Pubdate: Thu, 11 Nov 2010
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Sean Gardiner

POLICE STOPS FALL SLIGHTLY

The number of times New York City police officers stopped, questioned
and sometimes frisked people dropped slightly in the third quarter
from a year earlier, but was up slightly in the first nine months
compared with a year earlier.

Police filled out 137,301 "Stop, Question and Frisk" reports, known as
250s, between July and the end of September, according to statistics
provided by the NYPD to the City Council on Wednesday. That number is
down about 0.4% compared with the third quarter of 2009. The number
resulting in an arrest or a summons-8% and 7%, respectively-was up
slightly from a year earlier when 6% of the stops resulted in arrests
and 7% resulted in summonses.

During the latest third quarter, a law went into effect that limits
the NYPD to keeping electronic database information on only those who
are arrested or given a summons as a result of as stop. Previously,
the NYPD had been keeping the information from all 250 reports in the
database, whether the person stopped was charged or not.

It's believed that the law forced the NYPD to purge more than a
million names and other identifying information from that electronic
database, although the paper forms themselves are still kept.

"Once again we have another quarter with more than 100,000 stops of
innocent people," Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the
New York Civil Liberties Union. "The only good news here is that the
NYPD can no longer put their names and addresses in its criminal
investigation database."

The racial breakdown of the stops made in the third quarter remained
basically the same: Blacks were subjects of 56% of the stops,
Hispanics 31% and whites 10%.

Civil rights advocates have argued these numbers show a racial bias
because they are disproportionate to the city's racial population breakdown.

Police officials have countered that the stops are in line with the
descriptions of crime suspects.
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