A Terry Stop is when the police are allowed to stop, question and frisk someone they believe is behaving suspiciously (Larson, 2000). It is not the same as an arrest because it is limited in terms of both the time the police can talk with a subject and what they talk to the subject about. A Terry Stop can lead to arrest if evidence of wrongdoing is found. Terry Stops should not be legalized because it is leads to racial profiling from police officers.
The Terry Stop originated from a case that occurred in 1968 when two men, John W. Terry and Richard Chilton, were standing at a street corner and were thought to be acting suspicious by Detective Martin McFadden. The two men were going back and forth 24 times in total looking at the window of the same store. Each time they passed the store, Terry and Chilton had a conference. After a period of time, Terry and Chilton were joined by another man named Katz, who left them after a short talk. McFadden thought that the three may have been planning to rob the store, possibly at gunpoint. McFadden followed Terry and Chilton (who were later joined by Katz again) and identified himself as a police officer. McFadden asked the men to identify themselves, and after an unintelligible answer, the officer patted down Terry and felt a gun in his outside coat pocket. McFadden did not search the outer garments of any of the three until he felt the gun. Once McFadden found the gun, all three were taken to the police station, with Terry and Chilton eventually being charged with carrying a concealed weapon. (FindLaw, 2010)
When the case went to trial, the defense lawyers argued that it was against the Fourth Amendment to search someone in the manner that McFadden searched Terry and company. The prosecution responded with the idea that the search was lawful and led to a legal arrest. While that theory was rejected by the judge at the trial, the evidence was not suppressed with the reason being that McFadden had a good reason to believe that Terry, Chilton and Katz were acting suspiciously. Another reason the search was considered OK by the court was because they said that McFadden had the right to conduct the search to make sure Terry and his friends were not a threat to him in terms of having weapons. The court said there was a difference between a stop that leads to an arrest and a frisk and search for evidence of a crime or potential crime. The men were found guilty and their conviction was not overturned on appeals. (FindLaw, 2010)
The court’s argument in regards to the Fourth Amendment is that the amendment protects people against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Not only that, but in this specific case the argument was about whether or not the weapons seized were to be admissible in court as opposed to the officer’s conduct. Besides that, the court found that the search conducted by Detective McFadden was “reasonable.” On the subject of officer’s conduct, an officer is allowed by law to conduct a search of the outer parts of a person’s clothing if the officer (or officers) believes that he or she may be in danger.
With all of the above in mind, the Terry Stop law is still something that either needs to be abolished or modified because statistics show that police officers are more likely to stop minorities (ie: African-Americans or Hispanics). For example, last year in New York City, officers stopped more than 530,000 people (which incidentally is five times as many stops as there were in 2002). 83 percent of those stopped were either African-American or Hispanic (with 51 percent being African-American) and only 11 percent were white. (Shvartsman, 2010) This is an issue because it is not fair that someone could be stopped and frisked in public, when it is likely based on the statistics that a person’s only crime when driving or walking down the street is being a young minority. Especially when you consider that 88 percent of those stopped were eventually let go without an arrest. (NYCLU, 2010)
Even though most Terry Stops are completed without incident, there are stories of people who have actually been arrested with no charge because of a Terry Stop. Late in 2007, Leonardo Blair, a former New York Post writer, who is a Jamaican, was stopped by the police. After Blair was searched by the officers, he was arrested for no reason (Lin, 2008). He was let go with no charges, but obviously there were hard feelings from Blair. Blair then filed a lawsuit with help from the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). Donna Lieberman, a member of the NYCLU, said that Blair was arrested for “walking while black.” Anyone who watches the television show COPS knows that there are times where officers will stop someone and handcuff them while saying that the subject is being detained. Think about that happening to you in public. Even worse, imagine being handcuffed, let alone being frisked in broad daylight, when you are just minding your own business. You could be coming home from school, work, taking a walk, or driving to the supermarket and you could be stopped by an officer, frisked, handcuffed and maybe even taken to the police station. It is a bad scenario in all cases, but it is worse in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Boston where there is the potential for a crowd of people watching you get frisked and thinking that you are a criminal.
A major problem with Terry Stops is that it leads to conflict between minorities and the police. There should never be a bad relationship between African-Americans/Hispanics (more specifically law-abiding minorities) and the people who are supposed to protect them. When people feel that they cannot trust the police, it can be argued that we are one step closer to anarchy in our society. Until the end year reports regarding Terry Stops are more balanced, there are always going to be issues with minorities and any authority figures. Even if you take away statistics, which admittedly not many people will look at closely unless they are a member of an organization such as the NYCLU, remembering cases like the Sean Bell shooting will automatically lead to bad feelings from minorities towards the police. The idea that minorities are 89 percent of all Terry Stops (in New York City) in and of itself suggests that there is racial profiling which is illegal. It is going to take years of work before minorities trust the police if there is never another questionable incident. With Terry Stops being legal, there are questionable incidents on a daily basis. Based on the numbers given above regarding the amount of Terry Stops last year, in New York City there are nearly 1,500 stops a day.
On the other side of the argument, police officers are trained to be able to figure out when there is reasonable suspicion to stop a car or a pedestrian. One may argue that as long as a Terry Stop lasts five minutes or less and doesn’t lead to an arrest or even handcuffs being used, then it is worth it just to make sure that someone suspicious is truly not up to something. So then the argument becomes how much is someone’s humiliation worth and where does that stack up against the safety of the public? On the surface, it doesn’t seem as if it is unfair for someone to be questioned momentarily by police if it is going to keep the public at large safe. In other words, Terry Stops are related to utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is about doing what is right for the most people possible (Mill,). It could be said that Terry Stops only upset one person as opposed to potentially making many other people feel safer. Even if we were to expand the people being upset by Terry Stops to a group of people, there are still more people that will probably be appreciative of the idea that police officers are patrolling the streets and stopping people that may have weapons or may be dealing drugs.
In Philadelphia there were 200,000 stops in 2008 (Shvartsman, 2010), which was up from around 100,000 in 2007. The increase was a direct result of the election of Mayor Michael Nutter, who started an aggressive Terry Stop policy after he was elected in November 2007. (Shvartsman, 2010) On the one hand crime has dropped in Philadelphia since the policy was more aggressively pursued by the government; on the other hand it is impossible to prove direct correlation.
Another argument in favor of Terry Stops could be that police officers are trained to catch subtle behavior in potential suspects and if they waited for behavior that was too obvious then there would be many more crimes committed. One could argue that only experienced officers should give Terry Stops because the longer that an officer is walking a beat and seeing the prelude and aftermath of criminal behavior, the more likely it is that they will be able to notice the little things that said criminals do.
The biggest problem with the Terry Stop law is that there is no way to tangibly analyze what getting stopped and frisked by the police in public does to someone’s psyche. There will be people that will always be able to see a Terry Stop for what it is and be able to move on with their day and their lives. On the other hand there will be people who are going to be scared when they see police cars for the rest of their lives and as we have seen from the story of Mr. Blair, age does not matter, but apparently race does. When it comes to tangible payback from the police department it is tough to get because Terry stops are legal and not only that it is hard to prove racial profiling even with the overwhelming statistics.
While it is very important that people feel safe when they are walking the streets, it should be argued that it is more important that the relations between minorities and the police department settle down. It is also important that young, law abiding African-American and Hispanic people (young men specifically) feel that they can walk the streets without being harassed and embarrassed by the police. If the statistics regarding Terry Stops were more representative of the population, particularly of major cities, this would not be as much of a problem. The truth is that the statistics are leaning way too much in one direction and that leads to the members of our society not trusting the people that they should trust the most.
Larson, A. (2000, March). What Happens when i am stopped by the police. Retrieved from http://www.expertlaw.com/library/criminal/police_stops.html
Lim, A. (2008, June). Stop and frisk-the brooklyn rail. Retrieved from http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/09/local/stop-and-frisk
Mill, J.S. (n.d.). Utilitarianism-google books. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=TmJF2moTtg8C&printsec;=frontcover&dq;=utilitarianism&source;=bl&ots;=A13mhrXqAx&sig;=ywa9xSsv_6a0BHiFIQMidozaoSY&hl;=en&ei;=y6BPS_7UF5HV8AaiosGRCg&sa;=X&oi;=book_result&ct;=result&resnum;=5&ved;=0CCkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q;=&f;=false
Shvartsman, S. (2010). Stop and frisk. Retrieved from http://criminal.lawyers.com/Stop-and-Frisk.html
Stop and frisk practices. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices
U.S. supreme court terry v. ohio, 392 u.s. 1 (1968) . (2010). Retrieved from http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol;=392&invol;=1
