How would you feel if you were innocently walking down the street and a police officer stopped and frisked you solely based on what you looked like.
The topic of stop-and-frisk has been receiving a lot of attention lately. New York City Mayor de Blasio is attempting to overturn the stop and frisk tactics that have been in effect in New York City since the 90’s. The conflict is whether or not the police should have the authority to stop and frisk anyone for any reason.
Personally, I am in favor of proactive policing and stop-and-frisk. If the police are suspicious of someone’s actions, they should have every right to stop and question that person. The controversy, however, is what suspicious exactly means. This becomes a concern of racial profiling.
Ultimately, it is the job of the law enforcement to keep us safe from danger. In an age where terrorism and random shooters are rampant, police need to be on high alert at all times, starting with boots on the ground in local neighborhoods.
In 2012, on more than 200,000 occasions, people having done nothing wrong were stopped on the streets and questioned. What most had in common – they were black and Latino men who had done nothing wrong.
A large number of people would fault the police for this. However, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton assured the public in a recent statement, “We will not break the law to enforce the law. That’s my solemn promise to every New Yorker, regardless of where they were born, where they live, or what they look like. Those values aren’t at odds with keeping New Yorkers safe – they are essential to long-term public safety.”
If the police promise to keep their word in this statement, black and Latino men will not be targeted by the police. The target of the police will be any suspicious person. If a police officer is found targeting black and Latino men, they should be reprimanded.
Nobody wants to put our society in danger and nobody wants any individual to feel vulnerable to police unfairness. I feel that proactive policing, or stopping and frisking, is a large part of the responsibility of law enforcement to keep us safe. Of course, the police should not stop just anyone they want and they most certainly should not target certain age groups, genders or races. But, when a police officer sees something that they categorize as even slightly suspicious, they must take action to investigate the situation. They may very well prevent a crime.
In this era of terrorism and mass killers, stop and frisk is one practice that can aid in keeping us as safe as possible. This practice should be upheld with strict oversight to assure that all individuals maintain their civil rights.
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