A third of the hundreds of thousands of pedestrian stops Philadelphia police officers conducted last year were done so illegally. More than half of the time, officers frisked civilians without having the legal right. Yet less than 1 percent of those pat-downs produced a weapon.
Black residents, by far, were affected by these practices more than any other group.
These are some of the findings of the latest progress report of the Philadelphia Police Department's stop-and-frisk program, which has been overseen by a federal court monitor since 2012.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Stop It
We live in gun nut America, where the conventional wisdom is that everyone should be packing all the time. Did I say everyone? Well, of course not EVERYONE, not certain types of people in certain neighborhoods. Stop & Frisk is just a license to harass minorities for reasons which make absolutely no sense in the context of our gun nut culture.