The Procedure Of Stop And Frisk By Police

Stop & Frisk is a procedure done by police officers to search for weapons or any items that can cause harm to others. If the officer has probable cause and feels like the person is going to commit a crime or has a weapon, then they will go to the person to do a stop & frisk. The officer stops the person and runs his/her hands over the person’s outer clothes to see if they do in fact have a weapon. The search is supposed to be done very carefully and lightly to not overstep any boundaries or rights. Stop & frisk is a momentary thing and can be lead to an arrest if the officer finds any weapons or items of harm on the person. Police have been using this procedure for years, but they were doing this procedure in a very disorderly way. It was
I have a cousin who is a cop and he explains to me the procedure of stop, question and frisk and how it should be. He tells me that in certain situation things can happen so fast and you make think you did something right, but looking back he wished it done the frisk softer or in a different way. I understand that police officers have to figure out a situation in a very quick manner, so there way of doing the frisk might not be the best. On the other hand, cops stopped my brother and they questioned him about smoking marijuana and asked if he had any weapons. Now, they were doing everything by the books until they decided to frisk and was completely aggressive with him. They tore his clothes, pushed him to a wall and overpowered him in a sense. My brother is a big guy, so maybe they were scared he could attack them, but he was willing to cooperate and did everything they were saying. If done right and in a orderly and proper way, stop, question & frisk can be a very beneficial thing and can stop criminals for harming someone or a group of people. However, there are bad apples in any field of work. Some officers might not handle the situation appropriately because they let the power get to their head or they might not be able to think on their feet fast enough and cause people to stop this procedure. It doesn’t help that the media is displaying cops harassing people and causing people to die because of trying to hard to stop & frisk them. There needs to be a healthy balance and train the officers to better handle certain stop & frisk situations. Furthermore, the community needs to be a bit more understand and it is hard because of awful the media portrays this procedure, but they need to do some research and put themselves in the cops’ shoes to see how they would handle