Stop and Frisk Gun Reduction Breeds Disguised Harms

© 2001, 2010 Peter Free

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Beat 144 residents expressed more neighborhood satisfaction after the experiment than did those in a comparison control beat. [21]  However, they were only marginally more likely to say the shooting problems had improved.  They were not more likely to say the overall crime problem had improved.  Their increased satisfaction appears to have come from the perception that neighborhood drug problems had improved. [22]

Some caveats should be noted.  It took 1,434 traffic and pedestrian stops to generate the seizure of 29 guns. [23]  The total of 3,186 interactions with police conceivably generated an environment in which the police presence itself caused the deterrence responsible for the reduction in gun crime.  [24]  This distinction is important.  If presence as opposed to stop and frisk intrusion is the key element, untargeted saturation patrol operating according to conventional probable cause and reasonable suspicion guidelines may contribute more to public safety with less risk of public backlash than stop and frisk tactics.  As will be seen, New York's experience reinforces this view.

The Office of the Attorney General of New York Expresses Concern

            Public concern with the impact of New York's stop and frisk tactic on minorities led the Office of the New York Attorney General (OAG) to investigate in March 1999. [25]   The OAG report begins with the observation that "effective policing and respect for individual rights are complementary.  Civil Rights without personal safety is a mirage; policing without respect for the rule of law is not policing at all."  [26]  The carefully researched document is an indictment of stop and frisk as practiced by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

            The OAG statistically analyzed 175,000 NYPD "UF-250" forms completed in 1998 and the first quarter of 1999.  Police Department policy mandates that these be completed when (a) an officer forcefully stops someone, (b) frisks or searches, (c) arrests,

or (d) stops someone who refuses to be identified. [27]  The form includes identifying data and the reasonable suspicion that led to the stop. [28]  Of the stops examined, 34 percent were made for suspected weapons possession. [29]

            The data showed that stop rates were discriminatory.  African-Americans comprised 25.6 percent of the city population, but 50.6 percent of the stops.  Hispanics, 23.7 percent of population, accounted for 33.0 percent.  Whites, 43.4 percent of the population, comprised only 12.9 percent of the stops. [30]  The police department stopped 9.5 African-Americans for every African-American arrested, 8.8 Hispanics for each Hispanic arrested, and 7.9 whites for each arrested. [31]

After statistically accounting for disparate crime rates, blacks were stopped 23 percent more often and Hispanics 39 percent more often than whites. [32]  Precincts with the highest stop rates (mostly minority) had stop rates in excess of that predicted by crime rate alone.  Precincts with the lowest stop rates (mainly white) had stop rates below the predicted rate. [33]   Significantly, African-Americans comprised 30 percent of those stopped in majority white districts where the African-American demographic representation was less than 3 percent. [34]  

The data also showed a very significant rate of unconstitutional seizures.  Only 61.1 percent of the UF-250s contained facts sufficient to provide reasonable suspicion for the stop made. [35]  Another 15.4 percent could not justify the stop, and 23.5 percent did not contain enough information to allow the reader to decide one way or the other. [36]  Totaling these latter figures means 68,000 of the reasonable suspicion stops were unconstitutionally made. [37]

Unconstitutionality Probably Underestimated

            The OAG data probably underestimates the deficient reasonable suspicion problem.  UF-250s may have been filled out for only 20 to 33 percent of actual stops made. [38]   It is likely that the more deficient the reasonable suspicion, the less likely the form was to be completed.  The general NYPD consensus was that the UF-250s were most often completed when a citizen appeared likely to complain about the officer's conduct. [39]  In that mode, self-serving statements are even more likely.

The Problem of the Police Psyche  

Police intervention carries with it costs in (a) citizen hostility to the diminution of individual freedoms and (b) violence.  These risks are aggravated by the personal nature of the profession.  Officers must tweak their resting psychic arousal to confront potentially disagreeable or dangerous people and violent or armed offenders.  Since

confrontational street situations are inherently physical, the bottom line for all officers is whether they have the body, the determination, and the physical and verbal skills with which to force another human being to do their bidding.

Consequently and contrary to public perception, police are almost always operating at a self-perceived physical [40] and psychological disadvantage.  Every officer soon learns that offenders and many citizens are much more likely to be operating at peak arousal than they are.  This means that law enforcement is inherently defensive.  NYPD observes that "the factors of danger and authority tend to make officers constantly vigilant, suspicious, and ready to assert dominant authority" when their authority is questioned in even a minor way. [41]

As a result of all this, from the officer's perspective, courts are irrelevant to whether a frisk will be done when an officer feels threatened.  Police frisk for weapons first and worry about court later.  [42]  It is the officer's life on the line, not the court's.  The sixth sense, so maligned by the judicial system, is exactly what keeps many officers unharmed.

The defensive arousal common to regular street officers is augmented among elite units who have concerns about officer safety constantly drilled into them.  This psychic priming can aggravate the hair-trigger readiness of some, particularly young, officers.  One might reasonably assume that the combination of youth and the macho allure of special units is a prescription for the predictable exercise of bad judgment in street confrontations.  The frequency of bad judgment need not be high to result in tragic, well-publicized confrontations with innocent citizens.  These incidents expand the divide between public and police.

The Illustrative Death of Amadou Diallo

            The problems presented by stop and frisk are well illustrated in the police-shooting death of an unarmed New York resident in February, 1999.  Amadou Diallo, a West African, was mistaken by SCU officers for a serial rapist.  When confronted by the four plainclothes officers, Diallo apparently made the predictably human mistake of trying to reach for his wallet.  One officer shouted, "Gun!"  The officers then fired 41 rounds and hit him 19 times. [43]  Diallo was black, unarmed, and not a rapist.

            Supervisory concerns about an incident of this sort are not confined to the guilt or innocence of the officers who did the shooting.  Administrators should consider the police department's responsibility for putting police in the situation where this sort of indefensible killing is likely to happen.  Several considerations come to mind: (a) The team was in plainclothes and potentially difficult for citizens to distinguish from thugs in their midst; (b) the unnecessary descent of four officers on one "suspect" may have escalated his emotional state into volatility; (c) police identifications of suspects described from other crimes are notoriously unreliable; (d) the team's knife-edge suspicion and sense of danger tilted them toward the use of deadly force under circumstances where the force was murderous; (e) the officers began shooting without

personally verifying the presence of a weapon; and (f) 22 rounds missed their target and potentially endangered innocent bystanders.

 

 

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