Stop & Frisk: Is It Right?

The Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights states that people's rights against unreasonable searches and seizures will be protected.  However, the stop-and-frisk law states that police have the right to stop and search anyone in public areas on account of suspicion.

This practice raises serious concerns over racial profiling and privacy laws.  Of the people stopped, around 90% of the people stopped are totally innocent, and over 50% are African-American.


“It’s used in communities where we have lots of guns and lots of murder victims," the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, says In defense of the stop-and-frisk laws.  "And we’ve brought crime down 35 percent in the last 10 years."


I agree that the stop-and-frisk laws can be helpful, but they are severely overused.  I think that only in extreme situations, where there is obvious cause for suspicion, should the police be allowed to stop and search people.


The reason the number of people stopped-and-frisked each year has risen since 2004?  Money.  That's right, cops get rewarded bonuses for arrests made from a stop-and-frisk, and every American is incentivized by money, yes even the cops.


If police were to practice this procedure far less often, I'd be okay with it, but this is certainly not the case. Therefore, I believe the government should take away the bonuses for arrests the cops get in order to control the number of innocent people who are unfairly pulled over.  


America prides itself on freedom and being a land of opportunity for everyone, and how can minorities feel free a part of the American nation if they are searched for just walking around?


So, while reducing the number of stop-and-frisks may cause a slight rise in the crime rate, it needs to be done because the real crime is the police infringing upon the freedom of the innocent people.