Stop-and-frisk: Already here

IN THE FINAL DAYS of the Democratic mayoral primary election, Michael Nutter's proposal to use "stop, question and frisk" policing to get guns off the streets came under rapid fire.

Nutter's rival candidates bashed the plan. So did Mayor Street and the police commissioner. A political action committee aired television ads accusing Nutter of threatening civil rights.

What nobody mentioned is that stop-and-frisk - in which police stop people suspected of criminal activity and pat them down for illegal weapons - is already used by police in Philadelphia.

"The idea of giving officers training to recognize [illegal] guns? That's already in place," said Lt. Fran Healy, a lawyer for the Police Department.

Last year, Philly cops stopped 132,765 pedestrians, according to department data. Some of those stops would have involved a pat-down or an arrest.

A rough analysis shows that Philadelphia averaged nine stops per 100 residents last year. New York City averaged six stops per 100, according to data released by the New York Police Department earlier this year.

So why the big deal over a program city police already had?

Nutter - who won the primary - said he was aware of the department's practices. Police officers would come up to him and say, "You know that we do this already, right?"

"The issue is," Nutter said, "is it a publicly promoted and announced official policy and is it aggressively utilized?"

Nutter says he wants to give stop-and-frisk greater emphasis within the department and with the public.

But police spokesman Sgt. D.F. Pace insisted that stop-and-frisk is emphasized to Philly cops.

"As a sergeant that worked the streets, I would have to respectfully disagree with that," he said. "Sergeants are keenly aware of stop-and-frisk. If [police] see someone that is up to no good . . . they're going to stop that person."

Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.

In fact, the number of pedestrian stops made in Philly has jumped significantly over the last three years. According to police data, the 132,765 pedestrian stops last year were up from 102,321 in 2005 and 87,812 stops in 2004.

William Johnson, executive director of the civilian Police Advisory Commission, said that the increased stops had not been accompanied by an uptick in complaints.

"We haven't seen a comparative increase in the number of complaints as the result of that, no," Johnson said. The Police Department's public-affairs office did not provide data on complaints made to the department.

Police lawyer Healy said officers are instructed in the police academy on when they may legally stop and pat someone down. Training continues in the police districts as well, he said.

Nutter wants officers to be reminded of stop-and-frisk rules in their daily roll call so that "it's in the front of their minds."

He also plans to air public-service announcements about the policy to spread the word that police are targeting guns.

The idea is to get people with illegal guns to leave them at home. Fewer guns mean fewer homicides.

When asked how soon he would release a complete plan of action, Nutter, who faces Republican Al Taubenberger in November, said, "I want to get elected first."

The legal guidelines for stop-and-frisk go back to a 1968 Supreme Court decision, Terry v. Ohio. In that case, the court ruled that officers could stop someone if they had "reasonable suspicion" that the person had or was about to commit a crime.

Stop-and-frisk was used by the New York City police in the 1990s under Mayor Rudy Guliani as part of a major crackdown on crime. The aggressive enforcement was part of a "broken windows" approach - the theory being that going after minor infractions can prevent bigger crimes.

New York's crime rates dropped drastically, but the approach has critics. A study by the state attorney general's office found that African-Americans were stopped more frequently than whites and that one stop in seven was made without proper cause.

"There's always going to be violation, and how much violation are you willing to tolerate?" said Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Fagan, who led the study.

A increase in stop-and-frisk in Baltimore over the past few years has drawn wide criticism. A grand jury found that police were arresting too many people without justification in black neighborhoods.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Baltimore, along with the NAACP, filed a class-action lawsuit against the police department.

"The primary goal is a reform of the policing practices," said ACLU staff attorney David Rocah.

Whether the practice has helped in Baltimore is hard to say. According to police spokesman Matt Jablow, the violent crime rate has gone down overall, but the murder rate has gone up.

Still, University of Pennsylvania criminologist Lawrence Sherman - who is cited by Nutter in his crime plan - supports stop-and-frisk.

Sherman conducted a study in Kansas City in which crime-ridden neigborhoods were flooded with increased patrols, with officers using tactics such as stop-and-frisk. Research showed that the effort decreased crime and increased the seizure of illegal guns.

Nutter said he will increase police oversight, to help prevent civil-rights violations.

In 1996, to settle a police corruption lawsuit, the city agreed to a number of reforms, including providing civil-rights groups with raw police data to study for signs of racial profiling or other abuses.

That arrangement stopped several years ago, according to attorney David Rudovsky. Nutter said he would bring it back. He also said he would work with civil-rights groups as he implements his plan.

Rudovsky said the data on police stops proved that the department needs such oversight.

"There were a significant number of stops where the police information would not justify the stop," Rudovsky said. "I think it was pretty clear to us, based on all the analysis we did, that there was some racial bias shown." *