It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Hard-left Mayor William de Blasio would severely curtail the aggressive “stop and frisk” program.
Hey, it disproportionately targets minority areas of New York City, so it must be racist, right? So we\’ll make sure those damn cops do as little of it as possible and improve the quality of life, right? New York City will be a much better place to live, right?
How about wrong, wrong and wrong.
Excerpted from Rocco Parascandola, Kerry Burke and Larry McShane\’s article for the New York Daily News:
A dramatic drop in stop-and-frisk encounters has emboldened criminals and made cops more reluctant to take proactive police action, even as murders and shootings are on the rise in the city.
The frightening message – echoed by police supervisors and union leaders – comes as stop-and-frisk encounters are on pace to plunge by 42% this year, with 20,000 fewer street stops.
There were 11,652 stops across the city through June 3 – projecting to roughly 28,000 for the year, records obtained by the Daily News show. As the number of stops fell, the number of murders spiked 19.5% during the first five months of the year, the number of people shot is up 9.2% and the number of shooting incidents jumped 9%.
Why is this happening?
Well, in the words of Ed Mullins, who heads the Sergeants Benevolent Association, “What you\’re seeing now are the perps carrying their guns because they\’re not afraid to carry them.”. Anyone want to argue with that?
If Mr. Mullins is correct, , what you are seeing is that an insistence on less aggressive police work has resulted in an immediate, significant spike in violent crime.
And for the “stop and frisk is racist” crowd – those nice folks who conveniently ignore the fact that more “stop and frisk” was conducted in primarily Black neighborhoods because more violent crime was occurring in those neighborhoods – who do you suppose the main victims of this spike in violent crime are?
Hint: it ain\’t the mostly-White folks who live in those doorman buildings on the upper east side.
Let me help out here. If most Black-criminals prey on other Blacks, and there is a spike in violent crime in mostly Black areas, the victims of that spike in crime – innocent, law-abiding people who just want to live their lives in something other than perpetual fear – are mostly going to be Black as well.
Does that mean that William de Blasio was racist for demanding that stop and frisk be dramatically curtailed? No, of course not.
Mayor de Blasio was not racist for demanding less stop and frisk, he thought it would be a way that suspects – disproportionately Black suspects – would be treated more fairly…
…and people who felt this was a bad idea were not racist — if their reasons were that stop and frisk is a) an effective way to curtail violent crime, which is b) more necessary in primarily Black areas of the city because c) there is more violent crime in those areas.
That\’s just common sense.
With the above in mind, can we stash the racist mantra for a bit, consider that fewer stop and frisk procedures have coincided with more violent crime, and seriously consider whether there is a correlation between the two? Then, if we conclude that the correlation does, in fact exist, can we entertain the possibility that it would be a good idea to reimplement a more aggressive stop and frisk program?
That\’s just common sense too.
