Stops, Frisks and the Truth

Editorial

Stops, frisks and the truth

For too much of New York’s political and judicial leadership, numbers are all that matter in passing unfounded judgment on the NYPD’s stopping, questioning and sometimes frisking people deemed suspicious.

The statistical indictment goes as follows:

Police made 685,000 stops last year compared with 161,000 in 2003 — therefore, the cops must be abusing their authority. More than half the people stopped were black, while African-Americans make up only 23% of the population — therefore, the NYPD is unconstitutionally victimizing blacks on the basis of race.

Those conclusions run counter to strong evidence that the NYPD actually applies the stop-and-question tactic with professional restraint.

The U.S. Supreme Court has established that police may briefly stop people for questioning when the cops have a reasonable suspicion that criminality is afoot. Across the country, officers apply this authority every day after reaching experience-based assessments of a situation.

Rather than wait to respond to a shooting, they intervene when it seems likely someone is carrying an illegal weapon. Sensibly, major police departments have adopted the strategy.

Here in New York, the program has been a key factor in suppressing crime. The city’s murder rate — 6.5 killings per 100,000 people — is the lowest among the country’s five largest cities.

It’s less than half the rates in Chicago (16 per 100,000) and Houston (12.5 per 100,000), and less than one-third the rate in Philadelphia (21.2 per 100,000). The big city that comes closest to New York is Los Angeles, at a rate of 7.7 per 100,000.

Three of the four cities that follow New York as America’s largest reported using organized stop-and-question strategies, Houston being the exception. Their stop rates — far higher than New York’s or comparable — undermine the impression created by stop-and-question opponents that the department has run out of control.

Last year, cops made 139 stops for every 1,000 people in Chicago and 132 for every 1,000 people in Philadelphia. The NYPD rate was almost 40% lower: 83 stops per 1,000 people. Los Angeles last posted data for 2008. Those figures showed a stop rate of 64 per 1,000 people, while the NYPD’s rate that year was 66.

Those figures show that at 685,000, New York’s count seems large only because the city is so large.

By virtue of purely rational policing, the NYPD makes stops unevenly from one community to the next. Areas with the highest rates also have the most crime. They are places where protection is needed most, where police are likeliest to encounter suspicious behavior and residents have benefited most from the NYPD’s success. They also happen to be poor and minority neighborhoods.

In deciding to make a stop, police may consider factors ranging from whether a person matches the description of a reported perpetrator to whether the individual is in a high-crime area and appears to be carrying a weapon. If an officer then has good reason to believe his or her life could be in jeopardy, he or she may frisk the suspect.

How far an officer can permissibly go depends on the circumstances as they appear in the expert view of a trained officer. Playing a numbers game with the stops — particularly a racially based one — is harmful because the calculations dismiss as meaningless the tough judgments cops must make under life-and-death circumstances.

Those who follow the numbers on a leap toward a destructive conclusion include Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who aspires to be mayor; New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, who’ll be pivotal is setting the boundaries of the stop-and-question program , and Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin, who misguidedly granted class-action status to a suit against the NYPD .

Scheindlin has, for example, gone far beyond fairly judging whether police were justified in making individual stops. One sentence in her decision revealed the heart of her thinking. She wrote: “This case presents an issue of great public concern: the disproportionate number of blacks and Latinos, as compared to whites, who become entangled in the criminal justice system.”

Since the likes of Scheindlin, Lippman and de Blasio are obsessed by the statistics, as opposed to the realities of street policing, the question they need to answer is: How many would be okay? Would they be satisfied if the NYPD cut the number in half? Or would only zero be sufficient? And what then of a different number that will surely rise — the body count?

For too much of New York’s political and judicial leadership, numbers are all that matter in passing unfounded judgment on the NYPD’s stopping, questioning and sometimes frisking people deemed suspicious.

The statistical indictment goes as follows:

Police made 685,000 stops last year compared with 161,000 in 2003 — therefore, the cops must be abusing their authority. More than half the people stopped were black, while African-Americans make up only 23% of the population — therefore, the NYPD is unconstitutionally victimizing blacks on the basis of race.

Those conclusions run counter to strong evidence that the NYPD actually applies the stop-and-question tactic with professional restraint.

The U.S. Supreme Court has established that police may briefly stop people for questioning when the cops have a reasonable suspicion that criminality is afoot. Across the country, officers apply this authority every day after reaching experience-based assessments of a situation.

Rather than wait to respond to a shooting, they intervene when it seems likely someone is carrying an illegal weapon. Sensibly, major police departments have adopted the strategy.

Here in New York, the program has been a key factor in suppressing crime. The city’s murder rate — 6.5 killings per 100,000 people — is the lowest among the country’s five largest cities.

It’s less than half the rates in Chicago (16 per 100,000) and Houston (12.5 per 100,000), and less than one-third the rate in Philadelphia (21.2 per 100,000). The big city that comes closest to New York is Los Angeles, at a rate of 7.7 per 100,000.

Three of the four cities that follow New York as America’s largest reported using organized stop-and-question strategies, Houston being the exception. Their stop rates — far higher than New York’s or comparable — undermine the impression created by stop-and-question opponents that the department has run out of control.

Last year, cops made 139 stops for every 1,000 people in Chicago and 132 for every 1,000 people in Philadelphia. The NYPD rate was almost 40% lower: 83 stops per 1,000 people. Los Angeles last posted data for 2008. Those figures showed a stop rate of 64 per 1,000 people, while the NYPD’s rate that year was 66.

Those figures show that at 685,000, New York’s count seems large only because the city is so large.

By virtue of purely rational policing, the NYPD makes stops unevenly from one community to the next. Areas with the highest rates also have the most crime. They are places where protection is needed most, where police are likeliest to encounter suspicious behavior and residents have benefited most from the NYPD’s success. They also happen to be poor and minority neighborhoods.

In deciding to make a stop, police may consider factors ranging from whether a person matches the description of a reported perpetrator to whether the individual is in a high-crime area and appears to be carrying a weapon. If an officer then has good reason to believe his or her life could be in jeopardy, he or she may frisk the suspect.

How far an officer can permissibly go depends on the circumstances as they appear in the expert view of a trained officer. Playing a numbers game with the stops — particularly a racially based one — is harmful because the calculations dismiss as meaningless the tough judgments cops must make under life-and-death circumstances.

Those who follow the numbers on a leap toward a destructive conclusion include Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who aspires to be mayor; New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, who’ll be pivotal is setting the boundaries of the stop-and-question program , and Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin, who misguidedly granted class-action status to a suit against the NYPD .

Scheindlin has, for example, gone far beyond fairly judging whether police were justified in making individual stops. One sentence in her decision revealed the heart of her thinking. She wrote: “This case presents an issue of great public concern: the disproportionate number of blacks and Latinos, as compared to whites, who become entangled in the criminal justice system.”

Since the likes of Scheindlin, Lippman and de Blasio are obsessed by the statistics, as opposed to the realities of street policing, the question they need to answer is: How many would be okay? Would they be satisfied if the NYPD cut the number in half? Or would only zero be sufficient? And what then of a different number that will surely rise — the body count?