NEW YORK: “The New York Civil Liberties Union released Wednesday an analysis of new New York Police Department’s data that provides the first detailed picture of the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program throughout the totality of the Bloomberg administration, including new insights on the program’s stark racial disparities and its ineffectiveness in recovering illegal firearms,” according to the report.
“The NYCLU also released an analysis of 2013 stop-and-frisk data which shows the program last year had a gun recovery rate of only .02 percent and still overwhelmingly targeted young black and Latino men,” the report also stated.
Here are some of the report’s findings and conclusions:
- The 191,851 stops in 2013 (a decrease of 64 percent from 2012 and 72 percent from 2011) were spread unevenly amongst the city’s 77 precincts, with the 73rd Precinct (Brownsville) leading the city with 8,001 stops. Setting aside the Central Park Precinct, the 94th Precinct (Greenpoint) had the fewest stops at 486.
- In 72 out of 77 precincts, black and Latino New Yorkers accounted for more than 50 percent of stops, and in 34 precincts they accounted for more than 90 percent of stops. In six of the 10 precincts with the lowest black and Latino populations (such as the 6th Precinct in Greenwich Village), blacks and Latinos accounted for more than 70 percent of stops.
- Young black and Latino men were the targets of a hugely disproportionate number of stops. Though they account for only 4.7 percent of the city’s population, black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24 accounted for 38.6 percent of stops in 2013. Nearly 90 percent of young black and Latino men stopped were innocent.
- Though frisks are to be conducted only when an officer reasonably suspects the person has a weapon that might endanger officer safety, 58.2 percent of those stopped were frisked. Of those frisked, a weapon was found only 3.2 percent of the time.
- Frisks varied enormously by precinct, with officers in the 44th Precinct in the Bronx frisking people 84.3 percent of the time, compared to a low of officers frisking people 29 percent of the time in the 20th Precinct on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
- Black and Latino New Yorkers were more likely to be frisked than white New Yorkers and, among those frisked, were less likely to be found with a weapon.
- In 2013 the NYPD recovered a gun in only one out of about every 500 stops, a gun recovery rate of 0.02 percent.
Conservative pundits and groups along with then New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have argued that stop and frisk is a necessary police tool to keep the crime rate down.
Others including community activists and civil rights leaders maintain that stop and frisk is unconstitutional, disporportionately targeting blacks and Hispanics.
To Read the Entire Report: NYCLU Report