We were wrong: Ending stop and frisk did not end

stopping crime
Three years ago this month Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled
unconstitutional the NYPD’s program of stopping, questioning and sometimes
frisking people suspected of criminality.

The third anniversary of Scheindlin’s ruling — August 12 — presents an opportune

moment to evaluate its consequences on the city after the passage of a reasonable
amount of time.

While her findings remain as flawed today as they were then, New York has come
through to a brighter day.

The NYPD under Commissioner Ray Kelly used the lawful tactic of questioning
suspicious individuals to deter crime before it happened. Many cops believed, for
example, that the fear of getting stopped for questioning prompted would-be gun-
toters to stop carrying their weapons.

As many readers will know, the Daily News Editorial Board supported the NYPD’s
strategy as essential to public safety. We also expressed fear that forcing the
department to pull back could seriously harm public safety.

Our editorial commenting on Scheindlin’s ruling stated:

“Make no mistake — Scheindlin has put New York directly in harm’s way with a
ruling that threatens to push the city back toward the ravages of lawlessness and
bloodshed.”

In other pieces, we predicted a rising body count from an increase in murders.

We are delighted to say that we were wrong.

The NYPD began scaling back stops under Kelly before Scheindlin’s decision and
accelerated the trend under Commissioner Bill Bratton. As a result, the number of
stops reported by cops fell 97% from a high of 685,700 in 2011 to 22,900 in 2015.

Not only did crime fail to rise, New York hit record lows.

The murder count stood at 536 in 2010 and at 352 last year — and seems sure to
drop further this year. There were 1,471 shooting incidents in 2010 (1,773 victims).
By 2015, shootings had dropped to 1,130 (1, 339 victims).

The downward march has continued this year — a marked contrast to crime spikes
in many major American cities.

Explaining crime trends is extraordinarily difficult. There are heated debates, for
example, over whether the stop-and-frisk program did, in fact, help drive crime
down at any point in which the department employed the tactic.

Similarly, criminologists will have a field day trying to pinpoint the primary reasons
why crime has continued to drop.

Regardless, there can be little doubt that the NYPD’s increasing reliance on so-
called precision policing — knowing whom to target, when and where — has played
a key role.

And there is no doubt that, heavily grounded in memories of past horrors and too
little informed about the potential of smart new strategies, our fears were baseless.

Mayor de Blasio knew better. Advised by Bratton before his election, de Blasio
foresaw the possibility that the NYPD could fight crime while relaxing interactions
with the public.

Post stop-and-frisk, the facts are clear: New York is safer while friction between the
NYPD and the city’s minority communities has eased.