Stop-and-Frisk: New York Attorney General's Report Questions its Effectiveness

New York's attorney general said the stop-and-frisk report – an NYPD spokesman called it flawed – sought to 'advance the discussion about how to fight crime without ... violating equal justice under the law.'

The report, released Thursday by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D), found that only 3 percent of the some 2.4 million New Yorkers stopped between 2009 and 2012 – most of them black and Latino men – ended in a guilty plea or conviction at trial. And of these, just one in ten had a sentence of 30 days or more.

Silent March against stop-and-frisk and racial profiling in New York,
June 2012. (Photo: Long Island Works)

The attorney general also investigated the racial disparities in the pleas or convictions that resulted from arrests for marijuana possession – a significant portion of stop-and-frisk arrests. Police arrested over 10,500 blacks for possessing the drug, and about 5,600 Hispanics, but less than 2,000 whites. The court dismissed  about 75 percent of these cases with white defendants, however, while only dismissing about half of those with black defendants and about 60 percent of Hispanics.

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