New York City’s tenuous race relations are back in the news in a big way. In a three-piece special investigative feature, the Daily News on Sunday unveiled the alarming fact that the city’s black and Latino subway riders are far more likely to be stopped by the police than whites and Asians in the subways.
Tina Moore, Benjamin Lesser and Greg B. Smith have the story:
The NYPD is far more likely to stop and question black and Latino subway riders than white commuters – particularly in Manhattan, a Daily News investigation has found.
Blacks and Hispanics make up 49% of subway riders, yet account for nearly 90% of the citizens stopped and questioned in the subways in the last two years. Whites make up 35.5% of subway ridership, yet they account for a mere 7.9% of the subway riders stopped in the last two years, records show.
This racial disparity occurs across the city, particularly in NYPD Transit Districts that serve mostly white neighborhoods of Manhattan, including Wall Street, SoHo, Tribeca, the West Village, the upper West and East Sides, and midtown. Unlike in the rest of the city, the NYPD’s practice of stopping subway riders grew dramatically through last year – even as the crime rate has plummeted.
As the Daily News notes, this data is alarming because the high frisk rates don’t correspond to a related drop in crime. In 2004, there were just 7.6 stop-and-frisks per day to go along with the 9 subway crimes per day. In 2005, frisks spiked to 32.3 while crimes went down to 8.5 per day. In 2006 and 2007, frisks were at 74.3 and 74.2, respectively, while crimes dipped from 7 per day to 6.
“The million dollar question is, if the city is safe with half this enforcement, why are we doing more enforcement?” Eugene O’Donnell, an ex-cop who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said. “If the subways are safe with “X” level of enforcement, then why go with enforcement that goes beyond that?”
The NYPD meanwhile defending their practice. “Subway crime is down, in part, because of stops. Officers make stops based on reasonable suspicion, and the numbers reflect the times, places and circumstances where those observations take place,” Paul Browne, department spokesperson, said.
More alarming, however, are the way cops are seemingly flaunting the rules. In two companion pieces, Tina Moore explores how the cops often tell those they stop that the police are free to stop anyone any time and how cops usually don’t tell people why they are stopped. The corresponding map shows who gets stopped where. As expected, areas New Yorkers generally consider to be more “white” see higher proportions of non-white stopped.
Right now, response to this story has been muted. The New York Civil Liberties Union noted that this data simply confirms what many of us already knew about race relations and police stops in the subway. Cops are still targeting minorities at a disproportionate rate whether the need to do so exists or not. How the city’s various leaders respond to this over the next few days will be telling.
Graphic from the New York Daily News.
4 comments
I’m part of that 8.1% Does that make me a minority?
Why blacks (non-arabs and middle easterners) and hispanics are being stopped is anyone’s guess.
In order to be intellectually honest about this issue, how come we are not also analysing or discusing a similar racial breakdown of the specific number of criminals and perpetrators who were actually arrested for crimes they committed in the NYC Subways by the NYPD over the past few years as well?
Until we see those numbers as well, maybe the numbers cited above won’t seem so “disproportionate” or “discriminatory” but, rather, disingenuous.
I don’t know about subway crime, but 85% of marijuana arrests in New York are black or Hispanic even though whites use marijuana at a higher rate than either group.