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http://news.yahoo.com/court-blocks-ruling-ny-police-stop-frisk-policy-200407179.html

Court blocks ruling on NY police stop-frisk policy.
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
1.NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked a judge's order requiring changes to the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk program and removed the judge from the case.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the decisions of Judge Shira Scheindlin will be stayed pending the outcome of an appeal by the city.

The judge had ruled in August the city violated the Constitution in the way it carried out its program of stopping and questioning people.

The city appealed her findings and her remedial orders, including a decision to assign a monitor to help the police department changes its policy and training program associated with it.

The appeals court heard arguments Tuesday on the requested stay.

The appeals court said the judge needed to be removed from the case because she ran afoul of the code of conduct for U.S. judges by compromising the necessity for a judge to avoid the appearance of partiality in part because of a series of media interviews and public statements responding publicly to criticism of the court.

The judge had ruled that police officers violated the civil rights of tens of thousands of people by wrongly targeting black and Hispanic men with its stop-and-frisk program. She appointed an outside monitor to oversee major changes, including reforms in policies, training and supervision, and she ordered a pilot program to test body-worn cameras in some precincts where most stops occur.

The stop-and-frisk tactic has been criticized by a number of civil rights advocates.

This is going to get interesting.

I'm not sure how I feel about the law myself. I've heard it's been directly responsible for a significant drop in crime rates. But it does strike me as a pretty big infringment on the 4th Amendment.

 djones520 wrote:
This is going to get interesting.

I'm not sure how I feel about the law myself. I've heard it's been directly responsible for a significant drop in crime rates. But it does strike me as a pretty big infringment on the 4th Amendment.

Trading liberty for security blah blah quote quote

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
This is going to get interesting.

I'm not sure how I feel about the law myself. I've heard it's been directly responsible for a significant drop in crime rates. But it does strike me as a pretty big infringment on the 4th Amendment.

Trading liberty for security blah blah quote quote

Well, apparently the question is if it's a violation of the 4th. That's what the whole fight is over.

 djones520 wrote:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
This is going to get interesting.

I'm not sure how I feel about the law myself. I've heard it's been directly responsible for a significant drop in crime rates. But it does strike me as a pretty big infringment on the 4th Amendment.

Trading liberty for security blah blah quote quote

Well, apparently the question is if it's a violation of the 4th. That's what the whole fight is over.

Ah, weird. In my head it seems like a clear violation, but I guess if there's a debate than that's just my opinion

Yeah, my gut tells me so as well, but them lawyers, their canny at making arguments that make no sense to anyone but themselves.

This should be all sorts of fun before the case is resolved

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, my gut tells me so as well, but them lawyers, their canny at making arguments that make no sense to anyone but themselves.

We got some folks like that in YMDC...

Bloomberg approves of it. That's how you know it's unconstitutional nanny state bs.

Seaward has a point actually.

The blanket use of S&F is unconstitutional on its face. There is a minimum standard for such a thing that has to be met first.

 Frazzled wrote:
Seaward has a point actually.

The blanket use of S&F is unconstitutional on its face. There is a minimum standard for such a thing that has to be met first.

Which, according to the state of New York, is looking even remotely suspicious apparently.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Seaward has a point actually.

The blanket use of S&F is unconstitutional on its face. There is a minimum standard for such a thing that has to be met first.

Which, according to the state of New York, is looking even remotely suspicious apparently.

And then we can blame the victim, because it's obviously the way they dressed that made them look suspicious!

(200th post!)

Actually dress can be a part of that determination.

Whats the prevailing justification used to support stop in frisk? Is it basically "ends justify the means?"

 cincydooley wrote:
Whats the prevailing justification used to support stop in frisk? Is it basically "ends justify the means?"

You are aware that stop and frisk existed long before this whole "scandal", right?
Stop and Frisk was initially upheld by Terry v. Ohio. It's why it's called a "Terry stop".

The prevailing justification for a "stop and frisk" is that there is a reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity to justify a brief detainment and cursory search, but not enough for an actual arrest.
The basic jist of it is if you're a police officer and you see someone walking on a hot day with a heavy coat on near the scene of a reported bank robbery where there were individuals wearing masks and jackets there's a "reasonable suspicion" that the individual in question was involved and you can stop them to do what amounts to a patdown.

You do not have enough to necessarily arrest the person but anything discovered incidental to the patdown can be used to justify an arrest. Caveat is that the items discovered must immediately be recognizable--so something like a hairpin discovered on a man with a buzzcut near a reported break-in is not necessarily going to be justifiable as a reason to arrest the person on suspicion of the break-in.
Also note that some states/jurisdictions have Terry stops requiring you to identify yourself to an officer and they've been held as constitutional and not in violation of the 4th/5th Amendments.

The problem with New York's stop and frisk is that there have been numerous, numerous, numerous reports of the officers in question being told to focus solely on specific ethnic groups to the point where it goes to racial profiling.

Edit note: These may not be the greatest examples to give, but they are ones that were used for a few little scenarios for a course on administration of a law enforcement agency.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Whats the prevailing justification used to support stop in frisk? Is it basically "ends justify the means?"

You are aware that stop and frisk existed long before this whole "scandal", right?
Stop and Frisk was initially upheld by Terry v. Ohio. It's why it's called a "Terry stop".

The name derives from Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968),[2] in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that police may briefly detain a person whom they reasonably suspect is involved in criminal activity

Being a human being outside isn't enough to allow a Terry Stop. Stop and Frisk kept the first party, where you briefly detain someone, but leaves out the latter, where you have to have reasonable belief.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Whats the prevailing justification used to support stop in frisk? Is it basically "ends justify the means?"

You are aware that stop and frisk existed long before this whole "scandal", right?
Stop and Frisk was initially upheld by Terry v. Ohio. It's why it's called a "Terry stop".
.

Knew it existed, but didn't know that much about "Terry Stops."

Thanks for that.

 Ahtman wrote:

Being a human being outside isn't enough to allow a Terry Stop. Stop and Frisk kept the first party, where you briefly detain someone, but leaves out the latter, where you have to have reasonable belief.

They have reasonable belief, that people of certain ethnicity are more likely to be criminals .

Which is of course the core of the problem at hand.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Whats the prevailing justification used to support stop in frisk? Is it basically "ends justify the means?"

You are aware that stop and frisk existed long before this whole "scandal", right?
Stop and Frisk was initially upheld by Terry v. Ohio. It's why it's called a "Terry stop".

The name derives from Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968),[2] in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that police may briefly detain a person whom they reasonably suspect is involved in criminal activity

Being a human being outside isn't enough to allow a Terry Stop. Stop and Frisk kept the first party, where you briefly detain someone, but leaves out the latter, where you have to have reasonable belief.

Did you not read the rest of my post or just go on from the first part?

"Stop and Frisk" existed long before New York's "Stop and Frisk" program(which is technically "Stop, Question, and Frisk").

As I mentioned though the whole thing about New York's implementation of the policy is that the department is purportedly (there is proof of certain stations and supervisors using it, but not necessarily a department wide implementation) using race as the sole driving criteria behind this.

Additionally a large part of the problem is that they are using the paperwork for stops as a quota to meet for their officers.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Whats the prevailing justification used to support stop in frisk? Is it basically "ends justify the means?"

You are aware that stop and frisk existed long before this whole "scandal", right?
Stop and Frisk was initially upheld by Terry v. Ohio. It's why it's called a "Terry stop".

The prevailing justification for a "stop and frisk" is that there is a reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity to justify a brief detainment and cursory search, but not enough for an actual arrest.
The basic jist of it is if you're a police officer and you see someone walking on a hot day with a heavy coat on near the scene of a reported bank robbery where there were individuals wearing masks and jackets there's a "reasonable suspicion" that the individual in question was involved and you can stop them to do what amounts to a patdown.

You do not have enough to necessarily arrest the person but anything discovered incidental to the patdown can be used to justify an arrest. Caveat is that the items discovered must immediately be recognizable--so something like a hairpin discovered on a man with a buzzcut near a reported break-in is not necessarily going to be justifiable as a reason to arrest the person on suspicion of the break-in.
Also note that some states/jurisdictions have Terry stops requiring you to identify yourself to an officer and they've been held as constitutional and not in violation of the 4th/5th Amendments.

The problem with New York's stop and frisk is that there have been numerous, numerous, numerous reports of the officers in question being told to focus solely on specific ethnic groups to the point where it goes to racial profiling.

Edit note: These may not be the greatest examples to give, but they are ones that were used for a few little scenarios for a course on administration of a law enforcement agency.

What Kanluwen said. The argument is that the NYPD has effectively been searching all persons in specific areas whenever they cross paths, regardless of cause.
Thats the definition of authoritarian state. However I have no proof for that actually being the case.

 d-usa wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

Being a human being outside isn't enough to allow a Terry Stop. Stop and Frisk kept the first party, where you briefly detain someone, but leaves out the latter, where you have to have reasonable belief.

They have reasonable belief, that people of certain ethnicity are more likely to be criminals .

Which is of course the core of the problem at hand.

Given that a number of officers have come forward saying they do not agree with the policies, I think the larger issue at hand for the actual enforcement is the whole quota metric for stop and frisk paperwork.

If officers are being told "You have to stop and frisk X number of individuals of African American descent and Y number of Hispanics or you could lose your job", they might do the cursory stop and frisk just to fill out the paperwork.
Wikipedia puts the number at "90% of those stopped are let go", which kind of supports that idea.

Don't forget Middle Easterners.....

Guilty until proven white isnt the best way for the police to work...

 djones520 wrote:
I'm not sure how I feel about the law myself. I've heard it's been directly responsible for a significant drop in crime rates. But it does strike me as a pretty big infringment on the 4th Amendment.

I think it's difficult to directly correlate stop and frisk to the drop in the crime rate - after all, plenty of jurisdictions did not implement stop and frisk, and have seen similar drops in crime. But it's irrelevant anyway since, I agree with you on the latter - I think they took something with a constitutional basis and implemented it in such a fashion it no longer is such. The efficacy of an infringing program is irrelevant, I think.

By the NYPD's own reports, between 88 and 90% of the people stopped and frisked in the last 11 years were innocent and no arrest was made. This is, by definition, poor police work with regards to "reasonable suspicion".

Is there a standard metric for the acceptable level of valid arrests from stop & frisk?

I mean, to make an arrest in 10% of cases sounds all right to me, though of course they may be arresting most of the subjects for resisting the stop & frisk operation.

In the UK we used to call it "suss" for suspicion. It got banned in the 80s because it was causing such racial tension that riots resulted. They brought it back in the 2000s and it is causing racial tension again, resulting in the riots of 2011.

 Frazzled wrote:
Actually dress can be a part of that determination.

Note to self: Do not wear black leather trench, gloves, and fedora next time in NYC..... also remove knives and cutlass from same.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there a standard metric for the acceptable level of valid arrests from stop & frisk?

I mean, to make an arrest in 10% of cases sounds all right to me, though of course they may be arresting most of the subjects for resisting the stop & frisk operation.

There isn't a metric, no. It's subjective. However, are you considering the scale when you say 10% seems OK? We're talking about approximately 550,000 innocent people a year who are hassled and then charged with nothing.

550,000 people hassled might be a price worth paying to catch 55,000 criminals. It sounds like a lot of bad people. I am ignoring the downside of the racial tension that results of course.

As a society we should be able to come to some idea of the acceptable level of inconvenience.

Supposing 20% of the people stopped got legitimately arrested. Ought it rather to be 80%?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
550,000 people hassled might be a price worth paying to catch 55,000 criminals. It sounds like a lot of bad people. I am ignoring the downside of the racial tension that results of course.

As a society we should be able to come to some idea of the acceptable level of inconvenience.

Supposing 20% of the people stopped got legitimately arrested. Ought it rather to be 80%?

I think the slippery slope argument to that would be "where do we stop just randomly searching people". Would it be okay to search cars just because they are driving if you end up arresting 10%? Would it be okay to search houses if you end up arresting 10% of homeowners? I know the slippery slope argument is a slippery slope argument and should be taken with a grain of salt, but the thought is there.

I don't have any actual numbers handy, but I also wonder how many of those 10% arrested end up actually being charged with something and then how many of those actually end up with any sort of conviction. I think the actual number of "criminals convicted" will be lower than the 10% arrested, which should probably make us think about this setup even more.

[insert Benjamin Franklin quote]

But of course that is the trade-off we always face: what is the acceptable ratio of criminals caught vs innocents being troubled vs constitutional somethings.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
550,000 people hassled might be a price worth paying to catch 55,000 criminals. It sounds like a lot of bad people. I am ignoring the downside of the racial tension that results of course.

As a society we should be able to come to some idea of the acceptable level of inconvenience.

Supposing 20% of the people stopped got legitimately arrested. Ought it rather to be 80%?

If that were the criteria then all police check points would be done away with. Drunk drivers, car thieves etc would never be picked up in random checks.

As for the downside in racial tension, if one ethnic group is overrepresented in crime then it is up to that group to become more law abiding, not for the police to give them an easy ride to satisfy some politically correct mandate.