One recent morning, Victoria Gonzalez was talking to a co-worker at the Highbridge Community Life Center Storefront when something happening just outside the front door caught her attention: Three uniformed police officers jumped out of an unmarked vehicle, Gonzalez said, and approached two women who appeared to be in their late 20s or early 30s. The officers, all male, proceeded to pat down and frisk the two women in plain sight at the corner of West 164th Street and Ogden Avenue, before ultimately allowing them to continue on their journey.

“They’re supposed to have a woman cop when they’re dealing with women,” Gonzalez said. Then she tried to envision how she would feel if she were in their position. “Scared,” Gonzalez said. “Embarrassed. I would just be confused.”

When informed of the reported incident, Inspector James Essig, commander of the 44th Precinct, said it was not objectionable for male police officers to stop and frisk females. “That’s fine. That’s no problem,” Essig said. “An officer is stopping and frisking someone because they believe they have a weapon. A female [officer]- by all means- if they have time to do it. ”

Currently, the New York Police Department (NYPD) is under citywide scrutiny for its stop-and-frisk procedures. According to a study released earlier this year initiated by the NYPD and conducted by the Rand Corporation, officers in New York City stopped more than 500,000 pedestrians in 2006 on suspicion of a crime. Nearly 90 percent of those stopped were nonwhite (53 percent Black, 29 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Asian, 4 percent race unknown). Remarkably, the study also pointed out that, “In 90 percent of the stops, the detained individual is neither arrested nor issued a summons.”
The New York City council recently acquired data from the NYPD about stop-and-frisks, and is in the process of interpreting this data.

The Rand Corporation report, entitled, “Analysis of Racial Disparities in the New York Police Department’s Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices,” offers several explanations other than bias on the part of officers for wide racial disparities in pedestrian stops. These explanations include the fact that “many of the precincts with a large allocation of patrol officers also have large nonwhite populations,” and the greater statistical likelihood of nonwhites matching descriptions of crime suspects.

“While we ultimately found some evidence of unequal treatment across racial groups,” the report concludes, “our analysis estimates that the problem is not of a massive scale, but rather one that police management can address with effective supervision, monitoring of police activity, and effective interventions when problems are identified.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) strongly criticized the report. “No matter how much the statistics are massaged, the fact still remains that in 2006, more than half a million New Yorkers were stopped and frisked by police, about 90 percent of those people were engaged in no unlawful activity, and 86 percent of those people were black or Latino,” said executive director Donna Lieberman in a November 20 press release.

“It’s clear by their own language that the report’s authors are trying to explain away the racial disparities that arise over and over again.”
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne defended the department’s tactics, arguing that the reason so few reported stop-and-frisks result in arrest is because officers must stop several individuals that fit a suspect description when as they are investigating a crime.

“If police received a report of a gunpoint robbery of a bodega, and of the gunman as a man in his 20s running northbound on Webster Avenue, say, in dark clothing; ten individuals may be stopped and briefly questioned because they fit the general description,” Browne said in an email to the Horizon. “But only one is eventually arrested. Police must then file reports required by the City Council on the 11 individuals we briefly stopped but we didn’t arrest.”

Essig similarly insisted that stop-and-frisks remained both necessary and justified.
“The purpose of a stop and frisk isn’t that a crime has occurred,” Essig said. “Based on a description, a crime might have occurred. But the officer may have seen something suspicious.” Essig said it was the job of law enforcement to investigate such suspicions.
But local elected officials see the NYPD’s stop- and- frisk tactics as a major concern. “It remains a very serious problem in the community,” said Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo. “I think when you look at the overall policy the police department functions from, it pretty much is what the heart of the problem is.”

Jim Fairbanks, chief of staff for Councilmember Helen Diane Foster, agreed. “I think the police have the belief that this is a crime-ridden neighborhood. Therefore to do their job, they make some assumptions that all young people, Black and Latino males living in a crime-ridden neighborhood, may be committing a crime,” Fairbanks said. “So to rid their precinct of crime and make it safe for everyone, they have developed a policy of stop and frisk, where the vast, vast, vast majority of people are not involved in anything.”
Foster has recently held two community forums seeking to inform local residents, particularly youth, about their rights during stop-and-frisks. Fairbanks said that people who are stopped and frisked should not give any information beyond their name and address, and (in the case of youth) their parents’ phone number for police to call.

“They should cooperate, be friendly, but say, ‘No, I’ve been told that I should not say anything until I see a lawyer,’” Fairbanks said. “If the officer tries to stop and frisk them, they should cooperate, but they should say, ‘I object to you frisking me and searching me. That’s a violation of my 4th and 5th Amendment rights,’” Fairbanks added, referring to the Constitutional ban on illegal search and seizure (4th amendment) and protection against self-incrimination (5th).

Gonzalez said that, within Highbridge, the stop-and-frisk incident she recently witnessed was hardly unique. “If you go down Anderson [Avenue], you’ll see something like that,” Gonzalez said. “If you go down 165th , you’ll see something like that.”

East of the Grand Concourse, in Morrisania, activists expressed similar sentiments. Rafael Mutis, coordinator for the 7 Neighborhood Action Partnership Network- an organization that advocates for the repeal of the state’s Rockefeller Drug Laws requiring lengthy mandatory minimum sentences- said that widespread drug use in society was used as a pretext to stop and frisk residents-of certain neighborhoods and not others.

“They don’t go after people on Wall Street, where there’s a daily snowstorm,” he said, referring to his perception of high cocaine use rates in that area.
According to the Rand Corporation study, drug-related offenses constituted the fourth most-common suspected crime cited by police when stopping pedestrians in 2006,. (Weapons, robbery, and trespassing, in that order, were the three most common).

Mutis also argued that stop-and-frisks often intensify in neighborhoods, like the South Bronx, that are in the midst of gentrification, as law enforcement becomes increasingly motivated to protect wealthier white individuals moving into a neighborhood at the expense of low-income residents of color who already live there. “After awhile, when you’re constantly harassed,” Mutis said, “you think, ‘Well, Florida looks pretty good.’”

So what recourse is available to those who feel they have been unfairly stopped-and-frisked? “That’s the 64-million dollar question,” Mutis replied.
Fairbanks said he often directed young residents in particular to organize meetings around the issue. He said another option for them was to file a complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) a city agency which reviews allegations of police misconduct, and whose 15 members are chosen by the city police commissioner, the city council, and the mayor. (Complaints can be filed by dialing 311)

However, Fairbanks said that youth seldom take the step of filing a complaint.

“They’re young people and they’ve never heard of the CCRB,” Fairbanks said. “ My goodness, they’re just going to high school. They’re interested in extra-curricular activities, and boyfriend and girlfriend, and shopping.”