[delt0r]

Not to defend the US. But exactly the same thing happens here in Switzerland. Often at night i see cops just pull up and ask for ID and give them a search. White people are ignored.