Great news! NYC has seen a decrease in violent crime during the first quarter of the year, with shootings and murders dropping by 24% and 40%, respectively. Incidentally, the number of Stop-and-Frisks carried out by the NYPD has also gone down significantly during this time period.
“From January 1 through March 31 of this year, the NYPD conducted 99,788 stop, question, and frisks,” Gothamist reports. “For the same time period in 2012 that number was 203,500, continuing a decline in the practice that began last year.”
Deductive reasoning might lead one to believe that this cut in Stop-and-Frisks might have something to do with recent policy changes requiring more thorough documentation by the police, or that high-profile Federal Court case questioning Stop-and-Frisk’s constitutionality, or all that criticism it’s received from media outlets and mayoral candidates alike; but the NYPD is sticking to their guns.
“Staffing and other factors, including training, have had a bearing on the number of stops,” chief NYPD spokesman Paul Browne stated. “But the bottom line is that the total number of stops in any given quarter reflects what the police officers on duty during that quarter observed.”
Last year, we noted a similar correlation between fewer stop-and frisks and reduced gun violence. Lots of weird coincidences going on, huh?
