Chicago Enters 'Stop and Frisk' Ruling Debate
By aaroncynic in News on Aug 15, 2013 8:20PM
Chicago made its way into the debate over the New York City Police Department’s controversial “stop and frisk” policy after the New York Post ran a story saying the decision in New York to overhaul the controversial procedure would turn the city into another Chicago. After a judge ruled that the NYPD violated the rights of thousands of New Yorkers, the Post ran several stories on the matter, one of which quoted an unnamed officer saying “welcome to Chicago.” Nathaniel Pendleton, father of Hadiya Pendleton, whose murder a week after she sang at President Obama’s inauguration drew national attention, told the Post:
“If crime rates are down in New York, don’t stop what you’re doing. Don’t test the water...Can you sleep at night if someone gets shot because a cop couldn’t search someone they know has a gun?”
Pendleton also said that if Chicago was as aggressive as New York in its stop and frisk procedures, police “would find a lot more guns.”
But both Chicago residents and CPD said the controversial policy, which in New York City has almost exclusively targeted black and Latino men and netted nearly no criminal charges, is alive and well. "That stuff has been going for forever,” lifetime Englewood resident Johnie Williams told DNAinfo. “I think we have to gauge what the cops have to deal with — especially in this area. For the most part, it's semi-justified. You never know who's going to pop up with what,” he continued. Police Supt. Garry McCarthy also said the practice was quite common:
“Stop-and-frisk is a tactic that every department in the country uses because we have to stop people when we're going to arrest them. We have to frisk them if we're in fear of a weapon."
Not everyone agrees that shaking down random citizens on the street is helpful in stopping crime, and many have pointed out the policy increases discord between police and community residents. The Chicago Tribune reports Judge Shira Scheindlin, who handed down the ruling in New York on Monday said the procedure makes people “feel unwelcome in some parts of the city, and distrustful of the police,” adding “This alienation cannot be good for the police, the community or its leaders.”
Englewood resident Christopher Gordon concurred with that sentiment, telling DNAinfo he sometimes has been stopped four times in a day and police often tell him he shouldn’t be out in his own neighborhood. “It shouldn't be legal. There should be a reason. Even if you have something on you, they should give you a reason to stop you,” Gordon said. Indeed, the statistics seem to show the policy doesn’t net results. In her ruling, Judge Scheindlin noted 98.5 percent of the 2.28 million people searched turned up empty, and out of 4.4 million stops total, only 6 percent led to an arrest.