NYPD STOP AND FRISK STUDY

Professors Eterno and Silverman believe NYPD’s research project is flawed

My friend Eli Silverman and John Eterno, his co-author, say that NYPD’s research project showing that shootings increased as stop-an-frisks decreased is a flawed study.

Eli and I have long disagreed on NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactics under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration. I maintain that saturating a crime infested area with stop-and-frisks will force many crooks and gangbangers to leave their weapons at home, but I do understand Eli’s concern about the unconstitutionality of some stops conducted by NY cops.

BRATTON’S STOP-FRISK STUDY MISTAKE
A flawed research project will only confuse the issue

By John Eterno and Eli Silverman

New York Daily News
July 14, 2014

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton recently announced an NYPD study of the relationship between the levels of stops-and-frisks (which have decreased) and shootings (which have increased).

Bratton is making a big mistake — and wasting taxpayer dollars in the process. Regardless of what his analysis concludes, this research is sure to mislead policy-makers, send a mixed message to police officers and confuse the public after many wrenching years of grappling with discriminatory policing.

To start, we must recognize that stop-and-frisk data includes both constitutional and unconstitutional stops. The only honest way to study a connection between stops and shootings, then, would be to first parse out the legal stops from the illegal ones.

Yet the data collected on NYPD check-off box stop-and-frisk forms only weakly, if at all, differentiates the character of the stops.

As Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote in her landmark August 2013 ruling declaring the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional, the forms incompletely record only the officer’s account and permit a checking of boxes, many of which are “subjective and vague” (like “furtive movement”), “rather than requiring the officer to explain the basis for suspicion.”

As a result, it becomes challenging if not impossible to accurately gauge just how many illegal stops occurred in the past. While an “analysis of the (forms) reveals that at least 200,000 stops were made without reasonable suspicion, the actual number was likely far higher,” wrote Scheindlin.

More importantly, to be intellectually balanced, any study would have to not only examine the effect of stop-and-frisk on shootings, but also its impact on innocent minorities who bore the brunt of the illegal behaviors by police.

Our research — cited in the trial that found the Bloomberg administration’s use of stop-and-frisk to be unconstitutional — strongly suggests that pressures emanating from police headquarters’ bureaucrats were the driving force in this illegal activity. With little understanding of local street conditions, they imposed damaging quotas on officers, especially rookies in impact zones.

The biggest reason this study is a mistake: Even if the analysis by the NYPD (or any other researcher) were to find a perfect correlation between stops going down and shootings going up, the police would not be allowed to continue engaging in unconstitutional acts.

It is therefore irresponsible for Bratton to open the door to that possibility.

Over the course of approximately 8 years, more than 4½ million stops, most of them innocent black and Latino young men, shocked the conscience and offended decent-minded New Yorkers. A federal court ruling made clear: That was unconstitutional. It violated people’s rights.

In a democracy, the police must follow the law while they enforce it. This can be difficult, but it is crucial. It is a fundamental democratic value. We ban abuses of power and protect people’s rights even if those abuses, in one sense, “work.”

Instead of embarking on pseudo-scientific studies seeking to connect two unrelated trends, we should be striving to understand how the NYPD, prior to 2002, reduced index crime over 60% without the abuse of stop-and-frisk (or at least the overwhelming abuse as seen in the landmark stop-and-frisk case).

We trust that the NYPD and anyone hired with taxpayer money understand these limitations, and hopefully gives Bratton better advice than he’s received thus far.

The legacy of the previous administration is an Inspector General, oversight of NYPD by the federal government and a law that makes it easier to sue officers over illegal stops.

For the sake of New York City residents and NYPD officers, let’s not go down that same disastrous road again.