crimes and misdemeanors

Stop-and-Frisks Are Down a Bit Lately [Updated]

 Members of the New York Police Department (NYPD) are viewed on January 26, 2012 in New York City. After New York City's police commissioner Raymond Kelly appeared in the film
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

After the spring’s sustained uproar about NYPD street searches and the department’s concession that yeah, maybe they could be a bit more discerning, stop-and-frisks are down 34 percent in the second quarter of 2012. The New York Post reports that the “remarkable drop” puts the number of people frisked at 133,934 between April and the end of June, a number that still sounds pretty remarkable itself. In the first period of the year, 203,500 people were stopped, putting the NYPD on track to break last year’s record of 685,724. The second-quarter numbers change that trajectory. 

Of those searched recently, 54 percent were black, 32 percent Hispanic, 10 percent white, and 3 percent Asian. The police seized 1,769 weapons in the latest quarter, made up mostly of 1,259 knives and 316 logged as “other,” leaving 194 firearms.

While the city’s murder rate is still down, there has been a rash of shootings this summer. But an insane amount of stop-and-frisks have been shown to have little effect on overall gun violence throughout Bloomberg’s tenure.

Update: A representative of the NYCLU told Daily Intel that the numbers released so far are “very incomplete,” and that the NYPD still owes the City Council a more detailed report for the second quarter of 2012.

In a statement, the group said, “If past is prologue, we can expect that NYPD officers subjected at least 1,000 innocent New Yorkers a day to humiliating and unjustified street stops. That is nothing to brag about. This reduction is a good start, but much more needs to be done to rebuild community trust and protect New Yorkers from illegal and racially biased street stops.”

Stop-and-Frisks Are Down a Bit Lately [Updated]