Carrillo

Anthony Carrillo
Silverberg
Writing 150
11/19/14

Stop-and-frisk
I could feel the guns been pointed at me , is what African-American David
Ourlicht said in interview telling the story of how 6 police officers told him and his
friend to get on the floor and threw what they had in their hands as the officers pointed
their weapons at them after a shooting in the neighborhood . Ourlicht said they were just
sitting and smoking cigarettes after helping his friend moving things in his new apartment
(Whitaker). These types of situations involving racial profiling is what thousands of
minorities have to face every year , especially in New York . They experienced something
called stop and frisk . That means that a police officer has the power to stop , question and
frisk suspects given reasonable circumstances (Stop and frisk) . The police did not have a
good reason or evidence to stop them . According to the law , stop and frisk should respect
the 4 th amendment , which protects a person from unreasonable searches , as well as the
14 th amendment , which prohibits the government from intentionally discriminating
against minorities (Goldstein). Although stop-and-frisk is applied to stop crime , it is a
discriminatory practice that promotes racism . A better way to prevent crime would be the
practice of focused deterrence .

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The practice of stop and frisk started in 1978 with the case of Terry v . Ohio .
Before that , frisks were arguably illegal and a police officer could only search someone
after arresting them or with a search warrant (Misner 3). The case started when Officer
McFadden noticed that two men were acting suspicious in front of a store . He watched
them do the same routine , which was looking at the stores windows , walking on a short
distance to then going back to look at the stores windows several times . McFadden said
that was in a span of about 10 minutes and that he considered it his duty as a police
officer to investigate further before something terrible happened (Terry v . Ohio 7) . He
then identified himself as a law enforcement officer and frisked them and found a
handgun . The suspects were taken into the police and charged with carrying a concealed
weapon . John Terry, one of the men arrested , claimed that McFadden lacked evidence to
perform the frisk and violated his 4 th amendment rights . The case ended up in favor of the
state of New York . The Supreme Court granted limited approval in 1968 to frisks
conducted by officers lacking probable cause for an arrest in order to search for weapons
if the officer believes the subject to be dangerous (Misner 3).
Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and now former Police Commissioner Ray
Kelly defended the practice of stop-and-frisk and claimed that it keeps guns and violence
out of the streets and that it is very necessary, otherwise there would be anarchy (Eterno) .
Bill de Blasio , the current Mayor and Bill Bratton , the new Police Commissioner of New
York are still in favor of stop and frisk but they claim they will reduce the amount of
them . Bratton says that stop and frisk is a basic policy required by the society to function

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properly. He says the reason stop and frisk is viewed in such a negative is because it was
overused and because the majority of the police officers doing the stops and frisks were
not the most trained ones and they did not have someone to monitor and supervise them
correctly and tell them when they were wrong (You Cant Police Without Stop-AndFrisk) . The police authorities keep justifying stop and frisk as a way to prevent crime
despite all the consequences that it brings to society .
Stop and frisk was accepted because it was supposed to reduce crime as well as the
number of guns . In 2012 alone , according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, the
police stopped New Yorkers 532 , 911 times . 89 percent of this people were innocent .
Only 2 percent had guns , the rest of the ones that were not innocent because of marijuana
possession . This shows how inefficient stop and frisk is and that the police need another
solution that targets high-level offenders who are the major cause of violence . On the
other aspect of the study we have that 55 percent of the people that were stopped were
Black and 32 percent Latino (Fallon) . This shows that stop and frisk could be racially
motivated because minorities are the 87 percent of the people that were stopped . Because
of being racially motivated they overlooked the statistics . The NYPD found a weapon in
one out of every 49 stops of white people . It took 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of
African Americans to find a single weapon . The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out
every 43 stops of white New Yorkers and it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and
61 stops of African Americans to find contraband (Shen) .

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The use of the stop-and-frisk tactic has damaged some communities trust in
police so badly that many young people would not report violent crimes anymore . A
survey done by The Vera Institute of Justice of 500 men and women from highly
patrolled areas of New York City neighborhoods: Jamaica in Queens , East Harlem ,
Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York in Brooklyn , and the South Bronx . The very
detailed survey showed that the police threatened forty-five percent of them and forty-six
percent said they experienced physical force at the hands of an officer . Twenty-five
percent said they had been involved in a stop in which a cop has drawn a weapon .
Something very alarming is that 44 percent were stopped repeatedly by police officers , at
least nine times (Huffington) . There are several consequences to stop-and-frisk done
wrong . The police are losing supporters and people that do not trust in the police will try
to make justice with their own hands if they are involved in some sort of a violent
situation . This could lead to more violence and more danger to the community . Alvin , a
Latino man whose name remains unknown for his safety , is a clear example of why
minorities live with fear of the police . He explains in a video how he was stopped and
frisked on the same day by police officers and how aggressive they were when doing it .
One of the cops said he would punch him in the face and break his arm when Alvin asked
why he was being stopped again . He had an audio recording of what happened and he
included that in the video . After listening to something like this I am not surprised of
how minorities have negative the opinions are towards law enforcement .

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Some cops decided to speak up and shed some light on what really happens inside
the police headquarters in the same video Alvin appeared . Adhyl Polanco , a veteran of
the NYPD testified that he had to log at least five stop-and-frisks , make one arrest and
write 20 tickets each month . Bronx Police Officer Pedro Serrano said that he would get
punished for not meeting the quotas and get forced to do overtime and get yelled at , get
low evaluations and get denied when he asked for days off . Julio Valentn , another
retired NYPD officer , explains that it is a numbers game and that you need to match your
numbers from last year in order to not get penalized (The Hunted and the Hated). The
quotas encourage police officers to stop people to fill the numbers and this shows how
corrupted the people that are supposed to protect us are .
Although I acknowledge that stop and frisk was created to protect people from
violence , it is a discriminatory practice because of the bad use of it by some police
officers that abuse with their power as well as others that follow orders from high ranked
officers that only want stops and frisks written on paper . One alternative to stop and frisk
that is very promising is focused deterrence . Focused deterrence is comprised of law
enforcement , service and community partners who reject violence in clear and direct
ways (Engel) . The law enforcement agencies start the process by elaborating a plan
consisting in consequences to the ones who engage in violence . This plan would consist
in using everything the law enforcement can do if another violent incident happens . To
respond to these selected violent groups the law enforcement and the community
members need to prioritize violence and share information as well as having different

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ways to approach different scenarios . First , the targeted offenders are notified that
violence will not be tolerated via meetings or forums . The police officers explain to them
that if a member of their group commits a homicide , the whole group will be priority of
law enforcement . After that , they are offered a way out of the violent lifestyle in the form
of different kinds of jobs . Lastly, selected people of the community create awareness
within the community and strive to deliver a clear message of non-violence as well as
rejecting everything street norm that could lead to it (ENGEL) .
The Operation Ceasefire is a clear example of how focused deterrence works . In
1995 , Boston police had a crisis consisting in a big amount of youth homicides . They
decided to use focused deterrence to avoid that from happening . As previously stated ,
they interacted with a selected group of offenders; normally young gang members and
used levers to convince them to stop the violence . The "levers" were the youths'
vulnerabilities to a wide range of penalties, from deportation, to going to prison for parole
violations, to receiving a sentence for 10 years without parole in a federal penitentiary (Gun
Violence Programs: Operation Ceasefire). This resulted in a decrease of 68 percent of firearm
violence in one year.
This is one great alternative to stop and frisk and it would be a way to decrease
discrimination towards the members of society. It would help to recover the opinion people have
when they think about the police and maybe the law enforcement would regain the confidence
people once had. Focused deterrence can be applied to several aspects of violence or different
types of crimes such as drug markets, domestic violence and robberies. The principle is the

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same, targeting the offenders and the law enforcement working with the community for the
greater good. Although discrimination and racially motivated acts are not going away
soon , this would be a good way to start moving the country towards a more unified
entity.

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Works Cited
"Bill Bratton: You Cant Police Without Stop-And-Frisk." Here Now RSS. 25 Feb. 2014.
Web. 5 Dec. 2014. <http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/02/25/bill-bratton-nypd>.
Engel, RS, MS Tillyer, and N. Corsaro. "Reducing Gang Violence using Focused Deterrence:
Evaluating the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV)." Justice Quarterly
30.3 (2013): 403-39.
Eterno, John, and Eli Silverman. "Mike Bloomberg's Fact-free Defence of Stop-andfrisk." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 11 Sept. 2013. Web. 5 Dec.
2014. <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/11/stop -and-friskmichael-bloomberg>.
Goldstein, Joseph. "Court Blocks Stop-and-Frisk Changes for New York Police." The
New York Times. The New York Times, 31 Oct. 2013. Web. 5 Dec. 2014.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/nyregion/court-blocks-stop-and-friskchanges-for-new-york-police.html?pagewanted=all>.
"Gun Violence Programs: Operation Ceasefire." National Institute of Justice. 25 June 2008.
Web. 5 Dec. 2014. <http://nij.gov/topics/crime/gunviolence/prevention/pages/ceasefire.aspx>.
Misner, Robert L. "The New Attempt Laws: Unsuspected Threat to the Fourth
Amendment." Stanford law review 33.2 (1981): 201-30.
SHEN, AVIVA. "White People Stopped By New York Police Are More Likely To Have Guns
Or Drugs Than Minorities." ThinkProgress RSS. 22 May 2013. Web. 5 Dec. 2014.
<http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/22/2046451/white-people-stopped-by-newyork-police-are-more-likely-to-have-guns-or-drugs-than-minorities/>.
"Stop and Frisk." LII / Legal Information Institute. Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stop_and_frisk>.
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968).

"Terry v. Ohio 392 U.S. 1 (1968)." Justia Law. Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
<https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/392/1/case.html>.

The Nation. "The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD's Stop-and-Frisk
Policy." YouTube. YouTube, 09 Oct. 2012. Web. 05 Dec. 2014.

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Whitaker, Morgan. "Stop-and-frisk Victim: 'I Could Feel the Guns Being Pointed at Me'"
Msnbc.com. NBC News Digital, 2 Oct. 2013. Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
<http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/stop-and-frisk-victim-i-could-feel-theguns>.