Stop-and-frisk does not keep people safe and is rapidly becoming the most discredited policing practice in the United States. Exclusively targeting Black and Brown people, it leads to racially-biased harassment and violent intimidation. Young people, members of the LGBTQ community, people who are experiencing homelessness, or are immigrants, are especially put at risk.
Stop-and-frisk is a practice in which a law enforcement officer can stop a person and “frisk” them for weapons or contraband without probable cause. In theory, stop-and-frisks in DC (or as DC police deceptively call them, “protective pat-downs”) are supposed to be brief and noninvasive, and happen only when a person is suspected of having a weapon. In reality, “suspicion” applies almost exclusively to Black and Brown people, the stops are invasive and traumatizing, and police regularly conduct illegal searches for things other than weapons without probable cause. Stop-and-frisk has become code for a mass dragnet of racially-biased harassment aimed at using intimidation as a “crime fighting” tool.
Stop-and-Frisk Happens Everyday in DC
DC residents have years of stories of being stopped, followed, and abused by police who routinely violate their civil rights. And while the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has claimed to have ended jump out squads, described as “DC’s scarier version of stop and frisk”—which involve heavily armed teams of undercover officers violently searching and arresting anyone deemed suspicious—these tactics have also continued.
The chief of police himself has admitted (after pressure from the public and the DC Council) that stop-and-frisks occur in DC. The MPD, however has consistently resisted releasing data on the number of stop-and-frisks conducted by DC Police officers, and illegally refused to collect and release comprehensive data on stop-and-frisks for three years. A successful lawsuit brought by Stop Police Terror Project DC, Black Lives Matter DC, and ACLU DC forced the MPD to start releasing stop-and-frisk data but currently we only have four weeks of data.
What we know from the four weeks of data that MPD was forced to release is that there were 11,600 police stops in four weeks and more than 1,000 frisks. Out of those 11,600 stops, 70 percent were of Black people, and over 90 percent of those frisked were Black.
Stop-and-Frisk Doesn’t Work
Stop-and-frisk does not keep people safe and is rapidly becoming the most discredited policing practice in the United States. Studies of the tactic in a wide variety of cities have revealed clear racial bias and extremely low “effectiveness”: most people stopped hadn’t committed any crimes.
In DC less than 1 percent of those 11,600 stops conducted by MPD within four weeks resulted in finding guns. In other cities such as New York, Chicago, and Baltimore, the “hit rate” for finding weapons is almost never above 2 percent.
Stop-and-frisk is not only ineffective in preventing violence it makes it worse. Money and resources are wasted on a growing police force, when they could be used to support proven preventative measures that focus on helping communities not punishing them. The DC government has invested more than half a billion dollars in the MPD, and less than 5 percent of that amount into violence prevention.
As homicides rise—to more than 100 so far this year—police presence in DC has only grown. Officers harass community members for matching vague descriptions of suspects or for simply being in a high crime area, as their neighbors, friends, and relatives are killed. In fact, aggressive policing and use of stop-and-frisk has been shown to actively cause trauma, both to individuals and entire communities.
Stop-and-Frisk is Racist
Police consistently use stop-and-frisk to target Black and Brown communities. While the data MPD has released is limited, we do know that between 2010 and 2017 over 80 percent of all stop-and-frisks were of Black DC residents, who make up less than 48 percent of DC’s total population. And from the four weeks of very recent comprehensive data from 2019 we know that out of 11,600 stops, 70 percent were of Black people, and over 90 percent of the 1,000 frisks were of Black people.
This is a pattern that can be seen throughout the country: In Chicago, Black people made up 72 percent of all stops while representing only 32 percent of the city’s population, in New York at least 80 percent of stops each year were of Black or Brown people (one of the reasons a judge ruled much of NY’s stop-and-frisk program illegal).
And even though white people are far less likely to be frisked, police find weapons and “contraband” on white people more often than on Black people.
Why Legislation to Ban Stop-and-Frisk Is Needed
Defenders of stop-and-frisk, like DC Police Chief Peter Newsham and Mayor Muriel Bowser, claim that stop-and-frisk is ok as long as it’s “constitutional.” In reality there’s no such thing as a "good" type of stop-and-frisk because the constitutional limits on when police can stop someone and when they can frisk them are virtually nonexistent, leading police departments to make up their own rules.
Lawsuits challenging stop-and-frisk laws are hindered by the looseness of these constitutional limits. They are often dependent on the amount of data collected and released by police departments showing discrimination (which is why the MPD has been so resistant to following the law requiring data disclosure), and a judge’s willingness to put real and substantive restrictions on police.
Therefore stop-and-frisk needs to be banned through legislation. By banned we don’t mean simply banning racial profiling, we mean severely restricting when and how a police officer is allowed to stop or frisk someone without actual evidence. Reasons such as being “nervous” or “evasive,” or matching incredibly vague suspect descriptions--like Black man 20-35 wearing black hoodie and jeans--would be eliminated as acceptable reasons.
Cities have previously tried just banning racial profiling but when a police department uses inherently racist practices like stop-and-frisk profiling bans do not mean much. Stop-and-frisk is a practice that assumes every person of color is a suspect and a possible enemy.
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