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NYPD’s Policy of Random and Stop Frisk and Its Impact on Community

August 10, 2021

Introduction

Law enforcement agencies play a very big role in combating crime. Most of these crime control activities are legally practiced by police officers whose main aim is to ensure that the community remains safe. In the United States of America in New York City, drug trafficking and several forms of crime have been on the rise. Many criminals conduct illegal businesses in these regions. With the increase in the number of crimes, the United States government has taken steps to combat this inhumane nature. This involves the deployment of several police officers in various places within the city (Ferrandino, 2016). As they carry out this activity, they use the “stop and risk” procedure which combines these two actions into one combined tactic. Comment by Kristin Early: There are a few extra spaces throughout after Track Changes – just go through and remove. Thanks!

The rise in the prevalence of stop and frisk has led to uproar among the people across the United States of America. Many people claim that the police use stringent and unnecessary measures when stopping and frisking citizens. The police department in New York City has faced a lot of demonstrations, lawsuits, and debates from members of the public. People claim that the police violate their 14th Amendment rights (Vito et al., 2021). The law states that officers should only stop and frisk a person when they have reasons to suspect a crime is going to be committed or is being committed but many of the public feel that the police officers waste their time in this process of frisking them and feel that they are being racially profiled.

The research has shown that the stop and frisk policy has not helped in curbing the criminal activities across New York City, instead, it has led to an increase in crime. Some of the residents of the city want to engage in this criminal activity to test whether the police officers are accurate in their jobs. In addition, some of them have created very great animosity with the police officers., they regard the police as their greatest enemies (Ferrandino, 2016). They think that the police mistreat them in the process of their operations.

Problem Statement

The study will take place through qualitative analysis by conducting interviews and questionnaires. The study is necessary to investigate the main challenges that come in the process of frisking the people in New York City and how it has affected the way citizens view law enforcement officers. This study is important because of the increased complaints that have been arising among the members of the public and to see if certain neighborhoods or groups have a more negative attitudes about stop and frisk policy than others. The study subjects will be sampled among the police officers who take part in this event in New York City (Vito et al., 2021). A sample of the members of the public will also be included as part of the interviewees. This study is intended to start between the 1st -31st of August 2021. Comment by Kristin Early: Revise to have a clear start date and end date, both should be in the future. I would recommend a start date of October 1, 2021 and then add a realistic projected end date (about a year later).

Literature Review

Introduction

Stop and frisk policy has been applied by the New York City police department to control the types of items leaving and entering the city. The main aim of the police department in this mission is to ensure sanity among the citizens. In the United States of America, drug trafficking and other forms of crime have been on the rise. This menace has made the government deploy police officers in majority of the police centers to handle this challenge (Halder, 2020). The police have been trying to carry out this mission by doing their best though there have been a number of complaints from the public about the way this activity is conducted.

Most people see this approach by the police officers as a nuisance to them. They say that the police harass them a lot in the process of manning the security procedures. Others say that it is a way of time wastage since despite the police conducting such operations, they still collude with criminals to commit crime. Instead, they punish the innocent residents who are not even part of this activity. This issue has attracted a lot of public opinion, other people going for protests in the streets of New York, others have filed cases in court to challenge the government’s decision of participating in such an activity (Ferrandino, 2016). The aim of this study is to review the stop and frisk policy being implemented by their police department in New York.

Theoretical Considerations

Behavioral theory

The behavioral theory states that behaviors are learnd based on the environmental activities of people around us. The hatred or the animosity that might have existed between the police and public has been a result of coping with the excessive force that some police officers use during the encounters of the officers and them feeling like they are being racialiy profiled which leads to this behavior towards one another. Comment by Kristin Early: Good application of theory to your study, but you still need to cite to a source that discusses behavioral theory, as it is not common knowledge.

Literature review

An act in which police officer initiates the stop of a person to question and search on the basis of suspicion on criminal activity is known as stop and frisk. Stop and frisk was deemed unconstitutional at New York City after the ruling of the Floyd v. City of New York. Judge argued that police in New York City carried out stop and frisk in unconstitutional manner by discriminating against the minority citizens. Apart from New York other cities such as Chicago also use stop and frisk strategy despite being deemed unconstitutional by the court. The law continues to advocate for fair use of justice to minority citizens. Statics show that of the total stops and frisks conducted in New York City, half of the total stops involved youths aged between thirteen and twenty-five (LaHee, 2016).

According to (White, 2016), the NYPD’s use of stop and frisk has increased over the last two decades as indicated by 685,000 stops conducted in 2011. There are questions in New York regarding NYPD’s stop and frisk exercise and particular on its impact on the minority citizens. Serious questions were raised in 1999 about constitutionality of the 175,000 stops in New York that year. 15% of the total cases did not meet the suspicion threshold together with the racial disparities. The New York Minority citizens have been complaining about frisks of people suspected of crimes. There are two racial discrimination lawsuits relating to the matter of NYPD’s stops and frisks. The ruling on the case of Floyd v. City of New York demonstrated how NYPD continued to engage in racial discrimination. The ruling of the Floyd case has proved how use of stop and risk as crime control strategy has led to violation of the constitutional rights of many minorities New York Citizens (White, 2016).

According to (Rosenblatt, 2021), New York Police Department carry out stop and frisk to question and search New York Citizens when police officers have probable cause even without a warrant. NYPD’s use stops and frisk strategy to search for criminal offenders or those planning to commit criminal offences. Contrary to police aim in conducting stop and frisk, supreme court ruling evidence show that this strategy is a method used to perpetuate racial profiling and in particular Black and Latino harassment (Rosenblatt, 2021). New York citizens term stop and frisk strategy as a violation of the fourth and the fourteenth amendment of the constitution and are debating for a reform. Evidence show that stop and frisk are highly carried out in areas occupied by the minority group.

According to (Levchak, 2021), Blacks and the Latino pedestrians have a higher chance of being stopped and frisked to non-weapon force on the streets of the New York City. This paper show that NYPD’s use implicit bias by suspecting the minority citizens in the city of the New York. It is clear that minority groups are being profiled since ethnicity and race do not relate with weapon force. Statistics show that NYPD has conducted more than five million pedestrian stops between 2002 and 2019. Statistics reveal that Blacks and Latino make up about 85% of those stopped at the streets of New York a proof that NYPD carry out stops and frisks based on racial discrimination (Levchak, 2021).

(Mulaphong and Cheurprakobkit, 2021) stated that the aim of the NYPD’s stop and frisk strategy was to deter crime and disorder hence promoting confidence and trust in law enforcement. Evidence shows varying opinions on whether stop and frisk pedestrians at New York City fostered citizen’s feeling of safety. Research show that White citizens feel safer in their neighborhoods as compared to the blacks (Mulaphong and Cheurprakobkit, 2021). Comment by Kristin Early: You made some good edits here. Note though, that the Unit 1 Assignment called for adding another five study reviews to the Literature Review. This is worth quite a few points on the grading rubric. You will want to be sure to add the missing reviews before resubmitting the proposal in later assignments. Note, in Unit 6, we add another five studies for a total of 15 studies reviewed in the Literature Review. You might want to go ahead and just add ten more now to get a head start on that. Reach out if you are struggling to find studies.

Influence of Organizational Behavior

Training

Despite racial and ethnic disparities in the work of policing, it is a rule rather than an exception when conducting stop and frisks, searches, summonses and use of force when arresting pedestrians. It is clear that implicit bias is one of many factors which contribute to disparities when NYPD’s conduct stops and frisks at New York City. Evidence from numerous social psychological studies show that police behavior of disparities has been influenced by implicit bias. Evidence shows that when forming judgment and making decisions police officers rely on common heuristics which simply their cognitive tasks and help them in making quick conclusions. Due to use of the heuristics, police officers are prone to predictable patterns of error. Most of NYPD’s make judgment outside conscious awareness and embark on stereotypes which cannot be considered in an accurate decision making (Worden, 2020).

Evidence show that NYPD began in-service training using fair and impartial policing curriculum on implicit bias to its 360,000 sworn personnel back in 2018. Public safety agencies together with NYPD found that this training had several impacts on NYPD’s. This research focused on effects of the training among patrol officers responsible in managing Patrol Service Bureau, Housing Bureau and Transits Bureau. This team assessed officer’s beliefs, attitudes and their knowledge about bias and discrimination as a social problem and merit of policing without prejudice. Research shows limited effects of the limited training on officer’s awareness of implicit bias and to act without prejudice (Worden, 2020). It is clear that NYPD has a centralized administration due to the fact that there are NYPD’s who manage Transits Bureau, House Bureau and NYPD’s who conduct the actual stops and frisks.

Use of Force

From the evidence provided by the literature review, NYPD’s does not recognize dignity of every person. From stories shared by some of people stopped and frisked, NYPD’s use excessive force which is against public welfare and careful balancing. Law requires police officers to use reasonable amount of force to effectively arrest or protect other officers and general public from eminent harm from violent or assaultive individual. As a result of excessive force, NYPDs led to death of Floyd back in 2013.

Non-discriminatory policing

United States is democratic and therefore all citizens are guaranteed equal protection under law which is the basic principle of our democratic nation. To ensure that this principle is observed, law enforcement officers are required to adopt policies which promote police officers in a non-discriminatory manner. From the review, NYPDs rely mostly on generalized stereotypes beliefs and attitudes when conducting stops and frisks. NYPDs are required not to consider religion, origin, gender, person’s race, or ethnicity when deciding to order a citizen to stop but instead statics show that majority of those stopped are the Blacks and the Latino.

Study Culture

Under the leadership of William Bratton, NYPD has moved from aggressive strategies used to chase and arrest street crimes to a tactic which balances between crime prevention and community relationship (Crawford and Adler, 2016). It is now clear that under the leadership of Bratton, police have changed from warrior to guardian. The Bratton’s cultural change in NYPD involve policies regarding recruitment and training, use of social media platforms throughout NYPD and neighborhood policing. From this study, Bratton focused on a new NYPD which fostered communication and mutual respect. The new forms of communication included street level engagement by use of a neighborhood coordination officer program and online interaction through twitter, Facebook, and Ideal Scale. This report shows that under the new NYPD culture, New York City is now safer than it has been in years (Crawford and Adler, 2016) Comment by Kristin Early: When I saw the heading about Organizational Behavior, I presumed this was all focused on discussion of the organizational behavior constructs from the Volkema reading and their application. I can see however that you brought in more resources for the literature review here. I would remove the title above, as I crossed it out. And change the title below this to Organizational Behavior (as I have done). **Still be sure to have reviewed 10 peer-reviewed original studies in the Literature Review at this point, and then add another 5 studies for the Unit 6 Assignment.

How organizational culture Could Influence Data Collection and Interpretation of Results.Organizational Behavior

NYPD stops and frisks data collection can be affected by its organizational culture in several ways such as use of language and privacy issues. Comment by Kristin Early: There are eight (8) distinct principles in total and the intent is to select the four that apply. So, it is Individual OR Collective, Differentiation OR Integration, etc., but not both. Consider the organizational culture of the study site, then determine which of the four from the paired choices apply to your study site (i.e., individual OR collective, differentiation OR integration, centralization OR decentralization, and linear OR nonlinear), describing the culture related to individuals, groups, leadership, management, goals and values of the organization. Discuss how the four identified principles and the study site culture might impact your data collection and interpretation or results, relying in the Unit 1 Volkema (2010) reading and seminar discussions to support the discussion. Present steps you could take to overcome these potential obstacles.

Language

United States is made up of people from all over the world whereby some of them cannot speak English. In cases where some minority groups are not represented in the NYPD can lead to language barrier. To address this issue, I will ensure all groups of the citizens are represented in the team which will collect data.

Privacy Issues

Majority of the Blacks and the Latino do not feel safe at the hands of NYPD, and this might cause them to be reluctant to share their story. To curb privacy issues, I will promise all participants that their data will be safe and will only be used for the intended purpose.

Operational Definition Comment by Kristin Early: Operational definitions belong in the Research Design section. The order of headings at this point should be: At a minimum, the proposal should have the following headings: Introduction Problem Statement Organizational Behavior Literature Review Introduction Theoretical Considerations Review of Literature Summary and Conclusions Methods Research Purpose/Goal Study Variables and Conceptual Definitions Operational Definitions Validity and Reliability Research Hypothesis Data Approach Research Method Ethical Considerations Conclusion References Appendices

Stop and frisk is an act in which police officer initiates the stop of a person to question and search based on suspicion on criminal activity. Stop and frisk variable will be measured on the number of stops and frisks per year. Comment by Kristin Early: Okay, but this would exclude stops in which the officer does not have a suspicion but still stops a person – which is what a lot of people are concerned about, i.e., the lack of reasonable suspicion to make the stop. So, it seems you would want to define stops and frisks as all encounters where an officer stops a person and searches them. Operational definitions need to be much more specific, so that another researcher following behind you would know exactly how you measured each variable and could replicate your study. For example, if stops and frisks will be measured as the “number of stops and frisks per year” – for what geographic area would this include? What year? Where would you obtain this data?

Impacts of stop and frisk on New York Citizens can be measured based on satisfaction citizens get from NYPD stops and frisks. Number of Blacks, Latino, Whites, Asians, and Hispanic stopped per year. Comment by Kristin Early: Here the variable would be: Citizen attitudes about NYPD. How would you measure this exactly? What questions would you ask citizens to measure the continuum of positive to negative attitudes? Be specific here and what data collection instrument you would use to collect these data. Recall, that for each variable it is necessary to identify the attributes (values) for the variable and the level of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio).

Conclusion

Stop and frisk policy has both negative and positive effects, the police are doing good job by stopping and frisking any type of vehicle that may be passing in town, through this, there are a lot of criminal activities that get combated. However, some police officers tend to spoil for others the because they use this opportunity as an arena for ethnic or racial discrimination. It is therefore very important for the police to do this activity with a lot of decorum and respect. At sesame time, people should understand the police in their duties.

Research Design Comment by Kristin Early: Revise this section to follow the proper order of headings, as noted above.

The research design that will be employed in this process is the longitudinal study, this is a study design in which the data is collected from the different groups of people over a given time. Comment by Kristin Early: There remain some issues in this section that were not fully addressed from the feedback provided on the Unit 6 Assignment in CJ 525. Rather than repeat those comments here, please see that feedback for guidance as you make revisions to this section of your paper.

Hypothesis

There is a direct correlation between the stop frisk policy implemented by the government of the United States of America police in New York and the inroad range of animosity between the police and members of the public (Vito et al., 2021).

• It is hypothesized that citizens living in NYPD precincts with the highest stop and frisk rates, will perceive the NYPD more negatively than those living in areas with lower rates. Comment by Kristin Early: This hypothesis is testable, whereas the one above is too general to be able to fully test.

The section of Validity and Reliability is missing from the assignment. That element represented a large percentage of the Unit 1 Assignment grading rubric.

A cross-sectional study is a research design in which data is collected to a whole in a study population at a specific time to examine the relationships between variables of interest. An example, in this case, is when the researcher wants to know the relationship between joggers and their level of cholesterol at different ages. On the other hand, the longitudinal research design is an observational study where data is gathered from a study population over an extended period for example from years to decades, depending on the type of data being collected (Cross-Sectional Study Vs Longitudinal Study | QuestionPro, 2018). An example is when the researcher wishes to know the differences in the cholesterol levels among joggers of different ages over the last 10 years.

The retrospective approach looks backward into an outcome of a case, the risk factors that might have led to the occurrence of a particular problem, it has more error sources of errors such as bias and confounding factors. This makes the results to be a bit untrustworthy. Prospective study watches the outcome of a case such as the development of disease and the risk factors involved (Prospective, Retrospective, Case-control, Cohort Studies - Stats Direct, 2019). The outcomes are more accurate since it has less bias and confounding factors.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this paper is to see if people attitude about stop and frisk are different based on their race/ethnicity or some other factor.

Goals

By the end of this study, the researcher would come up with a solution towards harmonizing the measures put in place by the police in the “stop frisk” policy (Halder, 2020). This will reduce the animosity that has existed between them and the public.

Sampling

Sampling is the technique of selecting several persons or subjects of a group to act as a representation of the whole group in making some statistical inferences to get the characteristics. The results will be characterized as the characteristics of all the other elements of the group. Different sampling methods are being used by researchers in market research so that they don't have to go through the difficulty of trying to interview every single individual to gather actionable insights (Mohapatra, and Chamola, 2020).

Ethical research

Research ethics are defined as moral rules that do guide the researchers in conducting research with no deception or intention to harm the participants of the community at large either intentionally or not (Brittain et al., 2020). These ethics include

· Respect for every individual that is autonomy and also protecting those who have diminished autonomy

· Beneficence and non-beneficence

· Justice

· Integrity

· Informed consent

· Confidentiality and information protection.

Conclusion

The research has shown that the stop and frisk policy has not helped in curbing the criminal activities across New York City, instead, it has led to an increase in crime. Stop and frisk policy has both negative and positive effects, the police are doing good job by stopping and frisking any type of vehicle that may be passing in town, through this, there are a lot of criminal activities that get combated. However, some police officers tend to spoil for others the because they use this opportunity as an arena for ethnic or racial discrimination. Sampling is time-efficient that is, it is time-saving in doing research, and also it is cheap (cost-effective) to conduct. For these two reasons sampling forms the basis of any research design. Sampling techniques can be implemented in the research survey software for optimum derivation. For instance, in a situation where a drug manufacturing company wants to know how a particular drug has effects, it is almost impossible that that company will be able to assess every individual who has used that particular drug. The company decided to sample out a group of people from each demographic and then research that group. The results will give the company feedback about the drug's behavior

References Comment by Kristin Early: APA 7th edition format calls for some standard elements including: 1) the References page should begin at the top of the page of the last section of the paper; 2) capitalize only the first word of the title, subtitle and proper nouns in books and journal article titles; 3) double-space all sources in the references section; 4) use a hanging indent for each source where the first line is flush left, and each line thereafter for the source is indented a 1/2 inch from the left; 5) italicize book and journal titles, as well as the volume number of journal articles; 6) alphabetization of entries in the list by the first author's last name; and 7) include the DOI link for periodical references.

Brittain, S., Ibbett, H., de Lange, E., Dorward, L., Hoyte, S., Marino, A., ... & Lewis, J. (2020). Ethical considerations when conservation research involves people. Conservation Biology, 34(4), 925-933. Comment by Kristin Early: This is not related to your topic and should be replaced with a relevant source.

Crawford, S. P., & Adler, L. (2016). Culture Change and Digital Technology: The NYPD under Commissioner William Bratton, 2014-2016. Berkman Klein Center Research Publication, (2016-13). Comment by Kristin Early: This is a fine source for discussing the culture of the NYPD in the organizational behavior section, but since it is not peer-reviewed and is not an original study, it would not count toward the 10 sources needed at this point in the literature review.

Crawford, S. P., & Adler, L. (2016). Culture Change and Digital Technology: The NYPD under Commissioner William Bratton, 2014-2016. Berkman Klein Center Research Publication, (2016-13).

Cross-Sectional Study Vs Longitudinal Study | QuestionPro. (2018, June 12). QuestionPro. https://www.questionpro.com/blog/cross-sectional-study-vs-longitudinal-study/ Comment by Kristin Early: This is not a scholarly source. The textbook discusses the difference between cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, and could be used instead.

Ferrandino, J. A. (2016). The effectiveness and equity of NYPD stop and frisk policy, 2003–2014. Journal of Crime and Justice, 41(2), 119–135. https://doi.org/10.1080/0735648x.2016.1249385

Goel, S., Rao, J. M., & Shroff, R. (2016). Precinct or prejudice? Understanding racial disparities in New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy. The Annals of Applied Statistics, 10(1), 365–394. https://doi.org/10.1214/15-aoas897

Halder, D. (2020). Stop, search, frisk and detain: A comparative analysis of police power between India, UK and US. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3722731

LaHee, D. (2016). Youth perspective: Stop and frisk: Racial profiling in contemporary urban America. Child. Legal Rts. J., 36, 62.

Levchak, P. J. (2021). Stop-and-frisk in New York City: Estimating racial disparities in post-stop outcomes. Journal of Criminal Justice, 73, 101784. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2021.101784

Martyn Denscombe. (2016). The Good research guide: for small-scale social research projects (5th ed.). Mcgraw-Hill/Open University Press.

Mohapatra, S. C., & Chamola, S. K. (2020). Sampling in Research Series 1: Basic Concepts in Estimating Sample Size. Journal of Advanced Research in Medical Science & Technology (ISSN: 2394-6539), 7(1), 17-21.

Mulaphong, D., & Cheurprakobkit, S. (2021). Does Police Stop and Search Make Everyone Feel Safe? Evidence From the United States. Race and Justice, 21533687211023576.

Prospective, Retrospective, Case-control, Cohort Studies - StatsDirect. (2019). Statsdirect.com. https://www.statsdirect.com/help/basics/prospective.htm

Rengifo, A. F., & Slocum, L. A. (2016). Community Responses to “Stop-and-Frisk” in New York City. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 27(7), 723–746. https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403414560013

Rosenblatt, N. (2021). “Stop-and-Frisk” Policing in New York City: An historical evaluation of the controversial policy.

Thompson, T. (2016, August 21). NYPD’s Infamous Stop-and-Frisk Policy Found Unconstitutional. The Leadership Conference Education Fund. https://civilrights.org/edfund/resource/nypds-infamous-stop-and-frisk-policy-found-unconstitutional/

White, M. D., & Fradella, H. F. (2016). Stop and frisk: The use and abuse of a controversial policing tactic. NYU Press. Comment by Kristin Early: Be sure that a summary of the data collection methods and results from each study referenced in the References is included in the Literature Review.

Worden, R. E., McLean, S. J., Engel, R. S., Cochran, H., Corsaro, N., Reynolds, D., ... & Isaza, G. T. (2020). The impacts of implicit bias awareness training in the NYPD. The John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety/University of Cincinnati Center for Police Research and Policy.

Hi

You made a lot of good revisions to the proposal. There were some issues with missing elements though:

· Organizational Behavior: A full discussion is still needed on the organizational principles outlined in the Unit 1 Volkema (2010) reading, with application of those principles to your study site.

· Literature Review: A full discussion of the data collection methods and main results from at least 10 relevant, peer-reviewed original research studies on your topic is still needed.

· Operational Definitions: Greater specificity is needed to fully explain how your independent and dependent variables would be measured. See feedback within the assignment.

· Validity and Reliability: This section was missing.

· Organization and content: Headings were out of order – see guidance that I provided on that. Additionally, there were issues noted in earlier feedback on the Unit 6 CJ 525 Assignment that was not yet addressed. Rather than repeat myself, I have attached the feedback here again for your review.

The Validity and Reliability section represented 20% of the Unit 1 grade. I will give you the opportunity to revise and resubmit your Unit 1 Assignment to include this missing section. Please have the revised paper with the addition of the Validity and Reliability section completed and uploaded to the Unit 1 Assignment Dropbox no later than August 31st if you would like to take advantage of this opportunity.

Reach out with questions about the feedback.

Best,