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Living in a Stop and Frisk World

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Living in a Stop and Frisk World
Living in a Stop and Frisk World

Today around 1,400 citizens in New York City will have their constitutional rights violated through an unlawful search. The legal term for the controversial search is stop and frisk. The New York Police Department continues to pressure its officers to stop and frisk citizens, and these situations are happening at an alarmingly increasing rate. For the New York Police Department, it seems to be a game of numbers as they continue to force their officers to conduct stop and frisks through quotas (Gangi). While New York City has seen a decrease in crime over Mayor Bloomberg's term, it is difficult to directly correlate the stop and frisk policy with these decreases. This unlawful practice needs to stop as it is a controversial practice that many people believe is a direct violation of the human rights inherent for citizens. Furthermore, it could turn New York City into a police state.

If an officer does not fill his monthly quota of stops, summons or arrests, he is subject to discipline (Gangi). Often, this discipline will leave a unsettling paper trail behind the officer and prevent them from being able to move up in the ranking. This commonality has been explained by many New York Police Department officers confidentially in, “The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD's Stop-and-Frisk.” Last year, nearly 686,000 people were stopped on the street; a startling increase from only 97,000 in 2002. This amounts to a 600% increase in stops in less than ten years, and searches will continue to increase as the police department tries to keep these numbers up every year (Gangi). Factually speaking, the number has increased every single year since Mayor Bloomberg took office (Long). Crime is down, but can it accurately be attributed to an increase of stop and frisks? Stop and frisk can not be directly and certainly not solely attributed to the decrease of crime. Additionally, stop and frisk is highly subject to racial
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