FACTS: courtesy NYCLU

http://www.nyclu.org/node/1598

Stop-and-Frisk Campaign: Stop And Frisk Fact Sheet

Stop & Frisk Campaign

About the Issue

The NYCLU Campaign

Stop-and-Frisk Fact Sheet

Charts of Data

Links and Resources

Trainings and Workshops

Palm Card: What to Do If You're Stopped by the Police (2004)

NYPD’s Over-reliance on Stop and Frisk

• The NYPD stopped, questioned and/or frisked over 508,540 people in 2006, an increase from just 97,296 in 2002.
• Even using "the most liberal assumptions" about the national average when it comes to the rate of the public's contact with police officers, the Rand Corporation’s study notes, New York should have had "roughly 250,000 to 330,000 stops rather than the 500,000 stops actually recorded."
• Only 10 percent of stops led to summonses or arrests. The overwhelming majority of New Yorkers questioned and frisked by the NYPD were engaged in no criminal wrongdoing.
• As compared to a 1999 study by then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, which reported that police stopped nine people for each arrest they made, twice as many people now are being stopped for each arrest.

Disproportionate Stops of People of Color

• 89 percent of those stopped in 2006 were people of color. 55 percent of the stops were of black people – more than double their percentage of the population – and 30 percent were of Latinos.
• Stops of whites, who number about 3.6 million according to recent census estimates, amounted to only 2.6 percent of the white population. By contrast, stops of blacks, who number about 2.2 million people, represented 21.1 percent of the entire black population.
• Residents of Brownsville's 73rd Precinct and Harlem's 28th Precinct had a 30 to 36 percent chance of being stopped and questioned by police in 2006. Citywide, the average was about 6 percent.
• A total of 2,756 cops filed 54 percent, or approximately 274,000, of all stop-and-frisk reports in 2006. Of that group, 15 percent, or about 413 officers, stopped no whites.

Disproportionate Outcomes of Stops for People of Color

• In 2006, 21.5 blacks were stopped for each arrest of a black person as opposed to only 18.2 whites stopped for each white arrest.
• Cops found guns, drugs, or stolen property on whites about twice as often as they did on black suspects.
• Whites were stopped on suspicion of possessing a weapon at a rate lower than their weapon-possession arrest rate. Blacks were stopped on suspicion of possessing a weapon at a rate greater than their weapon-possession arrest rate. These findings indicate that cops were more often unjustified in stopping black people on suspicion of having weapons.

Disproportionate Use of Force on People of Color

• Police used force – i.e. handcuffing, frisking, drawing weapon, restraining – about 50 percent more often on blacks than on whites in 2006.
• 45 percent of blacks and Latinos who were stopped were also frisked, compared with only 29 percent of whites.

Sources Used:
Gardiner, Sean. “Frisk Management.” Village Voice, 11 December 2007.
NYPD Stop, Question, and Frisk Reports, 2006 and 2007.
Ridgeway, Greg. Analysis of Racial Disparities in the New York Police Department’s Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2007.