Craig Warga/ New York Daily News
“Stop and frisk” is a strategy that adversely harms communities for many reasons. In some of my past post I observed both sides of this controversial topic. People in favor of “stop and frisk” explained that communities where benefiting from these stops because the crime rate and gun control decreased enormously. While others who were against it argued that that was a phony excuse to attack minorities who didn’t know how to defend themselves. After doing plenty of research and viewing both opposing sides I believe that “stop and frisk” should be banned it is overrated and in fact does not work.
Editor Kate Taylor, from the New York Times wrote an article explaining that “stop and frisk” in fact is beneficial to the community. However, someone made an opinion post explaining how in fact everything they wrote about was invalid. They show statistics that prove that in a year there was 684,330 stops made. Out of those stops only 780 guns where actually being collected. Doing the math that shows that 1.1 guns were being collected for every 1,000 stops, that’s little to no improvement. The article also explains that “3,200 guns were seized by means other than stop-and-frisks, four times more than were seized in street stops.” The mass hysteria that has been distributed by media is the cause for why “stop and frisk” is still around. All this evidence is proving that it doesn’t work.
Almost everyone who has had the opportunity to interview the infamous Mr. Trump always bring up the same argument, that “stop and frisk” is racially profiling primarily black and Hispanic young men. What does Mr. Trump say to that? That absolutely everyone is wrong and that we need to take guns away from bad people who shouldn’t have them. A thought that I believe is frankly stupid considering all the facts.
In an article titled “Not only is ‘stop and frisk’ unconstitutional, it doesn’t work” they explain that officers are only targeting people who look suspicious. But of course, to the police officers no white person will ever be suspicious. Their eyes will automatically go to a young black or Hispanic male. Studies show that 52 % of people being stopped where black and 31% where Hispanic. In majority of these cases both Hispanics and African Americans were less likely to have a weapon on them but where always twice as likely to be stopped. A little over 675,000 people are being stopped for absolutely no reason. It has also been proven that there is no real correlation between the decrease in New York’s crime rate and “stop and frisk.” All the evidence is being proven yet the Mayor of New York as well as other people continue to ignore these facts and let “stop and frisk” continue.
I personally believe that’s this idea that “stop and frisk” is the answer to this decrease of crime is absurd. There are obvious facts that this practice clearly doesn’t work yet it continues to go on. Mr. Trump as well as the ex-mayor of New York continue to speak highly about this idea that is constitution. It definitely needs to stop being brushed off to the side because the lives of minorities are important and this whole “stop and frisk” law needs to be banned. From a minority’s perspective we cannot continue to let the white man take us away from our constitutional rights by allowing this law that obviously doesn’t work continue.
Injustice Between People of Color 