DISCUSSION BOARD QUESTION

Greetings Class,

Today I want to talk a bit about stops AND Frisks. As you have read in the materials the

foundational case for stop and frisks was Terry v. Ohio. In that case a police officer saw two

suspicious men that looked like they were casing Zu ker’s Me ’s Store. Feari g that the e were going to rob the store the officer stopped them and patted them down and found a gun.

The officer, McFadden was a veteran officer who saw several indicators that made him

suspicious. Specifically, they looked like they were getting ready to rob the store. Since most

robberies involve a weapon McFadden took steps to make sure he could safely investigate. In

other words he checked them for weapons.

There are really two elements to this issue; the stop and the frisk. These are not an arrest and a

search. That is a key point. If McFadden Arrested them it would have been a false arrest

because no probable cause existed that they committed a crime. You are allowed to search a

person who is arrested, but in this case the arrest would not have been lawful so the search

would also have been unlawful.

McFadden did not arrest them, he just stopped them. What is the difference you might ask.

Well, sometimes even though you are not free to leave an encounter with an officer, you are

not under arrest. In these cases the stop is called an investigative detention. This means that

the courts will allow an officer to temporarily restrict your freedom if they have reasonable

articulable suspicion that you are committing a crime. Notice that this is well short of probable

cause, which is required to make an arrest. There are many factors that go into whether a stop

is a lawful investigative detention, but the most significant are that the basis for the stop must

be reasonable and specific. The second factor is the length of the stop. It can only be as long as

reasonably necessary. You might notice that there is a lot of grey area here and you would be

correct. These stops that lead to arrests are often hotly contested.

The second part is the frisk. As I mentioned, a frisk is not a search. A frisk is designed to be

limited to a minimally intrusive investigation to see if a person has a weapon. This usually

means running the hands over the body to detect any hidden weapons. The ultimate intent is

to protect the officers. The requirements usually involve circumstances where a weapon is

reasonably likely to be present, such as someone who looks like they may be getting ready to

rob a store. But it also can simply be a stop that occurs in a high crime area. Much like the issue

of the stop, the frisk is also very much weighed on the merits of each case.

Over the years the doctrine of stop and frisk has been tried and tested and you may be familiar

with the stop and frisk program used by the NYPD. This is a new level of the stop and frisk being

used in its own right as a policing tactic. There are people on both sides of the issue. One of the

issues with the NYPD tactic is that it targets anyone in a high crime area. As we well know, most

of the people who live in high crime areas tend to be the victims not the actors of crime. This

can lead to people who have no connect to crime being caught up in the stop and frisks. The

program in NYC has been alleged to do just that. But on the other hand it has also been shown

to decrease crime. One of the major criticisms of stop and frisk has been that only people who

are charged as a result of stop and frisk fight it in court. Those who were stopped and frisked

a d ot harged usually do ’t o plai a out the treat e t. That of ourse does ’t ea that they feel good about being stopped and frisked.

So that is a little about stop and frisk. What do you think?

I look forward to hearing what you think in the discussion boards.

Have a great week.