NYC cops walk away from ‘stop-and-frisk’
Street searches that targeted predominantly black men are on brink of extinction
NEW YORK— Something strange has been happening to Davelle Taylor as he walks the streets of New York: nothing at all.
He will be with friends in Jamaica, a part of Queens. Police officers will spot them. And they will be left alone.
No questions, no pat-downs, no demands to stand against the wall. For the first time in years, Taylor, a 27year-old black man, is going about his business unbothered by the NYPD.
“They’ll walk past us and they’ll give us a little head nod,” Taylor said. “And they’ll just keep walking past us.”
The little nod is a big deal. Jamaica was one of New York City’s hot spots for stop-and-frisk, the police practice of stopping pedestrians (usually black men), questioning them and patting them down for weapons (usually finding nothing). Today, the city has no real hot spots at all — stop-and-frisk has nearly vanished.
Carding, a Canadian cousin of stopand-frisk, has confounded Toronto’s politicians and police officials. As they have puzzled over possible reforms, New York’s mayor and top cops have brought stop-and-frisk to the brink of extinction — ignoring former mayor Michael Bloomberg’s warning that abandoning the stops would cede the streets to violent criminals.
There has been no discernible effect on the rate of violent crime. There has been an immediate impact on the psyches of the black men who had been disproportionately targeted.
African-Americans, a quarter of New York’s population, were the subject of more than half of all stops. Only one in every10 stops resulted in an arrest or court summons. Fewer than one in 100 stops turned up a gun. In other words, tens of thousands of innocent black men were being accosted and embarrassed.
“Now we can walk down the street without getting mistaken for the wrong person,” said Andre Glass, 38. “Now you can walk down the street without police stopping you for random search and seizure. It goes on and on. It feels a whole lot better.”
“It’s more peaceful. You’re more at ease,” said Michael Williams, 25. “You don’t have to be watching over your shoulder every time the cop comes by.”
But personal habits shaped by years of stop-and-frisk have been slow to change, a warning to Toronto that policy reforms alone won’t heal the wounds from years of carding. Accustomed to being challenged for no real reason — “furtive movement” was the official justification for more than half of stops in 2011— black men interviewed on the streets of Jamaica said they still behave like they are targets.
Jevon Menendez, 26, tries to make his walk look “very calculated” so he can’t be accused of furtiveness. Volney Milfort, a 28-year-old with a booming voice, quiets himself when he walks in areas with a large police presence. Antwan Sherrod, 29, crosses the street when he sees an officer.
“I don’t even want to be close to the police,” he said. “I’m scared of coming into contact with them. I don’t even want to call them if I’m ever in trouble.”
They were standing at Jamaica Ave. and Parsons Blvd., a busy commercial intersection with a McDonald’s on one corner, a Wendy’s on another, and a movie theatre on a third, the Jamaica Center subway station just behind. An unremarkable block — and, as of 2012, one of the 10 places in New York where pedestrians were most likely to be stopped.
“One time I came out of here,” Sherrod said outside the McDonald’s, “and two cars just came out of nowhere, patted me down, searched my book bag. I said, ‘What is this for?’ They said, ‘ We’re just doing our jobs.’ You would have thought I just robbed the place or something, the way they just swarmed me.”
Afederal judge ruled stop-and-frisk unconstitutional in 2013, calling it a “policy of indirect racial profiling.” Bill de Blasio campaigned hard against it. Already on the decline when de Blasio became mayor in 2014, it has since been sharply curtailed by a strict new policy.
Officers must have a reasonable suspicion that a specific person has committed or is about to commit a crime. Someone matching a vague description of a suspect — “black male,18 to 25” — is no longer enough. If “furtive movement” is part of the reason for a stop, the officer must explain what the movement was.
The number of stops plummeted from 685,724 in 2011 to 46,235 last year. At the same time, the number of murders fell from 515 in 2011 to 333 last year, a modern low.
This year has been worse. As stops have become even less frequent, there has been an increase in murders — 154 through June 21, up from 138 at the same time last year. The spike has generated tabloid headlines such as “STOP AND RISK” and told-you-so grumbling from former Bloomberg officials. But the NYPD announced Wednes- day that last month was the lowest-crime June since 1993. There is no evidence the uptick is either a lasting trend or connected with the reduction from a low level of stop-andfrisk to a lower level of stop-andfrisk. And it is an uptick from a remarkably low level of crime.
Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said homicides may have simply “bottomed out.”
“The declines have been so dramatic, really almost incredible, almost unbelievable,” said O’Donnell, a former Queens prosecutor and NYPD officer.
“The consensus has been that at some point there’s a number of homicides you’re not going to get under, even in a supersafe city, when you’ve got nine million people traversing the place and guns.”
The effect of the new stop-and-frisk restrictions is most visible in areas such as Jamaica.
Roiled by the drug trade in the 1980s and early 1990s, the diverse, high-immigration community of housing projects and middle-income homes has been one of New York’s most heavily patrolled areas for decades.
The patrol officers are still a constant presence. They are just behaving differently.
Officers in Jamaica stopped 2,604 people in the first three months of 2012. In the first quarter of this year, they stopped 31.
Two weeks ago, on a steamy Sunday afternoon, small groups of officers in blue uniform walked briskly around the block, stood in the lobby of the theatre, stopped drivers for illegal right turns, responded in two minutes to a 911 call about a minor assault. Over seven hours, they did not appear to stop and frisk a single pedestrian.
“You would have seen all kinds of people on the wall. People at the train station getting stopped. By the movie theatre getting stopped,” said Taylor. “But now, lately, it’s been quiet.”
Their new-found caution has not been greeted with universal relief. Violent men have become unafraid to pack illegal guns, knowing they will not be searched, alleged Donna Clopton, a nurse who was until recently president of the council that served as a link between the community and area cops.
“They don’t think twice of it,” said Clopton, who is black. “Just yesterday, we had one of the kids in the area jumped on for no reason. The guy said he was looking at him funny. The level of violence goes along with feeling free to carry guns.”
Jamaica, though, appears safer than at any time since the crack wars began. There was only one murder through June 21, down from seven by the same time last year — and down from 51 for the year in the bad old days of 1991.
Williams, a college student and security guard, recalled the time seven years ago he was stopped and told to sit on the sidewalk as he was about to step into his car with friends.
If stop-and-frisk stays dormant, he said, black resentment of the police will eventually recede.
But it will take a while. He still tries to make a beeline between home and school, avoiding the bustle of Jamaica and Parsons. Lingering on a main street used to get black men stopped.
“You would have seen all kinds of people on the wall. People at the train station getting stopped. By the movie theatre getting stopped. But now, lately, it’s been quiet.” DAVELLE TAYLOR 27-YEAR-OLD NEW YORKER, ON STOP-AND-FRISK IN JAMAICA, QUEENS