Stop and frisk, race, and crime
Has New York’s stop and frisk law really reduced crime? After all, remember that correlation is not causation.
And are black men unfairly targeted by it, or is the proportion just about right considering the demographics of crime?
And speaking of the demographics of crime, isn’t it mainly the black population that’s being protected by this law, if it has indeed caused crime rates to go down?
Another interesting question is whether New York crime has gone down more than in other cities that don’t have stop and frisk. And why doesn’t every article on the subject attempt to answer that question? Surely someone must have done some research on that. And if not, why not?
To me, the most important issue is whether New York’s stop and frisk laws are being used to stop people (of any race or ethnic group) for little or no reason, or whether they are being used responsibly to stop people the police have reason to believe are acting unlawfully.
Why am I writing about this post, anyway? Well, today a federal judge “elevated to class-action status a lawsuit accusing officers of using race as a factor in stopping people on the city’s streets, opening the door to a vast number of additional plaintiffs.” Some statistics:
The stops ”“ as a practical matter ”“ are notable for the measure of racial disparity that occurs: black and Hispanic people generally represent more than 85 percent of those stopped by the police though their combined population makes up a smaller share of the city’s racial composition. Critics, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, also point out that the number of those who get arrested or issued a summons hovers around 10 percent of the stops ”“ and that it is proof that the majority of those stopped have done nothing wrong.
Would the NY Civil Liberties Union be happier if the police arrested more of these people rather than fewer? Don’t think so.
By the way, I wonder how many of New York’s finest are black or Hispanic themselves. I haven’t a clue, but I was unable to find that statistic, which surprised me. If it’s a rather high percentage, it would certainly cast some doubt on the “New York cops are racists” meme.
I note also that 93% of those stopped are men. But I don’t see any class action suit by men, although that would be every bit as justified (or unjustified, as the case may be) as the racial suit, wouldn’t it?
[NOTE: I finally found some figures that address the question in my next to last paragraph, although they are outdated (from 2008). But for what it’s worth, here they are:
In the lower ranks, the number of blacks has increased in the department; minorities have represented 53 percent of the officers hired during the Bloomberg administration. The 36,000-member department is 54.3 percent non-Hispanic white, 16.4 percent black, 25.7 percent Hispanic and 4.2 percent Asian-American.
Those figures are getting closer to mirroring a city that, based on 2006 figures from the Census Bureau, was 34.7 percent non-Hispanic white, 23.7 percent black, 27.6 percent Hispanic and 11.6 percent Asian-American.
Mr. Kelly’s tenure has also been characterized by Police Academy classes that more closely resemble the racial makeup of the city’s eight million residents. The class that graduated from the academy in July 2005, which was 18.3 percent black, was the first predominantly minority class in the department’s history. “We have recruits born in 50 countries,” Mr. Kelly said.]
It would also be interesting to know about the neighborhoods in which people were stopped, its racial make-up, and the crime situation there.
Relevant point from the inestimable Dr. Thomas Sowell . . .
“Media outlets that do not report the race of people committing crimes nevertheless report racial disparities in imprisonment and write heated editorials blaming the criminal-justice system.”
Here’s a link to the complete piece . . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/299918/censored-race-war-thomas-sowell
The American Criminal Lobby Union, like most leftist groups will use statistics to try to prove their point. If the numbers do not fit their narrative, they will be disregarded as racist. The vast majority of crimes against blacks are committed by other blacks, do not point that out, it dosen’t fit their predetermined conclusion.
That’s odd, a predetermined conclusion could be prejudice…naw, couldn’t be, could it?
You can always download a copy of “the color of crime” for your edification. Unfortunatly it hasen’t been revised since 2005, but the statistics are still interesting.
Go here. http://www.nc-f.org/
Having lived in NYC during the Rudy years when stop and frisk first came in I can testify that it had, once it was known it was being done, a distinct effect on the murder rate on city streets.
Why? Because to be caught packing in NYC in those days meant you were going to do a couple of years automatically — the judge had no leeway when it came to the sentence.
As a result, many criminals — notably blacks — left their illegal guns home when they went out on the street after stop and frisk took hold. Once you can’t whip out your gun and start blasting on impulse — and a lot of these characters were very impulsive — the murder rate goes down. As I recall it went down quite a bit and precipitously.
Once upon a time, what the Left is calling “profiling” and “racism” used to be called “good policing.”
You looked at the statistical profile of those committing crimes and the areas with the highest crime rates and, then, directed your presumably limited resources and attention primarily to those high crime age cohorts/individuals/groups and neighborhoods, rather than wasting time and resources on groups and neighborhoods where crime was less of a problem.
Same politically correct situation with Muslims here in the U.S.
Same with the TSA and its politically correct M.O.
Know of any Mennonites or Buddhists, little old Christian or Jewish ladies, white bread octogenarians, five year olds, or sick old people with Ostomy bags who have committed terrorist acts here in America lately?
I remember the time just before they enacted the stop and frisk, you could read reports of people firing in movie theaters. sometimes two gangs would pick the same night, sometimes a person unwrapping or talking on a cell phone would annoy someone…
and to answer wolla dalbo: five year olds maybe. of the others you list Buddhists actually would be the most likely.
TSA searches, detains 5 year old because his name was on no-fly list
http://boingboing.net/2008/01/09/tsa-searches-detains.html
Disabled World – 95 year old woman is viewed as a potential terrorist by government funded and supported TSA Agents: http://www.disabled-world.com/editorials/potential-terrorist.php
Aum Shinrikyo was a buddhist terrorist group, but i dont think they were big in the US.. though there are other groups world wide..
who knows about the others? 🙂
If NYC is <35% "non-Hispanic white", all the more reason for me not to go there. The Census Bureau does not seem to have a category for "Hispanic white" either, just "Hispanic".
Artfldgr–My point was that, if you wanted to structure your “policing” to have the greatest “bang for your buck,” you needed to play the odds, the hell with political correctness, and let the chips fall where they may.
And, yes, I know very well who Aum Shinrikyo was, and all their delightful little ways, as well as the fact that it was Muslim terrorists in Iraq who, for instance, were at one point taking kids with Downs syndrome from local hospitals and using them as suicide bombers i.e. “here kid, take this package around the corner and wait over there, and we’ll give you some candy.”
But, still, absent a current wave of such kiddie bombers, you have to play the odds, and right now, the odds favor a college aged or a little older, Middle Eastern man as the typical Muslim terrorist and it is to this “profile” that we should be directing most of our efforts, until that profile somehow changes.
I’m a LEO. And I have no hard statistics. Only anecdotal evidence.
Some LEO’s make a few too many “Stop and Frisk” calls. Some (maybe about 50%)are actually pretty good at spotting people “up to no good” and then have to articulate what led them to make that guess.
And I think Vanderleun’s point about NYC has some merit.
But stop and frisk really only works (when it works) because there are so many regulations and prohibitions. If people were easily permitted to carry firearms legally (in NYC) , if there weren’t a War on (some)Drugs (pardon the libertarian rearing its head), what would there be to find in most frisk/pat-downs? And cities tend to have an overabundance of laws, especially the ‘malum prohibitum’ type. And where do ,most African Americans reside? Rural areas or urban areas?
Race? Race baiters can try to make anything about race.
Neither here nor there but just my two cents.
And for artfldgr: Aum Shin Rykyo was a cockamamie, doomsday cult potpourri of many religions and beliefs. The name was certainly Buddhist in origin but Asahara borrowed plenty from Hindu, Christianity and others.
black and Hispanic people generally represent more than 85 percent of those stopped by the police though their combined population makes up a smaller share of the city’s racial composition
Their incidence in the population is irrelevant. (See neo’s excellent point re the gender of those stopped.) The relevant statistic is the proportion of those stopped in relation to their share in reported crime. And on that score, let’s face it (following Jesse Jackson’s famous comment about feeling relief at seeing the guy coming up behind him being white), blacks and Hispanics are off the charts. So stoppings should fall disproportionately upon members of those groups. That’s just good police work, the inverse, if you will, of good marketing. Non-criminal members of those groups should direct their opprobium not at the police, but at the members of their own groups who commit crimes, and thereby attract the attention of the police.
Someone should attempt computer modeling of where the plight of black Americans would now be had civil rights been worked out among the folk instead of by dictates from pointy headed intellectuals immersed in academia and government.
A liberal can’t imagine a path where racism could have all but disappeared in America and blacks could have retained their families, work ethic and love of country.
SteveH,
better yet, work out where everyone would be if eugenics wasnt constantly practiced and the people too dense to see it no matter WHAT math you show them?
they dont believe it even if you show them articles from other countries who can see it too!!!!
[mostly they love their cancers, especially eugenics based feminism of the progressives and Harmon, etc. ]
they announced today that minority births have surpassed white births 50% mark.
this article was back in 2008:
US set for dramatic change as white America becomes minority by 2042
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/15/population.race
the current census says that the rate is accelerating…
and wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
As of May 14, 2012, the United States has a total resident population of 313,544,041
82% residing in cities and suburbs as of 2008 (the worldwide urban rate is 50.5%[3]). This leaves vast expanses of the country nearly uninhabited [so much for running out of space]
The total fertility rate in the United States estimated for 2009 is 2.01 children per woman, which is below the replacement fertility rate of approximately 2.1
ok… so ALL births are not enough… we are NOT running out of space… not by a long shot… and there is no reason NOT to have more people, unless your playing eugenics games.. (fewer prols, make elite genes more concentrated… no?)
However, U.S. population growth is among the highest in industrialized countries,[11] since the vast majority of these have below-replacement fertility rates and the U.S. has higher levels of immigration
ok… so we “Hide the Decline” by letting hoards of illegals in… Then taking money from one group, who has fewer children because of it, and give it to minorities, who have lots of them…
this demographic change is ACROSS WESTERN CIVILIZATION, with country after country copying the same policies, while the countries they claim to be admiring, avoid the poison (having been the first to drink it then change direction!)
take a look at the graph. the sexual revolution and all that brought the resident population birth rate to below 1.7!!!
1.8 is the genocide point…
ie. any population that dips below that, ends up dying out…
the trick is to get them below that and hide it so that they dont wake up from the idea that they have been living bad advice given to them
but now…
can someone, given the new fact in the news today, HOW.. a population that makes up 74% of the total.. has fewer children than the other 26%?
232,022,590 people have fewer children than 81,521,450 people in the SAME country.
81 million people are responsible for MORE than 50% of all births.
232 million people are responsible for LESS than 50% of all births
and when the western civilization peoples are gone.. who will protect the small group of Jews?
what normal average people refuse to come to terms with is that there ARE people so evil as to attempt to remove one race to have access and ability to remove another race.
so explain to me how 300% more people produce (and have for decades) MUCH fewer than can replace them.. at an accelerated rate, and along the lines of removing the SMARTEST from the general population…
Nadya Suleman had 6 kids, then on the public dime, had 8 more..
Angel Adams has 15 kids by 3 men, and is expecting her 16th, and wants the state to pay for all that.
i guess some college bound white lady will have to pay in taxes so minorities can have more babies than her, and she and her family will be exterminated, and suleman, and adams, and those families, will replace them
heck.. they have ALREADY REPLACED THEM and there is nothing you can do about it!!!!!!!
ie. when you realize it, its too late to change it. they only have to prevent you from realizing it until that point. AFTER that point it dont matter what you do
and THIS is why the democrats are siding with minorities as Volk and they are siding with them attacking the oppressors…
[edited for length by n-n]
M J R Says:
May 16th, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Excellent article, I love Sowell. Thanks for posting the link.
Here’s a question coming from someone unfamiliar with the law: Setting aside the racial aspect of this- how does this law square with the 4th Amendment to the constitution? (Part of the Bill of Rights- The right to not have you or your possessions searched or seized without probable cause, etc)
One of the reasons why the TSA’s x-ray machines and pat-downs have been so challenged is because of the 4th amendment. They’ve gotten away with it because they claim that when you purchase a ticket to fly, you give the TSA permission to perform these actions. This made me wonder what is going on with this law and how they square it with the Bill of Rights?