https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/ending-new-yorks-stop-and-frisk-did-not-increase-crime
[links and images in on-line article]
Ending New York’s Stop-and-Frisk Did Not Increase Crime
James Cullen
April 11, 2016
Despite what many may claim, the United States is not in the midst of a
nationwide crime wave. In fact, the average American can still enjoy
some of the safest times on record. This is especially true in our
largest city, New York, which also used to be one of our most dangerous.
Given that history, it’s not surprising that New Yorkers carefully watch
for any sign of an increase in crime, even while our city tops the list
of safe large cities.
Most recently, journalists pointed to an increase in murder as renewed
cause for concern in the Big Apple. Commentators are saying the uptick
is only the beginning, in part because the city has wound down its
controversial “stop-and-frisk” program, in which police stopped and
searched citizens, allegedly without cause.
With stop-and-frisk now several years past, it’s an opportune time to
evaluate that claim. The program’s end, it turns out, did not herald the
start of a new citywide crime wave.
Stop-and-frisk became a central issue in the 2013 mayoral race because
of a concern that the program unconstitutionally targeted communities of
color. The program’s supporters disputed this, insisting that
stop-and-frisk was essential for fighting crime in such a huge city.
Bill de Blasio, who won that 2013 mayoral election, campaigned on a
promise to end stop-and-frisk. But, the courts nearly beat him to it. In
August 2013, federal district court judge Shira Scheindlin found that
stop-and-frisk had become a “policy of indirect racial profiling” and
that the police had searched innocent people without any objective
reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and
Raymond Kelly, the city’s police commissioner at the time, championed
the program as a critical component of reducing murders and major crimes
to historic lows. Bloomberg even sought to appeal Judge Scheindlin’s
order, winning a temporary reprieve from the appeals court, and vowed to
continue stop-and-frisk through the remaining four months of his term.
“I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a lot of people dying,” Bloomberg
said at the time.
The stop-and-frisk era formally drew to a close in January 2014, when
newly-elected Mayor de Blasio settled the litigation and ended the program.
In the years leading up to the program’s official end, stops had already
begun to plummet, leading article after article to claim that a jump in
crime was just around the corner. All of the hard work of previous
mayors and police chiefs could be undone, some said.
This alarm turned out to be both premature and incorrect, and data from
the history of the program indicates this shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
After growing slowly in the early 2000s, stop-and-frisk began to rapidly
increase in 2006, when there were 500,000 stops citywide. By 2011 the
number peaked at 685,000. It then began to fall, first to 533,000 stops
in 2012.
Given this large scale effort, one might expect crime generally, and
murder specifically, to increase as stops tapered off between 2012 and
2014. Instead, as shown in Figure 1, the number of murders fell while
the number of stops declined. Murder also continued to drop after as
stop-and-frisk wound down from its 2011 peak. In fact, the biggest fall
in murder rates occurred precisely when the number of stops also fell by
a large amount — in 2013.
Figure 2 shows that crime in general also fell, both while the number of
stops increased and fell. Crime continued to decline as the program
wound to its 2014 close.
Statistically, no relationship between stop-and-frisk and crime seems
apparent. New York remains safer than it was 5, 10, or 25 years ago. As
analysis by the Brennan Center has shown, a part of this was the
introduction of CompStat, which allowed police to consult data when
making decisions about where and how to respond to crime.
Listening to the data has made New Yorkers safer, and it’s important to
listen again. It says loud and clear: ending stop-and-frisk didn’t cause
a crime wave in the city.
_______________________________________________
Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list
Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org
http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel