This post includes links to articles from Cathy Young and Daniel Leddy.
Cathy Young wrote a column for Newsday titled The stark reality of stop-and-frisk.
« Criminologist Jeffrey Fagan has found that police stops do reduce crime — but only if stricter probable-cause standards are used, not just “hunches.” »
« But it is also true that denouncing law-and-order policies as a mere smoke screen for racism, as many progressives have done in recent years, is both inaccurate and counterproductive. »
« The uncomfortable truth is that Bloomberg’s observations about crime demographics in New York City are factual. Police data from 2018 show that about 73 percent of both shooting victims and shooting suspects in New York were black, while about 23 percent of victims and suspects were Hispanic. »
Daniel Leddy wrote an On the Law column for the Staten Island Advance titled Stop, Frisk and Bloomberg: Separating fact from fiction.
« Lost in the near-hysterical rhetoric is the fact that stop and frisk is a constitutionally valid street procedure whose use is essential to protect the lives and safety of police officers and the public they serve. The oft-heard claim that the courts struck down its use during the Bloomberg mayoralty as discriminatory against blacks and Hispanics is grossly misleading. »
« The right of police officers to stop and frisk individuals was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968 in its landmark decision in Terry v. Ohio. Writing for the court, Chief Justice Earl Warren said: “When an officer is justified in believing that the individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range is armed and presently dangerous” he may properly “conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him”. »
« On August 12, 2013, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that the NYPD had been using stop and frisk in a discriminatory manner toward blacks and Hispanics. She called for broad reforms, including the use of body-worn cameras, to be overseen by a federal monitor. Scheindlin, however, was a judge with a well-documented history of anti-police bias. In fact, not only did she, herself, suggest that the lawsuit be brought, but she advised two attorneys how to ensure that it came before her. This, and other ethical violations, led to her being removed from any further proceedings in the case by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. »
« The City had presented a very strong defense of the NYPD’s use of stop and frisk, arguing that “crime drives where police officers go, not race”. To that end, Mayor Bloomberg, speaking to NYPD leadership on April 30, 2013, said, “The sad reality is on the streets of our city, 90 percent of murder suspects and murder victims are black and Latino. And black and Hispanics are the overwhelming majority of suspects in other violent crimes”. »
« When Scheindlin, true to form, refused to grant the city a stay of her order pending appeal, the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit not only issued a stay but, as noted, removed her from the case. Unfortunately, the city’s highly promising appeal was never heard because Bloomberg’s successor, Bill de Blasio, ordered it withdrawn. »
« Shortly before Bloomberg entered the presidential race and, apparently in contemplation of doing so, he did an astonishing flip-flop.»
Articles of Interest 