Why the courts shut down "stop and frisk"

[gollygee]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/13/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-stop-and-frisk-and-why-the-courts-shut-it-down/

Shira Scheindlin, a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York, has ruled that New York City's "stop and frisk" policy violates the Fourteenth Amendment's promise of equal protection, as black and Hispanic people are subject to stops and searches at a higher rate than whites. Mayor Michael Bloomberg responded by deriding Scheindlin for not acknowledging the policy's benefits, noting that "nowhere in her 195 page decision does she mention the historic cuts in crime or the number of lives that have been saved."

But what, exactly, does "stop and frisk" entail? Is it racially biased? Does it actually reduce crime? Here's what you need to know.

What is stop and frisk?
"Stop, question and frisk" is an NYPD policy wherein police will detain and question pedestrians, and potentially search them, if they have a "reasonable suspicion" that the pedestrian in question "committed, is committing, or is about to commit a felony or a Penal Law misdemeanor."

More at link

[X_Digger]

1. kick! n/t

[LadyHawkAZ]

2. K&R

[juajen]

3. Scares everybody to death, so they all look guilty, ergo, frisk and search.

[Warpy]

4. Fishing expeditions by law enforcement were what the Fourth Amendment

was all about. Remember when we had that one?

End the drug war and we'll get it back.

[PrestonLocke]

5. This is crazy!

They shut it down due to the 14th being violated because of racial issues, not the clear violation of the 4th.

I swear I read something about this in a book at one point in time...

[Baitball Blogger]

6. What most people don't seem to understand...

many of my white friends do not understand the cautious decisions we have to make in life. They think we are too reserved, too uptight. But they don't understand that minor infractions of the rules that they might consider as funny, is something that many ethnic people will walk away from because what they see as a frat prank can be viewed as "breaking the law" for an ethnic minority.

We grow up with a great deal of second-guessing, which is exactly the kind of thing that interferes will a person's full development.

[Taitertots]

7. The insane part is that is wasn't struck down for obviously violating the fourth amendment

The equally insane part is that people still accept Bloomberg's attempts to imply that any decreases in crime were caused exclusively by mass searches.