Racial Bias in Boston and New York 

     

       A study was published recently that highlighted an important problem with the Boston Police Department.  The study shows that 63.3 percent of people stopped by officers are black.  This number is particularly disturbing because black people account for only 24.4 percent of Boston's population.  The data of over 200,000 stop-and-frisks was gathered over a four-year period and reminds us that racial profiling is still an issue.  This chart from the Huffington Post illustrates that the vast majority of people stopped are black. 

     

       The stop-and-frisk law allows an officer to search a person for contraband as long as the officer has a reason to believe that the person was going to commit a crime.  However, "The Boston reports showed, instead, that in three-quarters of all police-civilian encounters, the officer's stated reason for initiating the encounter was simply "investigate person"".   This means that officers have often been targeting people to be stopped-and-frisked for no reason other than the fact that they are black.  Because so many people are targeted without the officer having a legitimate reason to suspect them of criminal activity, most people being investigated are innocent.  The article states that "only 2.5 percent of those stop-and-frisk procedures resulted in the seizure of contraband".  This incredibly low number shows that stopping-and-frisking a person is often a waste of time.  The stop-and-frisk law does not help to catch criminals, it mostly just disrupts the lives of innocent people.

       The Huffington Post article relates the incidents in Boston to a similar case in New York City.  New York City's "broken windows" policy "focuses on aggressively enforcing quality-of-life offenses to deter more serious ones".  Similar to the stop-and-frisk encounters in Boston, 81 percent of all violations were issued to black and hispanic people.  The summonses are most often given out in black and hispanic areas of the city.  In some cases, over 10 percent of all people in black and hispanic areas have been given summonses.  This highlights the racial bias that is very prevalent in the city's police department.  Black and hispanic people are much more likely to be stopped-and-frisked in Boston and given a summons for a quality-of-life offense in New York City.

(Link to above chart)