Stop And Frisk Essay
“Stop and Frisk” “Stop and Frisk” has been a very controversial method of policing over the last few years in New York city because of its associations with racial profiling. It has been used as a tool for the government to attempt to reduce crime in a preemptive way by using reasonable suspicion to stop, question, search, and if necessary, detain any citizen the officer chooses. Statistically, almost 90% of stop and frisk suspects in New York city were found to have nothing incriminating and were promptly released. It also had little to no impact on reducing crime and murder in the city of New York. However, it impacted the the rights citizens felt like they had because it instituted a form of social control at the hands of the government.
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It was created with the best intentions in mind. However, sociologically, the surveillance creates a divide in the community that it tries to protect. The social and media portrayals of criminals causes this system to fail. Police officers instinctively have the same perceptions, even though they are statistically wrong. Being forced to rely on these false perceptions with stop and frisk creates a sense of distrust in the community. The idea behind stop and frisk is honorable if the bias and preconceptions of who a criminal is dismissed. If an officer can effectively notice who is engaging in suspicious activity without taking skin color, gender, or the clothes someone is wearing into account of their judgements, the system might just work. However it is impossible to eliminate those factors because perception is reality. Perception is knowledge. Whether that knowledge is accurate or not, how a person perceives a situation is the knowledge he/she will use to act for a position of power. Unfortunately, as shown with stop and frisk, it is difficult to determine the difference between false perceptions and reality and mixing those up can result in catastrophic divides in
It was created with the best intentions in mind. However, sociologically, the surveillance creates a divide in the community that it tries to protect. The social and media portrayals of criminals causes this system to fail. Police officers instinctively have the same perceptions, even though they are statistically wrong. Being forced to rely on these false perceptions with stop and frisk creates a sense of distrust in the community. The idea behind stop and frisk is honorable if the bias and preconceptions of who a criminal is dismissed. If an officer can effectively notice who is engaging in suspicious activity without taking skin color, gender, or the clothes someone is wearing into account of their judgements, the system might just work. However it is impossible to eliminate those factors because perception is reality. Perception is knowledge. Whether that knowledge is accurate or not, how a person perceives a situation is the knowledge he/she will use to act for a position of power. Unfortunately, as shown with stop and frisk, it is difficult to determine the difference between false perceptions and reality and mixing those up can result in catastrophic divides in