Michelle Chen

Targeted neighborhoods, pt. 2: NYPD stop and frisk

A new, disturbingly timely report by the Center for Constitutional Rights documents glaring racial disparities in the stops and searches carried out by New York City police. The analysis is hardly surprising, but the data does provide statistical muscle to community advocates who say Black and Latino neighborhoods are wracked by fear of police aggression.

Yesterday, the CCR presented key findings of its parsing of records of more than 1.5 million NYPD stops over a 3.5 year period:

“From 2005 to 2008, approximately 80 percent of total stops made were of Blacks and Latinos, who comprise 25 percent and 28 percent of New York City’s total population, respectively. During this same time period, only approximately 10 percent of stops were of Whites, who comprise 44 percent of the city’s population.

“Results show that Blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely to be stopped by the police than Whites; that Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be frisked after a NYPD-initiated stop than Whites; and that Blacks and Latinos are more likely to have physical force used against them during a NYPD-initiated stop than Whites. Yet the rates of summons and arrests from all stops is not only extremely low, but nearly the same across racial categories.”

Posted at 5:23 PM, Jan 16, 2009 in Civil Rights | Criminal Justice | Politics | Permalink | View Comments