Terry v. Ohio

In Terry v. Ohio (1968), Officer-Detective Martin McFadden was patrolling Downtown Cleveland when he observed two men stopping to stare in a store windows and then confer about 24 times.  A third man joined them and they all met up a couple blocks away.  Due to his suspicion, McFadden identified himself as a police officer and asked for the men’s identification.  The men began whispering to each other, giving the cop probable cause due to a safety concern for a search.  He patted down the three men, found weapons, and arrested them.

As discussed in the court’s opinion, it’s pretty crazy how easy it is for an officer to frisk someone based on suspicion.  In a perfect world, I think this is completely reasonable.  It makes sense to protect the public and the officer themselves.  However, it becomes inevitable that the issue of racial profiling arises.

As I read about in the two articles attached, this became a huge problem, especially, in New York City.  The New York Civil Liberties Union shows statistics of the city’s use of the stop and frisk policy.  The annual results from 2002 to 2016 were pretty consistent; roughly 77-90% of people stopped and frisked were innocent.  The racial majority was always blacks, then hispanics, and, in a very small percentage, whites. In a New York Times article, Judge Scheindlin has been advocating to fix this problem by laying out a revamping of the police system and creating a monitor to oversee stop and frisk procedures.  The city argued that minority groups tend to commit more crimes, so profiling against them is accurate.  I do not believe that statistic in anyway justifies stopping to frisk an innocent African-American individual carrying on with their day.  It seems very impractical to rid all police officers of bias, but, a monitor seems like it would definitely help to keep them accountable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/opinion/racial-discrimination-in-stop-and-frisk.html

http://www.nyclu.org/content/stop-and-frisk-data