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Does New York's "stop and frisk" policy violate unreasonable search?

TimCallahan

Philosopher
T
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Mar 11, 2009
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A higher court ruling has over turned a recent judgment banning the NY police policy of randomly stopping and frisking people. On the face of it, this policy seems to me to be an egregious violation of the fourth amendment's prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure. However, living at the opposite end of the country, in southern California, I haven't been following the details of this story, nor am I knowledgable about the details and special issues with respect to New York City. I'm interested in what others in this forum think about this issue.
 
What the court actually does I believe, is block the changes to the SAF program as decided by Judge Shira A. Scheindlin. The ruling is not so much on the issue of stop-and-frisk as on the judge herself.


The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, “ran afoul” of the judiciary’s code of conduct by compromising the “appearance of impartiality surrounding this litigation.” The panel criticized how she had steered the lawsuit to her courtroom when it was filed nearly six years ago.

The ruling effectively puts off a battery of changes that Judge Scheindlin, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, had ordered for the Police Department. It postpones the operations of the monitor who was asked to oversee reforms of the stop-and-frisk practices, which Judge Scheindlin had said violated the constitutional rights of minorities. Link
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Eta - I could be wrong but I think this ruling will allow SAF to continue until this issue is settled. That might be a while because it sounds like the lawsuit opposing SAF will have to be retried.
 
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I think Scheindlin's ruling was a steaming pile of horse manure. She seems to think searching people on the street without warrants or even reasonable suspicion is just fine so long as it doesn't disproportionately affect minorities.
 
It's an asinine and unprecedented rebuke of an otherwise good decision on Scheindlin's part.

Of course stop-and-frisk is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The searches are unreasonable. There are no warrants. There is no probably cause. BTW, 4th Amendment text:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
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But in NYC apparently cops can just pat you down on the street because you're black or hispanic. And Bloomberg et al thinks that's probable cause.

My recommendation to blacks and hispanics is to dig down into old subway tunnels and storm drains and only travel therein. If you actually travel on the street, some cop is going to arrest you for no reason for his quota.
 
Dragoonster said:
It's an asinine and unprecedented rebuke of an otherwise good decision on Scheindlin's part.

Of course stop-and-frisk is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The searches are unreasonable. There are no warrants. There is no probably cause. BTW, 4th Amendment text:



But in NYC apparently cops can just pat you down on the street because you're black or hispanic. And Bloomberg et al thinks that's probable cause.

My recommendation to blacks and hispanics is to dig down into old subway tunnels and storm drains and only travel therein. If you actually travel on the street, some cop is going to arrest you for no reason for his quota.
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I agree that SAF as it is used is wrong, but if she did use personal bias to not only make her ruling but to also have the case before her, that is also a violation of due process. If we let that slide, then why are we up in arms about SAF to begin with?

due process either matters or it doesn't.
 
mikedenk said:
Personally I'm a bit torn on the issue.

I read an interesting article from the pro-NYPD side yesterday: Courts v. Cops
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When SAF is done properly -- for cause, the police treating people decently -- everyone seems to support it. It's when the police start acting like bullies that people begin to resent it.
 
Donal said:
I agree that SAF as it is used is wrong, but if she did use personal bias to not only make her ruling but to also have the case before her, that is also a violation of due process. If we let that slide, then why are we up in arms about SAF to begin with?

due process either matters or it doesn't.
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Agreed generally. I don't think though that a Judge assigning herself a case is as obvious a violation of Due Process as millions of blacks and other minorities have experienced. I don't see the 4th Amendment for example being applicable to her actions. More a court procedure violation.

BTW, if her bias was "adhering to the Constitution", I also don't see any problem. Not sure from the article what her "bias" was supposed to be. Granted though I'm currently drunk and so may have immediately forgotten what that bias was.
 
newyorkguy said:
When SAF is done properly -- for cause, the police treating people decently -- everyone seems to support it. It's when the police start acting like bullies that people begin to resent it.
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You don't need SAF if you have cause.

SAF is always unconstitutional by definition, regardless of the races involved.
 
WildCat said:
You don't need SAF if you have cause.

SAF is always unconstitutional by definition, regardless of the races involved.
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I'm in complete agreement with you on this. I'm sure there are occasions when SAF has prevented serious crimes. However, we can't afford to abridge the Constitution for the sake of expediency.
 
The prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure is no longer in effect in the U.S.A.

IXP
 
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WildCat said:
You don't need SAF if you have cause.

SAF is always unconstitutional by definition, regardless of the races involved.
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The SAF tactic in New York City is a guideline instituted to require (mostly) uniformed patrol officers to seek out suspicious persons in high-crime areas and -- if the officers can identify a probable cause -- to frisk them for weapons or contraband. It was not supposed to ignore constitutional restrictions on illegal searches. It was supposed to be a way to get cops to be more proactive. So that they wouldn't just do routine patrol, they would focus on people on the street and actively look for suspicious persons and then stop them. Then, if they had grounds to lawfully do so -- and that was considered important -- search them. It was also expanded to put street crime units or task forces in neighborhoods with a lot of violent crime to try and reduce that activity by specifically looking for and stopping people who seemed to be suspicious.

Part of the rationale was to reduce the number of persons carrying illegal weapons -- especially handguns -- because they would have no way of knowing when or if they were going to be stopped.

As mikedenk demonstrated in the news link he provided, one of the troubling facts of the lawsuit is, some of the parties to it are persons who have extensive criminal backgrounds.

In a city like Chicago, where gang violence and illegal guns is epidemic in certain neighborhoods, SAF could probably be a valuable tool in making the streets safer.
 
WildCat said:
You don't need SAF if you have cause.

SAF is always unconstitutional by definition, regardless of the races involved.
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I would agree if you have just cause you don't need stop and frisk if you do not then it should be unconstitutional.

The argument I always hear in favor is it has cut down on crime so much and saves so many lives. Maybe we should just model ourselves after a country like Iran or North Korea where I believe violent crime is much lower.
 
eeyore1954 said:
...

The argument I always hear in favor is it has cut down on crime so much and saves so many lives. Maybe we should just model ourselves after a country like Iran or North Korea where I believe violent crime is much lower.
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I don't know (or especially care) about North Korea. North Korea might have less crime but they also have less food. I don't know how Iran's crime rate compares with the U.S. (one reason being I don't think you can really trust crime statistics released by the Iranian government), but Iran is supposed to be undergoing something of a crime wave.

Police commanders and other officials blame government mismanagement of the economy — which they say has caused a rise in unemployment and inflation — for the increase in crime. International economic sanctions have aggravated problems, many here say, leading to a record gap between rich and poor in Iran.

While no official statistics are publicly available, officials report a rise in violent crimes, mostly perpetrated by young men attacking their victims with knives to get money and other valuables. Local news media report only a fraction of the episodes, but at social gatherings of middle-class Iranians — the usual targets — horrific stories of theft, kidnapping, rape and home burglaries abound.

“Two young men entered my house two weeks ago and beat me senseless,” said Manijeh, 54, a homemaker from north Tehran, a more affluent section of the city. The intruders bound her arms and legs and beat her, asking for the location of the safe, she said. “But we don’t have a safe,” said Manijeh, who declined to reveal her surname out of fear that the burglars would return. They stole her car, ransacked her home and took nearly everything inside, she said.

“Our city has become completely unsafe,” said Manije...Link
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I was just being facetious but my point was we could really save lives and cut down on violent crime by cutting down on our freedoms and rights.
 
eeyore1954 said:
I was just being facetious but my point was we could really save lives and cut down on violent crime by cutting down on our freedoms and rights.
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Ooo Ooo I know or cutting down on our population? Time to kill everyone to prevent crime? I told them it would work, and they thought I was crazy . . .
 
eeyore1954 said:
I was just being facetious but my point was we could really save lives and cut down on violent crime by cutting down on our freedoms and rights.
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It's very true. If you mandated everyone staying indoors unless they had papers and shot everyone breaking curfew, I think there would probably be a drop in crime.

One or two people seem to think that you're seriously making that suggestion. It didn't seem like you were to me.
 
WildCat said:
I think Scheindlin's ruling was a steaming pile of horse manure. She seems to think searching people on the street without warrants or even reasonable suspicion is just fine so long as it doesn't disproportionately affect minorities.
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QFT. I hated her ruling so much. And De Blasio is just going to have someone "oversee" it.
 
Puppycow said:
Is that what he promised? I thought he promised to end SAF.
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Bill de Blasio has not promised to end SAF. Judge Scheindlin's decision would require a court-appointed monitor, "to have someone oversee it" and de Blasio supports that. He says if he is elected he would drop the city's appeal of the Scheindlin decision. This is what his campaign site says about SAF, it seems purposefully vague to me:

Fighting For Meaningful Stop-and-Frisk Reform. When communities in New York feel that the police officers are antagonists rather than partners in keeping their neighborhoods safe, it puts residents and officers at risk. Bill de Blasio has pushed for real reforms in stop-and-frisk by organizing communities and calling on Mayor Bloomberg to immediately end the overuse and abuse of this tactic. That’s why he has called for new leadership at the NYPD, an inspector general, and a strong racial profiling bill. Link
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TimCallahan said:
A higher court ruling has over turned a recent judgment banning the NY police policy of randomly stopping and frisking people. On the face of it, this policy seems to me to be an egregious violation of the fourth amendment's prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure. However, living at the opposite end of the country, in southern California, I haven't been following the details of this story, nor am I knowledgable about the details and special issues with respect to New York City. I'm interested in what others in this forum think about this issue.
Click to expand...

First thing - I have no issue with a Terry stop. In that particular case, linked in a previous message, two guys were continually walking back and forth on a single block, peered into a storefront window each time that passed it, and then stopped and whispered with one another. As some point, a third guy walked up and started conferring with them. When the cop walked up and frisked them, one of them was found with a gun. In that case, it's pretty likely that the cop stopped an armed robbery.

Unfortunately, when you read about Stop-and-Frisk under Bloomberg, you always end up with stories about some 13 year old kid being...well, attacked by cops while walking to school, or this guy who was attacked because he looked at a cop car. In other words, we're discussing police rolling up on people and harassing them while they're just doing ordinary things, which is very different than a Terry stop above. This happens, and always happened, throughout the US, but the key difference here is that it's apparently official NYPD policy, as decided by Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, with both men openly proclaiming that it should happen *more often* to minorities, despite it's astonishingly low, 0.2% (rounding up to the nearest .05%) success rate of finding guns on minorities.

As far as the recent ruling go, it's worth noting that many people outside of the judiciary have recognized the problem. The presumed next mayor, Nick De Blasio, has vowed to reform the program until it complies with the constitution, and the NYC council has passed, and overturned Bloomberg's veto of, city laws putting in place an independent monitor, and allowing residents who believe they've been racially profiled individually to sue the NYPD. How much these will help has yet to be seen, but they're both steps in the right direction.

So...yeah, count me as "against". It is a clear violation of basic rights. It's also both a waste of police manpower, and both infuriating and disruptive for the victims. As an example, see the kid held up from school. And even putting all of that aside, it also creates contempt for the police. After all, if you have a problem, will you call up the guys who always have your back, or the guys that just randomly shove you around and molest you? It's no shock that when NYPD shot, say, Kimani Gray, and then claimed that he had a gun, the local residents didn't want to hear anything from them. That's the environment the NYPD created for themselves.
 
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newyorkguy said:
Bill de Blasio has not promised to end SAF. Judge Scheindlin's decision would require a court-appointed monitor, "to have someone oversee it" and de Blasio supports that. He says if he is elected he would drop the city's appeal of the Scheindlin decision. This is what his campaign site says about SAF, it seems purposefully vague to me:
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Court appointed monitors! Oh, joy! Several years ago, the public school our daughter was going to in Hollywood was ruled to be improperly racially integrated because it had only 33% "minority" groups, rather the required amount (36% IIRC). Not only were the Russian Jews, who had fled the Soviet Union because of discrimination, not considered a minority group, so also were Iranians and Arabs - also in the school - considered "other whites," hence not a minority. To institute a plan of forced busing between a triad of schools to make our school more integrated, lawyers from a legal firm was chosen as court appointed monitors.

Since nobody wanted our kids bused elsewhere, the school's advisory council proposed and alternative. Hobart school which was not part of the triad, was 100% African American. The advisory council suggested bussing some of their kids to our school to achieve the official racial balance. The court appointed monitors refused to even meet with the advisory council and even threatened to have members of the advisory council jailed for trespassing if they didn't leave their offices. The bussing could only be between member schools of the triad.

The court appointed monitors were rigid, high-handed and autocratic in their dealing with us plebs. They were not elected officials, nor even appointed by elected officials and were thus not accountable for any actions they took. So, they were not put under any legal constraint. While not really being part of the government, they had sweeping powers.

Busing ended at our school, Gardner Street School, when Selma Street School, which was not in the official triad, had an overflow of students, some of which had to be sent to our, less crowded, school. Since Selma was virtually 100% Hispanic, the addition of their students to our school made it officially integrated, and bussing stopped. This was essentially the same solution our advisory council initially sought.

I don't mean this to be a derailing. I simply cite this as an example of the potentially disastrous consequences of instituting court appointed monitors. I hate to think what it would be like to try to do police work with lawyers, potentially ignorant of the situation, second guessing one's actions.
 
Mumbles said:
First thing - I have no issue with a Terry stop. In that particular case, linked in a previous message, two guys were continually walking back and forth on a single block, peered into a storefront window each time that passed it, and then stopped and whispered with one another. As some point, a third guy walked up and started conferring with them. When the cop walked up and frisked them, one of them was found with a gun. In that case, it's pretty likely that the cop stopped an armed robbery.
Unfortunately, when you read about Stop-and-Frisk under Bloomberg, you always end up with stories about some 13 year old kid being...well, attacked by cops while walking to school, or this guy who was attacked because he looked at a cop car. In other words, we're discussing police rolling up on people and harassing them while they're just doing ordinary things, which is very different than a Terry stop above. This happens, and always happened, throughout the US, but the key difference here is that it's apparently official NYPD policy, as decided by Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, with both men openly proclaiming that it should happen *more often* to minorities, despite it's astonishingly low, 0.2% (rounding up to the nearest .05%) success rate of finding guns on minorities.

As far as the recent ruling go, it's worth noting that many people outside of the judiciary have recognized the problem. The presumed next mayor, Nick De Blasio, has vowed to reform the program until it complies with the constitution, and the NYC council has passed, and overturned Bloomberg's veto of, city laws putting in place an independent monitor, and allowing residents who believe they've been racially profiled individually to sue the NYPD. How much these will help has yet to be seen, but they're both steps in the right direction.

So...yeah, count me as "against". It is a clear violation of basic rights. It's also both a waste of police manpower, and both infuriating and disruptive for the victims. As an example, see the kid held up from school. And even putting all of that aside, it also creates contempt for the police. After all, if you have a problem, will you call up the guys who always have your back, or the guys that just randomly shove you around and molest you? It's no shock that when NYPD shot, say, Kimani Gray, and then claimed that he had a gun, the local residents didn't want to hear anything from them. That's the environment the NYPD created for themselves.
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The area I hilited in the above quote, sounds like a case in which the cop had probable cause to frisk the three. Thus, it should be reasonable to separate such a situation from random SAF. I agree with you that the NYPD has set itself up for a fall in such situations.
 
TimCallahan said:
The area I hilited in the above quote, sounds like a case in which the cop had probable cause to frisk the three. Thus, it should be reasonable to separate such a situation from random SAF. I agree with you that the NYPD has set itself up for a fall in such situations.
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The Warren Supreme Court disagrees with you, to some extent. In the Terry case, they found that it fell under "reasonable suspicion", rather than "probable cause". "reasonable suspicion" is a lower standard, but still constitutional.

But this is nitpicking, since many of the Stop-and-frisks under NYPD are simply for people walking down the street, exiting a apartment complex, and the like. In other words, they meet neither standard.
 
eeyore1954 said:
I would agree if you have just cause you don't need stop and frisk if you do not then it should be unconstitutional.

The argument I always hear in favor is it has cut down on crime so much and saves so many lives. Maybe we should just model ourselves after a country like Iran or North Korea where I believe violent crime is much lower.
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With NSA, DHS and out-of-control IRS imo we've chosen Staci ala East Germany.
 
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