How many guns does stop and frisk uncover?

Posted May 9, 2012 By Alice Brennan

The NYPD’s controversial stop and frisk policy is failing in the very area it was designed to target — gun control — according to new analysis released by the New York Civil Liberties Union today. The detailed interrogation of the police department’s own stop-and-frisk records indicates a record 685,724 people were stopped and frisked by police last year, and just 780 guns were consequently recovered.

Since 2003, the number of people stopped has increased by 524,873, and police have recovered just 176 additional guns. “That’s about one gun per 3,000 stops,” said Chris Dunn of the NYCLU. “In 2003 it was about one every 200 people”

The report’s release comes as Public Advocate Bill de Blasio calls on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to conduct an audit on the effectiveness of the policy. De Blasio held a press conference today damning the disproportionate targeting of blacks and Latinos through stop-and-frisk policing.

“There is nothing particularly surprising about this data,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. “It’s unfortunately consistent with previous NYPD patterns.” The report highlights the racial disparity in the execution of stop and frisk policies in New York City, with the number of stops on young black men exceeding the city’s entire population of the same demographic.

The NYCLU analysis also drilled into neighborhoods where the most stops took place last year. Brownsville in Brooklyn topped out with the number of stops equaling 29 percent of the total neighborhood population, followed by East Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant and Hunts Point. On the Upper East Side, Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge the number of police stops equaled just 2.5 percent of the population. In 70 out of 76 precincts, blacks and Latinos made up over half of the stops, even in areas where they represented under 15 percent of the population.

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<h1>How many guns does stop and frisk uncover?</h1><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.thenewyorkworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/dailyQ2-01.jpg');" href="http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/dailyQ2-01.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2600" title="dailyQ2-01" src="http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/dailyQ2-01.jpg" alt="" width="105" height="105" /></a>The NYPD’s controversial stop and frisk policy is failing in the very area it was designed to target — gun control — according to new <a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.nyclu.org/files/publications/NYCLU_2011_Stop-and-Frisk_Report.pdf');" href="http://www.nyclu.org/files/publications/NYCLU_2011_Stop-and-Frisk_Report.pdf">analysis</a> released by the New York Civil Liberties Union today.  The detailed interrogation of the police department’s own stop-and-frisk records indicates a record 685,724 people were stopped and frisked by police last year, and just 780 guns were consequently recovered.
Since 2003, the number of people stopped has increased by 524,873, and police have recovered just 176 additional guns. “That’s about one gun per 3,000 stops,” said Chris Dunn of the NYCLU. “In 2003 it was about one every 200 people”
The report’s release comes as Public Advocate Bill de Blasio calls on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to conduct an audit on the effectiveness of the policy. De Blasio held a press conference today damning the disproportionate targeting of blacks and Latinos through stop-and-frisk policing.
“There is nothing particularly surprising about this data,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. “It’s unfortunately consistent with previous NYPD patterns.”  The report highlights the racial disparity in the execution of stop and frisk policies in New York City, with the number of stops on young black men exceeding the city’s entire population of the same demographic.
The NYCLU analysis also drilled into neighborhoods where the most stops took place last year. Brownsville in Brooklyn topped out with the number of stops equaling 29 percent of the total neighborhood population, followed by East Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant and Hunts Point. On the Upper East Side, Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge the number of police stops equaled just 2.5 percent of the population. In 70 out of 76 precincts, blacks and Latinos made up over half of the stops, even in areas where they represented under 15 percent of the population.

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