Is "Stop and Frisk" Being Improperly Used?
By: Melanie Ginel
"But I ain't do nothing!" This is the usual response that police receive from teens when being stopped and frisked. However, what is the exact definition of frisk? Is it even legal?
To frisk, according to the New York Police Department website, is to pat down an individual to check for any concealed weapons. This can be performed without a warrant and one can decline a search. The website states however that the police are not obligated to tell individuals that they can decline a search. Stop and frisks searches are designed to find guns and weapons on people on the street, but many times the police discover marijuana. Those being searched are usually African-American or Latino, many between the ages of 16 to 25 years old. Police are only allowed to pat down the people they are searching. It is not the protocol to go into individuals' pockets.
Many think that the police department actually uses this method of search to put the suspect's marijuana in public view, giving them reasons to be arrested. None of the young men searched would have their marijuana or other substances in plain view. "I keep it in my pants, where they won't find it," said 17-year-old Chris Taylor. "They don't need to be searchin' me anyways just 'cause I'm black. No one called them. It's my block."
Some searches do reveal weapons and guns, but most individuals searched are innocent. In 2010, 601,055 New Yorkers were stopped by the police according to the New York Civil Liberties Union Eighty-six percent of those searched were innocent. So is stop and frisk a problem? When asked, Jennifer Carnig of the New York Civil Liberties Union responded: "The problem isn't the tactic itself, but the NYPD's overuse of stop-and-frisk. The NYPD has no business continuing any policy that has a 90 percent failure rate. That is an unbelievably poor yield rate for such an intrusive, wasteful and humiliating police action."
Do young men get searched due to their body language? "Well of course I'm gonna get shook when I see the cops," said Aaron Walker, 16. "Even if I don't got nothin' on me. I'm still gonna feel some type of way if they're looking towards me man. I mean who don't get shook when there's cops around?"
Police officials claim that these stops need to be performed in certain neighborhoods due to crime rate. Some would say this is true, but the issue remains under dispute. "Vulnerable communities need better police protection, but a policy that is both ineffective and hurts the long-term relationship between the police and the community is not the way to provide that protection," Carnig said.
The problem is not stop-and-frisk itself. It is the police department abusing their power, or as Jelani Spencer-Joe, 16, put it: stop and frisk is "a violation of not privacy but of who you are." Some people feel the searches are mostly conducted on young men, but this doesn't completely exclude women. Spencer-Joe also called the search and frisk procedure "a violation of personal space.''
The police department continues to abuse their power by looking for other motives to issue summons. Jaime Torres, 17, angrily agrees, "Cops don't make no sense." He received a summons for what the police said was disorderly conduct. "I didn't let him search me, 'cause my counselor told me I didn't have to," he said. "He kept trying to touch me and said I disrespected him, so I got a ticket for disorderly conduct."
Another young man, Mike Stevens, 21, reported that he had been stopped before for reasons he believes to be related to his past. "I've been stopped, but that's cause I was on probation, so they know my face. But, if they don't know your face and you're just chilling then they don't need to search you!"
"Stop and frisk is important because it allows police to stop any citizen and question them," said Jennie Rodriguez, a former New York City detective. Along with questioning, an officer may pat down the suspect if they see something suspicious. In this case, something suspicious would be a bulge somewhere in the suspect's clothing that could be a concealed weapon.
"This is difficult today because everyone has a cell phone in their pocket and it can be easily mistaken," she said. "But police are not supposed to search an individual without a legitimate reason to do so. Although some officers may unfairly target certain people, that doesn't give them the right to assume." She acknowledges that some people may be unfairly targeted. She says people shouldn't be stopped and frisked soley on race.
