N.Y. Police Stop More Minorities: Study

New York City police stop and search disproportionately more blacks and Latino than whites, according to statistics released Wednesday that appeared to confirm a long-held perception among minority residents.

The study, commissioned by New York State Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer after a public debate over last February’s killing of an unarmed African immigrant in a barrage of 41 police bullets, found that one “stop and frisk” out of seven did not meet the legal definition of “reasonable suspicion.”

Even with the numbers adjusted to reflect higher crime rates in some predominantly minority neighborhoods, blacks were 23% more likely to be stopped than whites and Latinos 39% more likely to be stopped than whites on suspicion of committing a violent crime, the study found.

“I think the perception has been that there is disproportionate stopping of minorities and now we have an analytical basis to say that perception is real,” Spitzer, told reporters at a news conference. “And now I think it is incumbent upon law enforcement to open up to this reality and to address it in a very serious way.” Spitzer said he shared the results with Police Commissioner Howard Safir.

The report was based on police records from January 1998 to March 1999, known as UF-250 forms, that officers must fill out every time they make a stop. The attorney general added that in general, NYPD officers were “doing a great job” in fighting crime. “The vast majority are honest, hard-working and exemplary public servants,” he said.

Safir said in a statement that the study’s analysis of 175,000 forms was “flawed” and that “the race of the individuals stopped strongly correlates with the descriptions of persons committing violent crimes as identified by their victims.”

Spitzer called on senior police officials to meet his staff and community leaders to work toward changes, whether it be in training, supervision or increasing police officers’ understanding of the laws.

Spitzer said he approved of legally administered stops as a valuable tool for fighting crime, which has decreased to the lowest levels in a generation in recent years.

Latinos make up 23.7% of the population yet 33% of all those stopped were Latino.

By comparison, whites make up 43.4% of the city’s population but accounted for 12.9% of all police stops.