HOW MANY STOPS ACT?

We are talking about police stops. How many police stops we have in New York. And this is a legislation recently introduced by the state of New York that wants to reduce the unreasonable stops by the police in the streets.

During the mayor Adams ruling over the city of New York, the stops of the police have been 9 thousands in 2021 and 15000 in 2022, considerably less than the stops during mayor Bloomberg 685000 in one year 2011.

Strange thing to think but my experience in the city shows that the police is really not so aggressive against the citizens as it was in 2011.?It is good thing for the regular citizens who don’t feel so much intimidated, because any encounter with the police is a traumatic experience. Majority of the unreasonable stops doesn’t show any crime or doesn’t show illegal activity, like drugs and guns. And majority of the stops doesn’t end up with arrest or summons.

There are three kinds of stops, first level when the police is just asking your information about your name etc., and then second level when is asking threatening questions like “do you have a gun”, and then comes the next stage when they frisk you, and even arrest you.

If you don’t know, you have the right to refuse to be searched if the officer asks, and all the stops have to be reported now, including level 1 and lever 2 stops, as described above, as requires the new legislation, the so-called act “HOW MANY STOPS?” Recoding includes your demographics, your race, age, why they have stopped you, and so on information. The police thinks that it is a huge burden for their job, but that burden could reduce their pressure on the citizens who are not doing any crime, and are just in bad mood.

Because I have noticed people got arrested for stupid things like just forgetting their iPhone in a bar and then returning to pick it up got into an argument with the security, who doesn’t let them in to search for the phone, and could got arrested. I have seen people arrested for any arguments including one person arrested for playing tennis with more than 8 balls, when there was a sign in the park warning not to couch tennis with more than 8 balls.?It is called refusing to obey officer’s order and could end up with arrest. I have crazy stories for what stupid reasons people got arrested, having nothing to do with the security of the city or the crime.

Why people started to ask how many stops? Because some of these stops end up with death, like the case of Eric Garner, Antonio Williams, and many others. And the cases in which police found a gun is one in 13 stops in the last year. The fact that there is a gun doesn’t mean that a crime is committed either.

Mayor Adams increased the stops with 70% in 2022 for the reason to fight the crime. The statistics doesn’t show much importance of the increased stop policy on reducing the gun violence, actually. But it impacted the arrests and the incarcerated population in Rikers Island city jail that also increased under mayor Adams.

When talking about guns and violence I have one very good example from Israel, where all the streets are full of military men and women from the army, because they have mandatory service for the men 3 years and 2 years for the women, all carrying automatic guns, loaded and ready to shoot, but incidents when somebody started uncontrollable killing of civilians is not happening.

The legislation “How many stops” is part of the city efforts to keep the police accountable for its actions. And the impression with these stops is like they are targeting specific types and specific groups of the population, but the serious crimes stay untouchable and unaccountable.

Mayor Adams even acknowledged that the stop and frisk policy disproportionately affects the people of color, but defended the tactic, saying that it can help to get firearms off the streets if used lawfully. But how to be used lawfully when one group is privileged over the rest of the population, he didn’t respond. Mayor Adams even asked the officers to use the tactic stop and frisk to be more proactive. Adams made proactive policing a core goal of his public safety platform – an approach he says improves public safety, but in reality leads to more aggressive behavior from both sides.