Yes, that’s it. Now that you wrote it, I remember. I’m against an actual frisk, I think that is harrassment unless there is truly a valid reason. I guess my question about the basic idea is were the areas targeted by the cops where lots of crime was happening? Did they also happen to be minority areas? Then the minorities would seem to be disportionately stopped by cops, but maybe it was warranted? I don’t know exactly how thebpolic applied the policy. The big problem is some cops probably take it too far. Most cops know their beat, know the familiar faces. Your link says 9 out of 10 were innocent. So 10% actually were carrying on some sort of illegal activity? That actually is pretty high considering how often this was supposedly being done. That’s a lot of people caught isn’t it? It does seem like the cops took it too far, abused it, and I do think that is a problem. 10% isn’t enough to justify the policy in my mind, but it is still a lot of people.
Do you think it contributed to crime rates going down? They did go down significantly. There were more factors than just this policy obviously.
I could see jaywalking used as a reason to stop someone.
I’m very glad I feel much safer in NYC than when I used to go in the 70’s and 80’s.