ABSTRACT
The New York Police Department’s (NYPD’s) “stop-and-frisk” program was so massive that the number of recorded stops of young black men in 2011 exceeded the total number of such residents. Only 1.5% of the 2.3 million frisks conducted from 2004 to 2012 discovered illegal weapons. However, crime decreased during these years: 2,245 murders took place in 1990 and only 333 in 2014. Moreover, young black and Latino men commit over 90% of the shootings in New York City and constitute more than 90% of shooting victims. Was there a correlation between stop-and-frisk and the decline in shootings? Did the ends justify the means? Since socio-economic factors in the outer boroughs remained remarkably stable during this time period and the incarceration rate declined, police reforms apparently explain the improved crime figures. Beginning in 1994, under the leadership of William Bratton and Jack Maple, pivotal reforms were instituted. Sting operations and random drug testing were dramatically increased to nab corrupt cops, an emphasis was placed on getting guns off the streets, and the now famous Compstat system was instituted. The police also implemented a “pretext”-based crime approach in which the perpetrators of petty crime, such as turnstile jumpers, were arrested and frisked for weapons. This approach was initially non-controversial and quite successful. Crime immediately began declining and criminals were discouraged from carrying weapons. However, the unrelenting pressure to improve on the previous year’s crime figures resulted in rigorous enforcement of increasingly petty violations in “high-crime” neighborhoods while ignoring the same behavior elsewhere. For example, between 2008 and 2011, officers issued an average of eight bike-on-the-sidewalk summonses per year in Park Slope, but 2,050 in Bedford-Stuyvesant. In one poor neighborhood, young black men were stopped, on average, eight times a year. One of the most common justifications for stops was potential “trespassing” when residents failed to use a key to unlock the already open front doors of their apartment buildings.
