Stop-And-Frisk Remains An Issue Around The Nation

Houston Police arresting young man
William Anderson
January 3, 2020

Stop-and-frisk is a practice some people might think has gone away, but it hasn’t and you don’t need to look much further than Black communities to realize it.

The racist practice that forces Black people to submit to warrantless searches is taking on new forms to target us.

In New York, stop-and-frisk policy was ordered to stop in court. Mayor De Blasio long criticized his predecessor for it. Yet, a new report shows “stop and frisk has given way to an equally-intrusive, far more insidious strategy of profiling” using gang databases to employ the same tactics.

In cities like Miami Gardens, tens of thousands of people have been stopped countless times. An investigation by Fusion found the practice was employed against “the equivalent of more than half of the city’s population. Not one of them was arrested.” This is a predominantly Black town, too.

It’s not just New York City or Miami Gardens, either. 

In 2018, Milwaukee had to settle for millions after a lawsuit emerged against their use of stop-and-frisk to target Black people.

And Black Lives Matter DC, ACLU, and Stop Police Terror Project sued Washington, D.C., over stop-and-frisk. They found 81.6% of police stops in D.C. are Black people and almost 90% of the time force was used. This is violence.

A practice as racist as this has to be stopped by holding our local officials accountable and telling them enough is enough! Many are already doing this, but it’s a fight we all have a stake in.

We have a quick favor to ask:

PushBlack is a nonprofit dedicated to raising up Black voices. We are a small team but we have an outsized impact:

  • We reach tens of millions of people with our BLACK NEWS & HISTORY STORIES every year.
  • We fight for CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM to protect our community.
  • We run VOTING CAMPAIGNS that reach over 10 million African-Americans across the country.

And as a nonprofit, we rely on small donations from subscribers like you.

With as little as $5 a month, you can help PushBlack raise up Black voices. It only takes a minute, so will you please ?

Share This Article: