3 Reasons Stop-and-Frisk is Still Wrong, Despite Rising Crime Rates
It’s racist, it doesn’t work, and it can endanger public safety
As homicide rates rise across much of the country — along with those for offenses like burglary — politicians and commentators are sounding the call for a practice that many believed had been discredited.
Stop-and-frisk.
Or, as some now call it, “Stop, Question, and Frisk” (SQF).
Presumably, the “question” part has been added to make the process seem less authoritarian.
As if police asking some simple questions before they frisk you means they must have had probable cause once they did.
So, ya know, no harm, no foul.
Except there is harm. And there is most definitely something foul about the practice, especially as it has been carried out in places like New York, where its use was found unconstitutional nearly a decade ago.
Although SQF policies are not inherently unlawful, in city after city, such efforts have been administered in ways that run afoul of Constitutional rights.
And so long as crime rates were dropping, even after stop-and-frisk was formally ended in New York, few called for the practice to return. Even those…
