At the recommendation of the federal monitor assigned to the NYPD, police officers have begun issuing “receipts” to people they question and/or frisk but don’t arrest. The short “What Is A Stop?” form requires a cop to provide his or her name and badge number, as well as a reason for the stop in question. Explanation options include “concealing or possessing a weapon,” “engaging in a drug transaction,” “proximity to the scene of a crime,” “matches a specific suspect description,” “acting as a lookout,” “casing a victim or location,” and, of course, “other.”
Meanwhile, the New York Daily News reports:
In addition, a Sept. 21 internal NYPD order underscores that two factors police were previously able to cite — a suspect making a furtive movement or being in a high crime area — are not cause enough for a stop.
And in the strongest acknowledgment that racial profiling is a problem, the order says people can’t be stopped “because they are members of a racial or ethnic group that appears more frequently in local crime suspect data.”
The number of stop-and-frisks has decreased dramatically since the tail end of the Bloomberg administration, when complaints about the policy finally led to a judge finding its implementation unconstitutional. According to the ACLU, the NYPD made 685,724 stops in 2011; there were only 13,604 in the first two quarters of 2015. Still, those subjected to the practice are advised to keep their receipts.
