Why am I not surprised you would come here defending a police state tactic championed by Democrat Michael Bloomberg and continued by Communist Bill deBlasio.
Yes, it was championed by Bloomberg. It was, however, successfully implemented in the mid-90s under Rudy Giuliani and his police commissioner, Bill Bratton. And largely touted by Giuliani. It was just expanded greatly under Bloomberg.
I guess it shows the authoritarian/anti-liberty/anti-Constitution bent crosses both sides of the aisle.
It once again shows the divide is not R versus D but liberty versus authoritarians.
Agreed.
But note that stop-and-frisk has never been found unconstitutional,
per se. It was only the NYPD
policy that was found to be unconstitutional, based on racial bias.\
Their revised policy is more in line with Terry, stating that the officer must have "individualized, reasonable suspicion that the person stopped has committed, is committing or is about to commit a felony or penal law misdemeanor." No longer can it just be because someone is alone in a high-crime area, for example.
Maybe we should no longer call it "stop and frisk" or "stop, question, and frisk", because it's important to understand what we're talking about. Stopping and frisking those under "reasonable suspicion" is an important part of fighting crime. aligncare is right that it saved lives.
The problem is, as implemented in NYC, it stepped on rights.
Edited to add: I am not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice.
