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Results for stop and frisk (u.s.)

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Author: La Vigne, Nancy

Title: Stop and Frisk: Balancing Crime Control with Community Relations

Summary: The police practices of questioning, frisking, and searching citizens are well established and guided by legal precedents on the necessary preconditions required to engage in each of these acts lawfully. While stopping and questioning pedestrians is a routine police activity, frisking citizens can only be done lawfully on the basis of reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed and poses an immediate danger to the officer or the public. Searching an individual requires an even higher standard of probable cause for engagement in illegal activities. Each of these acts alone and in combination is designed to enable officers to question prospective suspects and witnesses, deter potential offenders, and apprehend active perpetrators. In recent years, however, the use of these practices has taken on new meaning due to the application of "stop and frisk" in New York City and other urban jurisdictions, particularly in communities of color. These jurisdictions have encouraged officers to stop and question pedestrians in specific high-crime areas as well as to increase the frequency of frisking these pedestrians. This more intensive use of stop and frisk has prompted questions and extensive debate about its legality and its effects on individuals and minority communities. The limited research conducted thus far indicates that while these more concentrated stop and frisk interventions have the potential to reduce crime, they may also negatively impact police-community relations and harm the legitimacy and efficacy of policing efforts. Given these findings and the heated public debate surrounding stop and frisk, today's police executives must think critically about how the acts of stopping, questioning, frisking, and searching can best be used to achieve crime-control goals in a manner that minimizes their negative effects. In the fall of 2011, the Urban Institute convened a roundtable with a wide array of police executives, practitioners, and researchers to develop a better understanding of both the challenges and opportunities surrounding the intensive use of stop and frisk (see appendix A for a list of participants). Prior to the roundtable, the attendees wrote a series of papers examining the use of this policing tactic, and at the roundtable they engaged in a wide-ranging discussion of the implications of intensive stop and frisk for public safety and police-community relations. This guide draws upon the knowledge gained during the roundtable and research in the field to describe both the legality and impacts of agency-led intensive stop and frisk strategies and to explore the ways in which individual officers, with guidance from their leadership, can employ their stop, frisk, and search activities in a manner that is lawful, responsible, and effective. To be clear, this publication is not an instructional manual on how to engage in stop and frisk, and it does not provide legal guidance on the topic; rather, its purpose is to help law enforcement officials think carefully about the ways in which these practices should be employed in the interests of promoting public safety while developing and reinforcing strong, mutually beneficial ties between police and the community.

Details: Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice, 2014. 68p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 23, 2014 at: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/413258-Stop-and-Frisk.pdf

Year: 2014

Country: United States

URL: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/413258-Stop-and-Frisk.pdf

Shelf Number: 133805

Keywords:
Police-Community Interactions
Police-Community Relations
Stop and Frisk (U.S.)
Stop and Search