Brooks
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All true, but the misuse or even illegal use of a procedure is not a reflection of the procedure.I think the issue here is that the NYPD brass has apparently ordered officers to find any reason to stop someone (within certain neighborhoods and with certain groups of people) with each stop being tracked in database and , according to some cops, the number of stops they make being used as a measure of their performance.
So while under Terry police certainly have a right to stop suspicious people and perform protective pat downs this really seems to smell like the NYPD institutionally ignoring the limits - few as they are - that Terry places on them.
There are people on this thread claiming that stop and frisk is unconstitutional. It's not. People have to discern between an individual police officer abusing his power and constitutionally accepted police practices.
Also, if someone's behavior truly is "reasonably suspicious" they SHOULD be in a database. If the same person is tracked several times a month, that's an important piece of information of which the police department needs to be aware.
As far as the brass' "quota" is concerned, the number of stops divided by the number of police officers comes out to roughly one per month per cop. If a New York City police officer doesn't see a "reasonably suspicious" individual once a month then the "brass" should be judging him harshly.