NAME:
LESSON:
SOURCE:
TIME AND DAY:
MATERIALS:
Laura Zippel
NY Stop and Frisk Policy
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed.2d 889
(1968); The Atlantic; WAPA Search and Seizure Manual (2012);
NY Times
Ballard; April 1, 2014, 11:30am; 50 minutes
PowerPoint presentation; Handout; Articles
I.
GOALS
A.
Introduce students to Terry Stops
B.
Re-Introduce different burdens of proof
C.
Enable students to think about different policy reasons for NY’s stop and
frisk policies and apply those reasons to Seattle
D.
Apply information from a news article to a policy argument (critical
thinking and analysis skills)
E.
Provide a foundation for subsequent classroom debates and active learning
exercises
II.
OBJECTIVES
A.
Knowledge
1.
Re-introduce probable cause
2.
Understand Terry stops
3.
Understand policy reasons behind and against stop and frisk
4.
Review of search and seizure and 4th amendment
B.
C.
III.
Skills
1.
2.
3.
4.
6.
Active listening
Collaboration with peers
Critical thinking skills through applying news articles
Understanding an issue through different views
Engaging in respectful discussion
Attitude
1.
The study of our constitutional rights can be really interesting
2.
Respecting and understanding others viewpoints is instrumental to
gaining more knowledge
CLASSROOM METHODS
A. NOTE: This lesson plan is designed to be taught after the students have
already been introduced to the 4th amendment and criminal burden of
proofs in general. It is especially useful after you have discussed other
search and seizure cases, Miranda rights, and juvenile justice issues.
B. Terry Lecture (10 min) (Use powerpoint)
a. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed.2d 889
(1968)
i. Facts: In Ohio, in 1968, a police officer in plainclothes, saw
two guys walking around, taking the same route each time,
and looking in the same store window. After this happening
5-6 times, a 3rd man came and had a swift conversation
with them and then left. The police officer suspected they
were going to rob the store and went to talk to them. After
identifying himself as a police officer he got their names
and patted the outside of Terry’s coat. After he felt a gun,
he had all three men put their hand against the wall and
patted them all down. Two of them, including Terry, had a
gun and were arrested.
ii. Defendant’s Argument:
1. This was in violation of the 4th amendment b/c it
was a search and seizure without enough evidence
for a warrant.
2. Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall
not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but
upon probable cause, supported by oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to
be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
iii. The Supreme court held that the search wasn’t in violation
because it wasn’t an unreasonable search and seizure under
the 4th amendment
1. Instead the court said it was reasonable even though
he didn’t have probable cause because it was
limited in scope and reasonably related to the
suspicions of the police officer, that of holding up
the store with a gun.
2. Since the officer only patted down the outside of the
cloths until he felt the gun, it was ok.
b. Proof standards:
i. Beyond a reasonable doubt: standard for criminal trials.
This is the highest burden because someone could
potentially be going to jail or lose their life (death penalty).
ii. Probable cause: standard for a warrant. Ask: what is the
probable cause standard?
1. Weaker than beyond a reasonable doubt
2. reasonable basis for believing that a crime may have
been committed (for arrest) and that evidence of the
crime is present in the place to be searched (for
search).
iii. For Terry stops: It's a lower bar than probable cause.
Instead the Supreme Court said you only need a
“reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal
activity”
1. Has to be more than a hunch
2. Reasonable officer standard (think what would a
reasonable officer think in that particular place and
time)
a. Objective standard
3. This means you have to look at the totality of the
circumstances
iv. Also point out who is involved in each circumstance and
how fast these stops might occur. (no real right answer)
1. How much time do police officers have to think
through Terry stop conditions instead of a jury or
judge thinking about probable cause?
a. Much less time to deliberate and walk
through all the evidence.
2. Is that a good reason?
C. Pass out articles and handout (10-15 min)
a. Break the class up and hand out one side’s article to each student
except the Mayors get to skim both articles.
i. NOTE: If you have more time you might want to give them
a chance to read all of the articles at the end or at least the
article on what the Judge in NY ruled.
b. Have them read the articles silently to themselves
D. Have them break up into groups have a triad discussion (25-30 min)
a. First split them into the article groups to discuss and come up with
their best arguments for their side and counters for the other side’s
potential arguments: for NY’s law, against NY’s law, and mayors.
(10 minutes)
b. Then have them count off and put them into the triad groups.
Within the triad groups each side should have around 5 minutes to
explain their side and position. (10 minutes)
c. When there is 10 minutes left of class have the mayors decide what
policy they want to endorse. Have them come up in front of the
class and give their thoughts. (5 minutes)
E. Debrief (5 minutes)
a. At the end tell them how the NY judge ruled (reforms to end racial
profiling) and how the new mayor is addressing it. This is also
explained in the last article if you wish to pass it out.
b. Connect the NY policy to WA, Seattle in particular. You can
discuss how Seattle might be impacted by the overturning of this
policy and how stop and frisk policies are implemented in WA and
Seattle in particular.
i. Think about recent Dept. of Justice evaluation of Seattle
PD
ii. Think about what neighborhoods Seattle PD focus on
iii. Is this comparable to NY? If you were Mayor of Seattle,
how would you deal with this issue?
IV.
EVALUATION
A.
Active listening and participation during the lecture
B.
Active participation during the triad
C.
Respect of other viewpoints
Stop-and-Frisk Didn't Make New York
Safer (EXCERPTED)
Donald Bloomer, The Atlantic, March 26th, 2014
When former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly was asked what would happen if stopand-frisk were curtailed, his response was characteristic of his tenure: “No question about
it,” he said “violent crime will go up.” When homicides rose in Chicago, Chicagoans
clamored for NYPD-style stop-and-frisk.
In reality, there’s no good reason to assume that these strategies work to reduce crime.
David Greenberg has conducted the most comprehensive analysis of the relationship
between the NYPD’s practice of stop-and-frisk and crime levels to date, and he finds “no
evidence that misdemeanor arrests reduced levels of homicide, robbery, or aggravated
assaults.”
No one thinks a police officer with a reasonable suspicion that a suspect has a gun should
be barred from frisking the suspect, but that is not what stop-and-frisk has come to mean.
The now-abandoned practice of requiring officers (often fresh out of the academy) to
meet performance goals for citations and arrests seems wrong on several levels, but the
most fundamental one is that it doesn’t reduce crime. A close second is the increased
costs to families and communities….
So why are so many so enamored of these dubious tactics?
Stop-and-frisk proponents, like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, and the criminologist Alan Zimring
believe that the method is effective because of what they have seen in New York. Crime
dropped precipitously in the 1990s, they say, and the reason for it is the distinctive way
the NYPD practiced policing.
The simple version is that the NYPD adopted order-maintenance policing, including stopand-frisk, and crime went down. But the increase in frisks and arrests didn’t predate the
drop in crime; it came after the drop in crime. If we widen our perspective, we see that
the crime drop in New York City, particularly for property offense, began long before
1990.
What about homicide? After all, citing that link was the most effective claim Bloomberg
and Kelly used in support of stop-and-frisk. Well, here’s a piece of data you won’t hear
any of the proponents tout: if you look at the 25 largest cities in the United States, only
five had significantly higher homicide rates in 2010 than in 1960. Big cities—including
New York City—are pretty much back where they started before the massive late-20th
century crime-wave. Some of these cities did not see the stunning improvements in
homicide rates that New York experienced in the 1990s, but that’s because they didn’t
see dramatic increases in homicide rates in the preceding decades.
When you look at all the data and all the research, the puzzle is not so much why crime
dropped in New York City, but what caused the great American crime wave in the first
place. There are plenty of prominent theories….
Abandonment. The historical evidence ignored by stop-and-frisk proponents also
describes widespread changes in police practices across the country. In the years leading
up to and during the crime wave, police effectively abandoned disadvantaged
communities…. throughout the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
Abandonment not only contributed to the rise in crime in New York and many other
cities across the country, but…also generated a backlash: after crime reached its peak in
the 1980s, there were widespread demands for more police presence in inner-city
communities and tougher penalties for offenders.
We changed that by putting many more police officers on the streets, and crime did fall.
But that doesn’t mean stop-and-frisk was the source of the drop. Experimental and quasiexperimental data that we have suggests that police presence (independent of stop-andfrisk) is effective. Look at any of several recent analyses of policing, and you see that
implementing more foot patrols appears to reduce crime. To be sure, the NYPD put more
boots on the ground, but under former Commissioner Kelly, the increased presence was
accompanied by unduly aggressive practices that have come to define stop-and-frisk,
leading some to believe that those invasive practices should get the credit for reducing
crime.
[W]e have ample evidence that polite and respectful interactions between police and
suspects encourages people to obey the law more than impolite and degrading
interactions. [W]e have evidence that moving police from low-crime areas to highercrime areas is a cost-effective way to reduce crime. [W]e have evidence that firm and
respectful offender notifications can significantly reduce criminal recidivism in general
and shootings in particular.
Crime-prevention, though, isn’t just about policing. The Crime Lab at the University of
Chicago has shown the efficacy of intensive tutoring and counseling aimed at helping atrisk youth.
Police departments across the country (including the NYPD under Commissioner
William J. Bratton and Mayor Bill DeBlasio) have begun implementing programs based
on hard evidence derived from large-scale studies like those described above. It is
disappointing that just as these officials are embracing practices supported by empirical
research (not to mention by the citizens in the communities being policed), proponents of
now-discredited tactics want to turn back the clock. Happily, they are rapidly becoming
relics of history, not guides for the future. Evidence-based policing and crime prevention
is here to stay, and we’ll all be far safer for it.
Reviewing the Rationale for Stop-andFrisk (EXCERPTED)
Paul Larkin, The Atlantic, March 24th, 2014
Any angler will tell you: “If you want to catch fish, you have to go where the fish are.”
The same is true when fishing for street crime.
In the case of crack cocaine, you need to focus on urban, poor, African-American
neighborhoods, because trafficking is primarily the work of dealers in those communities.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission, Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy, and
others agree about the demographics of the crack trade. Indeed, no one seriously
disagrees. The only question is how to address the problem….
The only question, then, is how to solve the problem, and this requires us to address three
important, difficult, and unavoidable questions. They’re important, because they shape
the policy debate. They’re difficult, because they involve contentious subjects. And
they’re unavoidable, because no one can honestly address this subject without taking a
position on them.
1. Is this technique useful? Yes. Street cops think so; just ask Big Cat and Gesuelli, the
two Newark officers…. Police administrators think so, as witnessed by the strong
endorsements from former NYPD Commissioners William Bratton and Ray Kelly.
Criminologists also think so. “Broken Windows,” the 1982 Atlantic article by James Q.
Wilson and George Kelling, formed the basis for today’s preventive street policing.
Franklin Zimring, Chair of the Berkeley Criminal Justice Studies Program, analyzed New
York City data and concluded in 2012 that the crime reduction correlated positively with
the NYPD’s law enforcement strategy, which includes preventive street patrol—not with
economic and sociological explanations. Accordingly, there is experiential, theoretical,
and possibly empirical support for the technique’s effectiveness.
It is easy to understand why critics discount its benefit for law-abiding black residents.
Offenders are arrested, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned—events that lend
themselves to statistics, photographs, and media stories. Crimes that do not occur—and
people who do not become victims—are invisible. Yet the lives saved and improved by
aggressive street patrol are real, even though they are unidentifiable.
2. Is this technique inherently bigoted? No. Cops of all races stop and frisk diverse
suspects. Crack trafficking and violent crime are concentrated in minority communities,
and, as Zimring has noted, “preventive street policing cannot be made much more
colorblind than the demographic patterns of violent crime.” The law also forbids bigotry.
A cop may stop and frisk a suspect only if he has a “reasonable suspicion,” based on the
facts of each case, that a suspect is involved in crime or is armed. An offender’s race can
help the police identify a known suspect, but his race cannot make him into a suspect.
Yes, street cops sometimes make mistakes, but the Supreme Court allowed for those
errors by adopting a low threshold for stops and frisks. Reasonable suspicion does not
require an officer to be right, or even to be more likely right than wrong, so we should not
be surprised if the police often err.
Moreover, selling crack is illegal, so offenders are discreet, not obvious. And crack
dealers arm themselves because they cannot call the police if someone steals their goods
or refuses to pay; violent retribution is their only recourse. Street cops therefore face
potentially deadly risks when they question suspects in close quarters. The fact that police
perform a high number of frisks without discovering any weapons can be more likely
attributed to caution than racism.
3. How can we prevent this technique from being used oppressively? The remedy is not to
outlaw the technique but to take these four steps.
Step 1: Ensure a diverse demographic profile within the police department. New York
City and Newark have done that, as Bergner noted. It reduces the risk that the local police
will be seen as outsiders “occupying” a community.
Step 2: Train and retrain officers in the law, and include the NAACP and ACLU as
academy lecturers.
Step 3: Discipline street cops for unduly aggressive stops and frisks, and have them
apologize sometimes if they are wrong. Officers will object that admitting a mistake
undermines the authority necessary to maintain dominance in a world of lions, not lambs.
Sometimes this is true, but not always.
Step 4: Have senior commanders brief neighborhood residents on what the police do and
why. If the community views the police favorably, politicians and the media will come
around.
One last point: Don’t blame street cops for problems they did not cause and cannot
remedy. Make progress on that problem, and the stop-and-frisk problem will fade away.
Forbidding the police from properly using this technique, however, cannot remedy the
real problem—unless the theory is that outlawing this technique will so terrify Sutton
Place residents with the prospect of returning crime to its 1960s levels that residents
eventually will pony up whatever funds are necessary to solve the real problem. I’m
cynical enough to believe that that strategy underlies some of the criticism, but I’m
hopeful enough to bet that it won’t work. The people suffering from drug trafficking and
crime deserve better than political gambits, and they deserve it today, not down the road.
FOR
AGAINST
Think about both your arguments and the
possible counter arguments the other side
will make.
Think about both your arguments and the
possible counter arguments the other side
will make.
Public/Local Safety?
Public/Local Safety?
Police Safety?
Police Safety?
Racial Profiling?
Racial Profiling?
Is there a way to compromise or “fix it”?
Is there a way to compromise or “fix it”?
NY TIMES article by Benjamin Weiser and Joseph Goldstein, January 30, 2014
Mayor Says New York City Will Settle
Suits on Stop-and-Frisk Tactics
(EXCERPTED)
New York City will settle its long-running legal battle over the Police Department’s
practice of stopping, questioning and often frisking people on the street — a divisive
issue at the heart of the mayoral race last year — by agreeing to reforms that a judge
ordered in August, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Thursday.
In making the announcement, which he said he hoped would end a turbulent chapter in
the city’s racial history, Mr. de Blasio offered a sweeping repudiation of the aggressive
policing practices that had been a hallmark of his predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg,
but that had stoked anger and resentment in many black and Latino neighborhoods. He
essentially reversed the course set by Mr. Bloomberg, whose administration had appealed
the judge’s ruling.
“We’re here today to turn the page on one of the most divisive problems in our city,” Mr.
de Blasio said at a news conference. “We believe in ending the overuse of stop-and-frisk
that has unfairly targeted young African-American and Latino men.”
The judge, Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan, found that the
department’s stop-and-frisk tactics were unconstitutional, and that it had resorted to “a
policy of indirect racial profiling.” At the height of the program, in the first quarter of
2012, the police stopped people — mostly black and Latino men — on more than
200,000 occasions. A vast majority of those stopped were found to have done nothing
wrong.
Judge Scheindlin had ordered the appointment of a monitor to develop, in consultation
with the parties, widespread reforms of the department’s “policies, training, supervision,
monitoring and discipline regarding stop-and-frisk.” That process will go forward as part
of the agreement.
The remarkable shift that has occurred in the city’s policing tactics was sharply
underscored by those present when Mr. de Blasio made the announcement. Among those
standing beside him were some of the Police Department’s harshest critics, namely the
directors of the civil rights legal groups that had pursued the two lawsuits that were
covered by the agreement.
Mr. de Blasio, in seeking to fulfill a campaign pledge that had helped propel him to his
landslide victory, said on Thursday that if the court approved the agreement the city
would withdraw its appeal.
The mayor appeared with Police Commissioner William J. Bratton and the city’s
corporation counsel, Zachary W. Carter, and chose a symbolic location to make his
announcement: the Brownsville Recreation Center in a neighborhood of Brooklyn where
the stop-and-frisk tactics had been widely applied.
A 2010 report in The New York Times found that the highest concentration of police
stops in the city had occurred in a roughly eight-block area of Brownsville that is
predominantly black.
“We will not break the law to enforce the law,” Mr. Bratton said in a statement. “That’s
my solemn promise to every New Yorker, regardless of where they were born, where
they live, or what they look like. Those values aren’t at odds with keeping New Yorkers
safe — they are essential to long-term public safety.”
In discussing the agreement, Mr. de Blasio was generous in his welcome to the city’s
former adversaries, who seemed delighted if not disbelieving at the turn of events in a
legal battle that began in the late 1990s.
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which helped
to handle one of the lawsuits, Floyd v. City of New York, said: “This is where the real
work begins. Nobody standing here is pretending this is ‘Mission Accomplished.’ ”
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which
handled the other suit, said the agreement “brings us closer to closing the book on that
tale of two cities.”
Bloomberg officials had credited the stop-and-frisk practice for the sharp reduction in
murders and the removal of illegal guns from the streets. But while Mr. Bloomberg had
characterized Judge Scheindlin’s ruling as dangerous and said it undermined public
safety, Mr. de Blasio described the city’s decision to move toward reform as a moment
“of profound progress.”
The mayor’s announcement comes amid a steep decline in the number of police stops, to
about 21,000, in the third quarter of 2013, when Judge Scheindlin issued her opinion.
Mr. de Blasio said the stop-and-frisk practice was “broken and misused” and cited a
“collective commitment to fix the fundamental problems that enabled stop-and-frisk to
grow out of control and violate the rights of innocent New Yorkers.”