Stop, Question and Frisk Policing Practices in New York City: A Primer
Resource type: Research Report
Center on Race, Crime and Justice at John Jay College |
This primer, funded by Atlantic and the Open Society Foundation, presents extensive statistics about the troubling police practice of stopping, questioning, and frisking pedestrians in New York City.
The Numbers
Data show stops tend to be concentrated in a handful of police precincts and that the vast majority of people stopped are Black or Hispanic.
Data source: NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk Report Database, 2012
The yield from these encounters between police officers and pedestrians is small. In 2012, for example, only 6% of stops resulted in arrest.
Data source: NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk Report Database, 2012
And the numbers of stops substantially exceeded the amount of crime accounted for each year.
Data source: NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk Report Database, 2012
The Effects
Numbers alone cannot capture how individuals feel when stopped by police, nor can they capture the consequences of those feelings, particularly among innocent people who are stopped multiple times.
A robust public debate and discussion will be essential to shaping stop, question and frisk policies into police practices that are both demonstratively more effective and recognizably more equitable.
Download the Report
Get Involved
Join these Atlantic grantees working to end unjust stop-and-frisk policies:
> Communities United for Police Reform
> New York Civil Liberties Union
> Center for Constitutional Rights
Learn More at stopandfriskinfo.org
John Jay College Foundation is an Atlantic grantee.