NYPD STOP-AND-FRISK CONTROVERSY

Professor Eli Silverman is a friend whom I hold him in the highest regard. Eli and a colleague, Professor John Eterno, much to the chagrin of Mayor Bloomberg and the police department’s top echelon, conducted an extensive study which revealed NYPD’s crime statistics were manipulated to show the city in a good light.

While Eli does not oppose stop-and-frisks per se, he is opposed to the way NYPD now practices these stops. Civil libertarians argue that NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactics are illegal and unfairly target minorities. Stats show that most such stops are conducted against citizens that are not armed and did not commit any crime. Nevertheless, I believe the stops are a valuable crime detection and prevention tool.

Stop-and-frisks by NYPD do not target people because of their race as claimed by civil libertarians. If the majority of citizens stopped happen to be black or Hispanic, it’s only because more stops are made in New York’s minority neighborhoods which also happen to have the highest rate of violent crimes in the city.

POLICE OFFICEERS PRESSURED TO CONDUCT STOP-AND-FRISKS: CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROFESSOR
Professor Eli Silverman said the pressure grew significantly after the NYPD began using the COMPSTAT system to fight crime, according to his survey of more than 1,900 former cops

By Robert Gearty

New York Daily News
April 5, 2013

A [John Jay College] criminal justice professor testified Friday about a study he conducted in 2012 in which retired cops said they felt pressured to conduct stop-and-frisks when they were on the job.

Eli Silverman said the pressure grew significantly after the NYPD began using the COMPSTAT system to fight crime, according to his survey of more than 1,900 former cops.

Silverman was testifying in a class-action lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court that claims the NYPD’s controversial policy targets minorities for illegal stops.

Earlier, a lawyer said experts will testify that when they analyzed crime suspect data they found race as a predictor of who is stopped “virtually disappears.”