The NYPD Took This Dog Into Custody Because His Owner Filmed the Police

[Dill]

(05-20-2023, 04:01 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: The info you posted said the reduction was a result of more LE bodies on the street.  However, it takes bodies on the street to implement stop and frisk.  Seems more like a chicken/egg debate than anything.  What I can deduct from any of that is that if stop and frisk causes more police to be on the street, thus resulting in a reduction in crime, than stop and frisk must be a fantastic policy.  

This is the kind of "debate" researchers can sort out rather easily, if increased police presence in one area sans Stop-and-Frisk produces the same drop in crime as police presence plus Stop-and-Frisk in another (this should be clear from Dino's post, which answered your original question pretty well),

 then it should also be clear that if increased police presence can appear without Stop-and-Frisk, the latter cannot be the "cause" of increased police presence. Rather both are equally a consequence of POLICY CHOICES, which should be under control of elected and accountable representatives of the people, who can easily implement the increased presence without the Stop-and-Frisk, should they so choose.  

But even if Stop-and-Frisk, by itself, had produced phenomenal results, it raised a serious constitutional issue--the profiling of bodies by color.*

Some people were obviously ok with that because "they" commit more crimes. ("It's just a fact!") 

And one can probably find Fox/Newsmax segments interviewing some black and brown residents of targeted neighborhood who "wanted it."

However, Dino's second study suggests that blanket disregard of the human/civil rights of black and brown citizens, even because of "facts," also increases distrust of police, not just in targeted areas, and not just by black and brown people.  Imagine the effect of Stop-and-Frisk without the increased police presence. I don't know how much research has been done in this area, but I think it quite likely that increased distrust of police might correlate with many other negatives, including increased crime. (Increased presence of police who interact the community is likely to have the opposite effect, while also reducing crime.)

Aside from ineffectiveness, there is the fundamental Constitutional issue the policy raised--

very hard to argue that the law is color blind with police and city administration behind such policies. 

So while some in NYC and elsewhere were clearly comfortable with the targeting, Constitutional rights or not, and unconcerned whether "they" distrusted police so long as the police kept "them" under control (remember, it's a fact that "they" commit more crimes), it was declared unconstitutional, since fundamental rights in our democracy are not supposed to hinge on whether people in one's demographic category commit more crimes--or are poorer or whatever else makes them "them" to "us." 
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/why-stop-and-frisk-was-ruled-unconstitutional/454425/

And rightly so, I think. Stop-and-Frisk would have been wrong even if it had worked. 

*Doubtful that many officers would say "Yes, I targeted that guy based on race". Rather they would say the targeting was based on trained (but colorblind)  observation. The profiling is registered in statistical disparities which reveal large numbers of people of color targeted who were not committing crimes. In fact, "they" were only half as likely to have illegal weapons, as white people targeted. How was that possible if "trained (but colorblind) observation" was really all that guided targeting? The judge who ruled the policy unconstitutional was more impressed with this statistical fact, than with the more general "'they' commit more crimes." https://civilrights.org/edfund/resource/nypds-infamous-stop-and-frisk-policy-found-unconstitutional/