About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

82 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. Arguendo 1 (2013-2014)

handle is hein.journals/gwargu82 and id is 1 raw text is: COMMENTARY Stops and Frisks, Race, and the Constitution Paul J. Larkin, Jr.* ABSTRACT For more than a decade, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has pursued an aggressive strategy to reduce street crime. Among the steps that the NYPD has taken is to stop and frisk anyone suspected of having committed, committing, or being about to commit a crime, such as the illegal possession of a firearm. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have touted the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practice as being responsible for the reduction in crime, particularly homicides, that New York City has witnessed over the past decade. The practice is controversial, however, because the vast majority of individuals stopped are African American or Hispanic. This controversy eventually made its way into court. Nineteen parties who had been stopped by the NYPD brought suit against the City in Floyd v. City of New York. After a trial, the federal district court ruled that the NYPD's stop- and-frisk practice violated the Fourth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court, however, applied the wrong legal analysis to the plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claims. The court relied on a statistical analysis of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practice as a whole, but the Fourth Amendment requires each stop or frisk to be examined individually. By contrast, the district court may have been correct in its equal protection ruling. The court was troubled by evidence in the record that the NYPD cared only about the number of stops, not their legality, as well as evidence of bigotry. That . Senior Legal Fellow and Manager, Overcriminalization Project, The Heritage Foundation; M.P.P., The George Washington University, 2010; J.D., Stanford Law School, 1980; B.A., Washington and Lee University, 1977. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation. In the interest of full disclosure, I was counsel for the United States in two cases mentioned below: United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1 (1989), and Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567 (1988). September 2013 Vol. 82 Arguendo

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most