The department said recently that it was instructing precinct commanders to review the legality of all stop-and-frisk reports, according to a report by WNYC. But such reviews — which should have been done all along — will be meaningless unless independent investigators actually interview officers to determine the proportion of stops based on reasonable suspicion, as required by law, and the percentage based on improper racial profiling, in which blacks and Hispanics are singled out.
The statistics are getting worse by the year. Last week, the New York Civil Liberties Union released a report — based on the department’s data — showing the number of street stops had grown to 685,724 in 2011 from about 97,000 in 2002, the year Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office. On Friday, the Police Department released data showing that the stops have occurred at an even higher pace for the first three months of this year.
