“Police are still stopping and questioning people in the city,” nypost.com reports. “The police tactic continues to be a useful tool for driving down crime, Police Commissioner James O’Neill said on the radio Sunday morning. ‘It’s something that we continue to do.'”
Paging George Orwell! When did the Big Apple po-po’s “stop-and-frisk” policing become “stop-and-question”? Maybe when mayoral candidate (now Mayor) Bill De Blasio pledged to reform the practice, amidst charges that stop-and-frisk amounted to racial harassment and profiling.
According to the new NYPD jefe, stop-and-frisk is now A-OK. His employees don’t do it so often anymore — and it works!
O’Neill acknowledged his department hasn’t been conducting the same number of controversial searches as it has in years past – but admitted the tactic is useful in ridding city streets of illegal guns.
“It’s very fruitful for us,” O’Neill said. “Our gun arrests are up around 20% this year. We’re still taking guns off the street.”
Just in case you feel compelled to take Commissioner O’Neill’s 20 percent stat seriously, please note that the NYPD has a long and ignoble history of cooking the books. And planting guns. Besides, arrests and convictions are two different things.
More to the point, O’Neill is arguing that “taking guns off the street” (and melting them out-of-state) fully justifies unpopular, indeed unconstitutional policing. This is my surprised face.