The article implies the police are doing something wrong by stopping minorities so often, but the opposite appears true: if their stop and frisk approach leads to similar arrest rates, then the police are able to gauge a similar degree of criminality across the population.
This also sheds some interesting information on the current controversy with Arizona's law on allowing the police to stop people to see if they are illegal immigrants. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Terry v. Ohio, allowed police to detain someone briefly under a "reasonable suspicion" standard, rather than the more stringent "probable cause" standard. New York City is currently stopping over 570,000 people per year and arresting about 6% of them.
That is a large number of people being stopped, with a fairly small percentage being arrested. If such a tactic is appropriate to deal with New York's crime problem, I wonder if the courts will overturn Arizona's attempt to deal with its illegal immigration challenge?
Unfortunately, I see our Courts increasingly disregarding our case law. Would be great if Terry v Ohio stands? Great. If not,it is just one more nail in the coffin of our country's future.
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