bronwynlewis/foter.comThe NYPD’s stop and frisk program
began in 2002 and since then, according to
data compiled by the New York Civil Liberties Union,  the
police have conducted 4 million such “interrogations,” peaking in
2011 with 685,724. The vast majority of stops are of blacks and
Hispanics. Little more than ten percent end in any kind of summons.
 

The program is currently being challenged in court,
where testimony yesterday revealed police officers were ordered
to increase their number of stop and frisks. “The goal is at least
one arrest per month and 20 summons,” a supervisor was heard saying
on tape played in court. The plaintiff’s attorneys say it amounts
to a quota, but the city defends the practice as being related to
performance goal. It says most stops are being made of blacks and
Hispanics because police are sent to neighborhoods with
minority-on-minority crime.

The city is giving credit in court to the stop and frisk program
for a decrease in crime. In defending the program, the mayor has
previously
boasted just 6,000 weapons recovered in 8 years, a hit rate
much lower than 1 percent.In fact that rate of guns found dropped
(from .38 to .033 percent) as stop and frisks have risen, which the
mayor used as evidence the program
was working.

The first election in 16 years in New York City not to feature
Michael Bloomberg will take place in November, and the issue of
stop and frisk has been seized by Democratic candidates jockeying
ahead of the mayoral primary. Stop and frisk has been going on for
more than a decade, with more than four million stops, but it’s an
election year that brings it to the attention of lawmakers who have
been in office for years. They’re now trying to create an
independent inspector general’s office to oversee the NYPD. Critics
say the NYPD already receives plenty of oversight (“two U.S.
attorneys, five district attorneys, the Civilian Complaint Review
Board, lawsuits filed by citizens and activists, the Department of
Investigation, the Commission to Combat Police Corruption and a
700-member Internal Affairs Bureau” as the New York Daily
News put
it.)

For his part, the mayor promises to
veto the legislation for an inspector general. Christine Quinn,
speaker of the City Council and an architect of the legislation,
says suggestions by officials in the Bloomberg administration to
wait and see if the court appoints a federal monitor for stop and
frisk
indicates they know there’s a problem that demands action. This
has been going on since 2002. Didn’t she know there was a problem
that demanded action before an open election appeared on the
horizon?