Stop and Frisk Gun Reduction Breeds Disguised Harms

© 2001, 2010 Peter Free

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A Closer Look at the Gun Problem

            Guns may be proportionately less of a crime problem than popularly believed.  Only 8 percent of the 6.3 million violent crimes of rape, sexual assault, robbery, and simple and aggravated assault in 2000 were committed with a firearm. [74]  Although 66 percent of 15,517 murders were committed with firearms, 34 percent were not.  [75]  In 1997, only 18 percent of State prison inmates and 15 percent of Federal inmates reported possessing, carrying, or using a firearm during the crime for which they were sentenced. [76]

            Without trivializing the enormous number of crimes and deaths committed with guns, law enforcement should be more cognizant of proportionality than it has been.  Stop and frisk tactics are often justified with political rhetoric that feeds public fear without legitimate foundation.  When combating any evil, it makes sense to attack the biggest part of the apple in the most economical way.  The above figures indicate that firearms are not the biggest part of the crime problem.  This is particularly so, because the majority of Americans do not yet want to come to grips with the legitimacy of firearms ownership itself.

A balancing of some kind is in order.  The cost of repressing and alienating ethic minorities in the United States far outweighs the apparently trivial and undocumented gains of stop and frisk attempts at gun reduction.  Treating any group of Americans in an unconstitutional, inhumane manner is too high a price to pay to maintain a false sense of “weaponless” order on the streets. [77] 

Conclusion

 Street level "stop and frisk," an outgrowth of aggressive order maintenance policing, has proven itself to be a harmful solution to gun violence.   The tactic puts

police officers into confrontational situations with citizens in a way in which predictably escalates the potential for violence and officially sanctioned bigotry.  Because police departments have not yet conquered the wider problems of inadequate training and supervision, abuse of authority, corruption, and racism, setting stop and frisk units loose upon disempowered segments of the public in the manner done in New York City is reprehensible.  New York Attorney General Spitzer's investigation of allegations of abuse by the New York Police Department was a step toward reform.  His action sets the desirable pattern for prosecutor’s offices everywhere.  Ultimately, the problem can only be fixed by more responsible politicians, a less racist public, and—most immediately—by law enforcement agencies who recall that their primary purpose is preserving a free and humane society under the Constitution.  "Protect and Serve" calls one to honor.

 

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