Stop-and-frisk in New York City

The stop-question-and-frisk program, or stop-and-frisk, in New York City, is a New York City Police Department practice of temporarily detaining, questioning, and at times searching civilians on the street for weapons and other contraband.

This is what is known in other places in the United States as the Terry stop. The rules for stop, question, and frisk are found in the state's criminal procedure law section 140.50, and are based on the decision of the US Supreme Court in the case of Terry v. Ohio. About 685,724 people were stopped in 2011. However, the number of stops has been reduced dramatically since then, to 22,939 in 2015.

The vast majority of those stopped were African-American or Latino, most of whom were aged 14-24. The racial disparity persists even after controlling for precinct variability and race-specific estimates of crime participation. Research suggests that stop-and-frisk had few effects, if any, on crime in New York City.

Stop-and-frisk became an issue in the 2016 presidential election.

The stop and frisk policy was adopted from English law in a number of American courts. In accordance with English common law, without statutory provisions, a police officer has the power to stop, question, and frisk suspects given reasonable circumstances. Based on a standard that holds less than probable cause, the power is granted upon the standard of reasonable suspicion. It is a question of circumstances of each individual case that determines whether reasonable detention and investigation is validated.

Stop-and-frisk was made into an area of concern by the Supreme Court when it encountered the case of Terry v. Ohio. While frisks were arguably illegal,until then, a police officer could search only someone who had been arrested, unless a search warrant had been obtained. In the cases of Terry v. Ohio, Sibron v. New York, and Peters v. New York, the Supreme Court granted limited approval in 1968 to frisks conducted by officers lacking probable cause for an arrest in order to search for weapons if the officer believes the subject to be dangerous. The Court's decision made suspicion of danger to an officer grounds for a "reasonable search."

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