Don’t Antagonize Those Who Could Help
Paul Butler is a law professor at Georgetown University and a former United States Department of Justice prosecutor. He is the author of "Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice.''
As a victim of racial profiling, I understand the anger it breeds. As a former prosecutor, I understand the need for effective policing. Stop and frisk is not effective.
Updated September 20, 2012, 4:56 PM
The N.Y.P.D.’s stop and frisk policy has one law enforcement benefit. It almost certainly deters many young African-American and Latino men from carrying guns on the street. This explains why the “hit” rate for stop and frisks that result in recovering guns is lower in Brownsville, Brooklyn, (0.05 percent) than in other parts of New York (0.15 percent), according to N.Y.P.D. data. In heavily policed neighborhoods like Brownsville, where the average young man is seized and searched five times a year, according to that data, you would be crazy to walk around with a firearm.
So you just give the gun to your girlfriend to carry, or you keep it at home. Gun violence in Brownsville remains among the highest in the city, and the N.Y.P.D.’s heavy-handed tactics actually may be counterproductive. Stop and frisk causes many citizens – not just the ones with guns – to hate the police. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 58 percent of whites but only 23 percent of blacks believe that police enforce the law without excess force and while treating all races equally.
To understand how the police find guns, and apprehend the criminals who use them, don’t imagine buff officers chasing bad guys down the street. Think of cops going from place to place trying to get people to talk to them. Following leads based on reliable information from ordinary citizens is the police work that solves and prevents major crimes like homicide. If a citizen thinks of the police as the rough men who humiliated her grandson by throwing him against a wall when all he was doing was walking home from school, she is not going to be eager to help them.
Stop and frisk also breeds disrespect for the law. The sociologist Tom Tyler’s research suggests that people obey laws that they consider legitimate, and that involuntary police-citizen encounters that are perceived as unfair detract from that legitimacy.
If you think the police are there to serve and protect, you are less likely to steal from a bodega, or drink in public. If, on the other hand, you think the police are out to get you, jumping the subway turnstile becomes an act of rebellion against an unjust system. Limiting use of stop and frisk would help stem lawless behavior that can encourage major crimes.
As an African-American man who has been the victim of racial profiling, I understand the corrosive anger toward the police. As a former prosecutor, I understand the necessity of effective policing in communities like Brownsville. The problem with stop and frisk is not only that it makes the citizens of New York less free, it also makes them less safe.