The Problems With NYC's Stop-and-Frisk

From letters to The New York Times:

• "there is no evidence — none — that New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy saves lives."
• "Weapons are recovered in roughly one in 1,000 stop-and-frisks in New York City. About 90 percent do not result in arrest or summons."
• "Eighty-seven percent of all people stopped are black and Latino, though they are 23 percent and 29 percent of our population, respectively."
• "Stop-and-frisk as carried out in New York breeds mistrust of law enforcement among communities of color — particularly young men, who are disproportionately targeted for stops."
• "The simple math shows that 3,200 guns were seized by means other than stop-and-frisks, four times more than were seized in street stops. By allocating police resources to inefficient stop-and-frisk tactics instead of using tactics that have higher public safety payoffs, the N.Y.P.D. is missing out on a substantial number of gun seizures."
• "The seizure rate of about one-tenth of 1 percent and the persistence of shootings show that the police are looking for guns in all the wrong places."
• "If the New York Police Department stops and frisks people to deter crime, rather than based on reasonable suspicion that the person stopped is engaged in crime, the stop-and-frisk policy is unconstitutional."

NAACP March against Stop-and-Frisk in NYC this Sunday, June 17th.