In these days of terrorism, then yes I agree...people should be stopped and searched if there's any reason at all for the police to be suspicious. This isn't a new thing.. as teens in the 70's, we would as a group just hang around the city centre in the evenings either at disco's , or just hanging around, doing daft things like going to the biggest train station terminal and having our photos taken in the booths.. not causing trouble but just being teens.. not bothering anyone.. yet the police would routinely stop and search us.. not one of us had a criminal record or had been in trouble with the law, we were just a bunch of white, young teens, and we'd be searched, and if we had a metal comb and some of us carried them just because it was a comb it was taken from us as something that could be used as a potential weapon... it enraged the hell out of us, but we wouldn't dare speak back to an officer.. The public want to be protected from terrorism, random stabbings and shootings...yet if white people much less any other race were stopped and frisked as we were way back in the early 70's..there would be a public outcry... people can't have it both ways...
As I understand it, the police can stop and search anyone whom they have reason to believe may be a threat to others, not just anybody who walks by. Why is that a bad thing?
The stop and frisk topic just re-surfaced after it was pointed out that Bloomberg instituted it in NYC as mayor. The hub bub is over the fact that it was done in black neighborhoods where peaceful and law abiding black citizens also live along with the hoodlums, so law abiding blacks should have cheered the practice since it made them safer.
It did exponentially decrease crimes in the NYC area, I must say. Bloomberg is an idiot for apologizing for it and Trump shouldn't flip on his original backing of it. Rudy loved it and still touts its merits. Newark, Jersey City, Union, Hillside, Paterson, Camden and the like should all implement this practice. There are areas of those cities that have merit to visit, but not on the present terms we live under in Jersey now.
As a corollary, any suspect who draws a gun or knife on the arresting officer should be shot in self-defense. Hal
@Shirley Martin Because of several reasons. That "reason to believe" is often fictitious based on appearance or "profiling", which is illegal in some places. Reason to believe is no different that "probable cause" used to detain, question, search, and charge erroneously. These types of police allowance resulted in Nazi Germany. Frank
I totally agree about the apology. I think a strong leader would simply say something like "we believed it to be appropriate at that time" and move on. Apologizing makes him look weak.
The scandal isn't so much over the stop-and-frisk policy but over the fact that it was applied exclusively to black people, as well as Bloomberg's defense of the practice, arguing that black people were the ones committing all of the crimes. Even in New York City, I don't believe that all of the crimes are committed by black people and even if that were the case, it certainly doesn't align with the positions that Democrats would like everyone to believe they hold.
Most of your everyday street crimes are definitely committed by minorities in NYC, Ken. But that applies to Chicago as well.
...and London too, ( especially knife crime) but not all , so stop and frisk should be for anyone suspected of regardless of colour...
@Lois Winters Don't exactly understand how Chicago parallels NYC here, but suffice to say, even back when I still resided there (1972), street crimes and minorities were undoubtedly closely linked. There remained, however, a large segment of minorities which despised criminal activity, and continually spoke out against it. Frank
I was a part of a similar heavy enforcement detail in Dallas Tx sometime back, with a Capt and an Asst Section Chief with us starting out we profiled certain races and vehicles heavy to establish findings, the jail population was 93% black so that's where we went to start the worst neighborhoods, weapons, drugs you name it we found them, blacks were responsible for the most crimes against persons also, we were very successful with our unit in removing such from the streets, really to much as the counsel made us stop as we were targeting blacks with their prior knowledge that we were to clean up an area, we did so and started seeing families outside again and much less calls to the area, well it went to well and we had to disband our unit as we were profiling racially yet it had been ok to start. Well no more, almost overnight the dealers were back and business as usual we just told the counsel your problem we solved it you reversed what we did all yours, crime and calls went right back even worse than before as they knew we were gone it was on tv! They got the desired results but did not want to admit them. Honestly the area was literally avoided when we left, Hampton Road Projects area. Worse now than ever.