NYPD Stop-And-Frisks Drop, But 87 Percent Stopped Were Black Or Latino

In the first nine months of 2012, the NYPD stopped almost 400,000 New Yorkers in its aggressive stop-and-frisk program, or 1,400 every day. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, this number actually represents a 30 percent drop compared to 2011, though police continue to disproportionately target minorities with equally poor results:

The latest stop-and-frisk report shows that the NYPD stopped and interrogated New Yorkers 105,988 times between July 1 and Sept. 30. About 84 percent of those encounters did not result in arrests or tickets. About 87 percent of those stopped were black or Latino. Whites were around 10 percent of people stopped.

NYPD uses vague criteria, often stopping people for displaying “furtive movement,”and overwhelmingly targets young black and Latino men. For example, although they account for 4.7 percent of NYC’s population, young black and Latino men accounted for 41.6 percent of the stops in 2011. And the program has failed to get guns off the streets. Homicides have dropped 20.5 percent to a record low, but police rarely find a gun.

NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program has a 90 percent failure rate, says NYCLU’s Donna Lieberman. “The drop in stop-and-frisks coupled with the drop in gun violence contradicts the NYPD’s narrative that stopping and frisking every person of color in sight is necessary to reduce crime in New York City,” she said.