[highball]

“Yes, I agree, I would not tolerate being accosted on the street for a pat down,”

Of course that’s not what was going on in NYC...the renaming is just agitprop.

That's exactly what we're talking about here - a policy in which innocent people are stopped on the street by the police and searched. The fact that only around 12% of these stops resulted in the cops finding anything at all tells us how abhorrent the practice is, not to mention how ineffectual.

Read that again - 88% of the people being stopped are innocent victims of an out-of-control police state. They walk away from their "encounter" without an arrest or summons, and likely without any respect for the police.

This isn't a 2nd Amendment question so much as it is a 4th Amendment one. In our country, we do not let the government presume us all criminals until we prove otherwise.

[Alberta's Child]

An astute radio host pointed out last week that the effectiveness of the “stop & frisk” policy is completely irrelevant. It would be illegal and unconstitutional even if it was 100% effective.

[lepton]

“Stopped”, in the sense of being spoken to...not stopped and frisked.

And the stopped are largely the same people repeatedly in different places, not a random sample. The lawsuit plaintiffs were people with long criminal records recruited to complain, and evidence suggests in some cases paid to complain.

A common example is the crowd on a corner, exchanging items with passing cars or doing gang stuff; or people coming out of what are supposed to be buildings they don’t live in and aren’t guests of residents whose landlords have submitted letters to the police asking them to enforce no-trespassing rules; and people waiting around secure doorways looking to tailgate in.

The policy is Stop, Question, and Frisk...so calling it Stop and Frisk is right there an attempt to deceive the drive-by-offended. I know black people that have lived in those neighborhoods for decades who have never been stopped beyond basically saying “Good day” to the officers.

Now I do think it’s gotten too persistent under Bloomberg, but that’s a finer line than those who are wailing are willing to admit.