I posted a comment the other day when this data was first reported and will repost here in hopes that some find it relevant. I believe the first video of the man getting pulled over confirms what I said that day.

REPOST:

As a latino, college graduate and native New Yorker I can say that I am more scared of the NYPD than I am of criminals, and that's the truth. The problem here is the aggression that I have encountered when dealing with most (not all) police officers. My fear is not of being stopped and frisked because I don't carry any contraband that can lead to an arrest but that I can endure the dehumanizing, embarrassing, degrading experience without giving the officer any motive to arrest me for "disorderly conduct", a charge which if anyone looks at the numbers they will see that it's abused much too often and is usually tossed out by the judge. I've found far too many cops to be abrasive and arrogant in these situations and there really is no need and this disrespect can easily lead to words exchanged that will undoubtedly lead to your arrest and although they know that the charges will be dropped they win because you will spend a day, maybe two, in jail before the judge tosses it out. Knowing this every time I've encountered these situations (even in front of my young son) I play their game and address them with utmost respect, "yes sir, no ma'am", etc. yet they still manage to talk down to me as if I was a second class citizen and I simply have to bite my tongue and swallow my pride and continue to kill them with kindness. Officers' attitudes during these stop and frisks create more animosity towards the police, and authority in general, than they deter crime, especially in teenagers. This is especially troublesome to our youth. During our teen years when we are beginning to develop our sense of self worth and personality and when you have a hostile force constantly degrading or harassing you, it's hard not to develop contempt for them and the system they represent. I think if officers were more respectful and acknowledge that if anyone should feel violated in the situation it should be the person they are stopping and frisking. Through their own personal experience they should know that most of the people being stopped and frisked are in fact innocent yet they treat them as criminals who must prove their innocence. I dream of the day that an officer comes up to me and says "I'm sorry sir put due to the high level crime in this area we are conducting stop and frisk operations and unfortunately I will have to search you because ..... (and give reason for the search here) but it should only take 5 minutes and you'll be on your way" instead of the usually screaming cop, sometimes with his gun in his hand, yelling "get up against the wall!" Don't these officers have empathy or are trained to understand these situations? Under these circumstances its a normal reaction to question "What happened? What did I do?" yet they take it as a form of disrespect and their attitude is "just do as I say or how dare you question me" and this attitude leads to unnecessary conflicts.

I also think that a majority of these "stop and frisks" are unconstitutional and the numbers in this article seem to prove it. If takes violating 575,000 citizens' rights to get 762 guns off the street, then that is a number that I'm not comfortable with, not in America. I'm sure that if the NYPD began raiding homes in the hopes of finding contraband they'd undoubtedly find some, but what about the homes where there's no contraband? How can you justify violating their right to privacy and illegal search and seizure to catch a handful of "criminals"?

My biggest concern regarding these "Stop and Frisk" operations is when they are used against minority teenagers. I find this to be a form of genocide against our youth. These officers have quotas to fill and that means that they must arrest at least some of these people, regardless of how minimal the charges may be. While the majority of arrests from these "stop and frisks" end up being for minor infractions such as loitering, trespassing, possession of marijuana, etc. it nonetheless ruins their future prospects by staining them with a criminal record for the rest of their lives. It seems that minority teenagers are being systematically targeted and given a Scarlet Letter that they must live with for the rest of his/her life. What happens when these young men and women decide they want to become a member of law enforcement? Will they be allowed despite having a conviction for a bag of marijuana in their youth? For example, the rate of marijuana use among teens in NYC is pretty consistent throughout all races but it is a fact that the chances of a minority teenager being arrested or having a criminal record because of it is much higher than non-minority teenagers in NYC. I know many will find the word genocide too strong for this argument but the definition of genocide is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide ) " and I think it fits here because these "stop and frisk" operations are systematically destroying the city's minority teenagers' futures and I believe that outweighs the benefits."

At best these "Stop & Frisk" operations are a violation of human rights and unconstitutional and at best the are a waste of police resources that produces very little results. I don't understand how anyone can justify a database of innocent people in America.

It's racial profiling and as an American Black man I'm appalled that the same folks who yell and scream about Arizona is eerily silent on this. I also find it baffling that Mayor Bloomberg will criticize Arizona,while he demands racial profiling in NYC and the MSM has not asked him about his double standard.

We're not fighting.... we're having a spirited debate. This is a study from 2007 funded by the NYPD. Come on. I read the "study results". The article makes no mention of Black people committing more crimes than white people. The article actually stated that officers used more force when frisking Black people than when frisking White people.

Look, Black/Hispanic people are no more likely to commit crimes than White people. However they are more likely to be convicted.

Man, when people start using your state like "This isn't _____!" you know you've been rough. In Communist Russia, racist legislators criminalize YOU!

thanks for posting this. It pains me to live in a city where the police are the furthest thing from your friend. Most of us on gothamist are white or live in comfy neighborhoods but even we are not immune to the ticket/arrest quotas

Doesn't anyone realize that the race percentages of people stopped and frisked match the race percentages of reported perps. The cops aren't stopping minorities indiscriminately. They are stopping them more than other races because more people have reported that minorities as opposed to Caucasians are the perpetrators.

-However well-intended, you are misinformed. Read the data provided by the NYCLU or the NY Times. Some 600,000 Black/Hispanic people were stopped and frisked and only around %6 were arrested or ticketed. Juxtapose to 50,000 Whites who were stopped and frisked, around %6 were arrested or ticketed.

-Could you cite the sources you used to come to this conclusion?

-One more thing. A perpetrator is usually the same race as their victim.

I am not looking to get into a fight with anyone on here, but rather just trying to engage in healthy debate. The study I am referring to is the Rand study, which is discussed in this article:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/11/21/2007-11-21_review_says_halfmillion_nypd_stopandfris-1.html

While the article refers to a few isolated problems, by and large the stop and frisk practices of the NYPD are not racially biased.

We're not fighting.... we're having a spirited debate. This is a study from 2007 funded by the NYPD. Come on. I read the "study results". The article makes no mention of Black people committing more crimes than white people. The article actually stated that officers used more force when frisking Black people than when frisking White people.

Look, Black/Hispanic people are no more likely to commit crimes than White people. However they are more likely to be convicted.

regardless, the fact that only 6% of stop and frisks resulted in at minimal a ticket means that it is very ineffective. The only thing it does is causes minorities to distrust the authority, which is far more damaging to the capability of the NYPD to investigate crimes in minority areas in contrast to what the NYPD gains in stop and frisk searches.