Posted on 08/23/2013 5:19:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
New York City seems on the verge of making the same mistake that Detroit made 40 years ago. The mistake is to abolish the NYPD practice referred to as stop and frisk.
It's more accurately called stop, question and frisk. People were stopped and questioned 4.4 million times between 2004 and 2012. But the large majority were not frisked.
The effectiveness of this police practice, initiated by Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1994 and continued by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is not in doubt. The number of homicides -- the most accurately measured crime -- in New York fell from a peak of 2,605 in 1990 to 952 in 2001, Giuliani's last year in office, to just 414 in 2012.
Nevertheless, the three leading Democratic mayoral candidates in the city's September primary all have pledged to end stop and frisk. And last week, federal judge Schira Scheindlin, in a lawsuit brought by 19 men who have been stopped and frisked, found that the practice is unconstitutional and racially discriminatory.
Bloomberg has promised to appeal, and several of Scheindlin's decisions in high-profile cases have been reversed. But the leading Democratic candidates for mayor promise, if elected, to drop the appeal.
The two leading Republican candidates support stop and frisk, but their chances of election seem dim in a city that voted 81 percent for Barack Obama in 2012.
What riles opponents of stop and frisk is that a high proportion of those stopped are young black and Hispanic males. Many innocent people undoubtedly and understandably resent being subjected to this practice. No one likes to be frisked, including the thousands of airline passengers who are every day.
But young black and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic males are far, far more likely than others to commit (and be victims of) violent crimes, as Bloomberg points out. I take no pleasure in reporting that fact and wish it weren't so.
This was recognized by, among others, Jesse Jackson, who in 1993 said, "There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it's somebody white and feel relieved."
You can get an idea about what could happen in New York by comparing it with Chicago, where there were 532 homicides in 2012. That's more than in New York, even though New York's population is three times as large.
One Chicagoan who supports stop and frisk is the father of Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl shot down a week after singing at Barack Obama's second inauguration. "If it's already working, why take it away?" he told the New York Post. "If that was possible in Chicago, maybe our daughter would be alive."
Chicago and New York both have tough gun control laws. But bad guys can easily get guns in both cities.
The difference, as the New York Daily News's James Warren has pointed out, is that frequent stops and frisks combined with mandatory three-year sentences for illegal possession of a gun mean that bad guys in New York don't take them out on the street much.
Stop and frisk makes effective the otherwise ineffective gun control that Bloomberg so strongly supports.
An extreme case of what happens when a city ends stop and frisk is Detroit. Coleman Young, the city's first black mayor, did so immediately after winning the first of five elections in 1973.
In short order Detroit became America's murder capital. Its population fell from 1.5 million to 1 million between 1970 and 1990. Crime has abated somewhat since the Young years, but the city's population fell to 713,000 in 2010 -- just over half that when Young took office.
People with jobs and families -- first whites, then blacks -- fled to the suburbs or farther afield. Those left were mostly poor, underemployed, in too many cases criminal -- and not taxpayers. As a result, the city government went bankrupt last month.
New York has strengths Detroit always lacked. But it is not impervious to decline. After Mayor John Lindsay ended tough police practices, the city's population fell from 7.9 million in 1970 to 7.1 million in 1980.
Those who decry stop and frisk as racially discriminatory should remember who is hurt most by violent crime -- law-abiding residents of high-crime neighborhoods, most of them black and Hispanic, people like Hadiya Pendleton.
There’s no way Detroit’s policy won’t target minorities.
“The effectiveness of this police practice, initiated by Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1994 and continued by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is not in doubt. The number of homicides — the most accurately measured crime — in New York fell from a peak of 2,605 in 1990 to 952 in 2001, Giuliani’s last year in office, to just 414 in 2012.”.......
If it isn’t broke, why fix it”? If there is nothing to hide (weapons in this case) then I’d suggest the “Stop and Frisk” is a GOOD thing. I’ll bet those who have been mugged would support it.
NY is not YET Detroit until they have complete black leadership in control.
That’s OK, most of the cops are black too so you won’t hear much about it.
For that matter, kinda odd how Detroit leads the nation in defensive shootings by a wide margin but you never hear about it. Seems that stand your ground and open carry are beneficial to blacks in Detroit so the left desperately avoids talking about it.
Sorry, Michael. What is it about “probable cause” that you don’t understand? This is NOT a police state in which innocent citizens have to justify their existence to a bunch of goons. Tyranny makes me safer only at the cost of my liberty.
Most of the victims of black crime are fellow blacks - people working for a living. People who are afraid to ‘snitch’... They want the thugs off the streets more than we do...
The "stop-n-frisk" policy will certainly be for the (local) majority population---
just say'n...
I agree; stop & frisk is indefensible to anyone who believes in individual rights. Giuliani lowered crime in NYC with a PC police force that simply did their jobs. They got most of the crap off the street by simply busting them for the little crimes they engaged in (turnstyle-hopping, public urination, whatever), rather than simply ignoring the smaller crimes with the excuse that there were more important crimes to deal with.
If it isn’t broke, why fix it”? If there is nothing to hide (weapons in this case) then I’d suggest the “Stop and Frisk” is a GOOD thing. I’ll bet those who have been mugged would support it.
Detroit's 1990 criminal homicides amounted to 595 cases, whereas its 2011 number was 344. On a per capita basis, the murder rate dropped from 58 cases per 100K population to 48 cases per 100K population. NYC's number went from 31 cases per 100K population in 1990 to 6 cases per 100K population in 2011.
Gun control was a “good thing” as long as it was only applied to minorities.
That’s how it was in the South, post-reconstruction.
Bye bye Constitution. It was nice knowing you. Stop and frisk: It’s for the children!
I will never welcome being stopped by the police and frisked. Its unconstitutional and free people shouldn't tolerate it. I most certainly don't want my wife and daughters being stopped and groped.
Its a finger in the dike approach to a vast cultural problem.
If there is nothing to hide (weapons in this case) then I’d suggest the “Stop and Frisk” is a GOOD thing.
Then why have a requirement for search warrants at all?
Think of the good we could do and how much safer we'd all be if we just did away with the Constitution all together!
These tactics may do some good, but also look like some of what the Constitution was written to protect us from.
I don't think DUI checkpoints are legal, either. Same for random drug testing.
And don't get me started on the TSA pat down and grope.
“If there is nothing to hide (weapons in this case) then I’d suggest the “Stop and Frisk” is a GOOD thing”
I agree 100%. There’s absolutely no reason anyone should have ANY rights as long as it gives us a sense of security.
Fine. If this country was suddenly deluged with a spate of suicide bombers who wore their dynamite vests under coats not plainly observable to the naked eye, and all the people caught with the vests or identified after they blew themselves (and possibly scores of other people) up were determined to be of swarthy-looking-middle-eastern ancestry, would you support stop and frisk on those individuals?
So how many of you live in Detroit?
The hypocrisy of FReepers cracks me up sometimes. Throw a tantrum about the fact that the TSA gives granny a rectal exam to avoid profiling muslims and then turn right around and pretend to be concerned about racial profiling.
Don’t like it, don’t live in those places.
Democrats want to keep minorities poor and dependent on government. Keeping their crime rate high helps to achieve their goal.
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