Reasonably Suspicious Police

by Jayda Jackson

The landmark supreme court case Miranda v. Arizona in 1996 narrowed police power to prohibit questioning people without a lawyer’s presence. Nonetheless, police power constantly evolves. Within the expansion of police power is the practice of stop-and-frisk policing in which police officers stop an individual they believe to be suspicious, question the individual, and in some cases pat the individual down in search of weapons or other contraband. This policy aims to decrease crime by preventing criminal acts before they happen. However, this practice creates an inevitable issue: this country’s overtly racist police. Stop-and-frisk policing gives police the ultimate authority to stop individuals based on reasonable suspicion. Black and brown people in America are already highly scrutinized and targeted by law enforcement and this type of policing perpetuates oppressive cycles of incarceration. The horrific police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner were products of the police’s right to approach individuals who they deemed suspicious. The basis of reasonable suspicion is highly subjective and expands police authority over people and as a result, people of color are more fearful, paranoid, and overall tired which is harmful to their right to a peaceful life, free of discrimination and terror.

The landmark Supreme Court case, Terry v. Ohio (1968), justified the police’s use of stop-and-frisk policing in conjunction with reasonable suspicion and argued that searches conducted by the police are not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. On October 31st, 1963, John Terry and Richard Chilton, two Ohio men, were subject to a police search from Cleveland police detective Martin McFadden after he believed the two were about to rob a store. Upon searching, McFadden found pistols on the two men and Chilton and Terry were tried and convicted for carrying concealed weapons. The men appealed and argued that the search was illegal. However, the conviction was held. In 1967, Terry’s case was argued before the United States Supreme Court (Chilton passed away before his case could make it).

The Warren Court ruled that police detective McFadden had the authority to conduct the search on the basis of officer safety. Rather than gathering evidence for a crime, the stop-and-frisk in this case was used to find concealed weapons that could pose an imminent threat to the officer or other people. Furthermore, the Court held that the search was definable by the Fourth Amendment (which would then make the search unconstitutional), however, they argued that not all searches are unconstitutional due to the loophole of reasonable suspicion. The decision was eight-to-one. The single dissenter, Justice William O. Douglas, argued that the standard threshold of probable cause should be the justification for a police search. The Terry ruling gives officers the authority to disregard probable cause if there is reasonable suspicion that one may commit a crime. Reasonable suspicion presents issues because implicit biases affect police judgments and harms some innocent people in the process. The dismissal of probable cause and inclusion of reasonable suspicion in this case expanded and intensified the power and scope of American police by granting them the authority to deem people suspicious based on their own judgment.

The scope of police authority has expanded through reasonable suspicion granted in Terry v. Ohio. Court cases such as Minnesota v. Dickerson challenged the broad umbrella of stop-and-frisk policing. The lower courts arguing this case held that a person who is in an area of high crime and is evasive towards police constitutes a sufficient basis for reasonable suspicion. These factors grant police much authority to stop people based on factors such as, where one lives or who one interacts with. Despite the Supreme Court arguing that location is not adequate enough to uphold reasonable suspicion, the lower courts acknowledge that location and evasion were the main reason for a police stop, meaning that those justifications can still get someone in trouble with the law. These grounds are problematic because poor and minority communities tend to live in areas with high crime. The high criminal activity prompts underserved groups to be evasive towards police for fear of profiling and potential harassment.Furthermore, highly-targeted groups aim to avoid the police to protect themselves from police who seek to persecute them. The stark disconnect between the Supreme Court’s views and the lower court’s views on reasonable suspicion present a dangerous outcome that increases police authority in deciding who to stop-and-frisk which perpetuates unfair policing.

With already heightened tensions between the police and people of color, the basis of reasonable suspicion incentivises police to act on their racist implicit biases and target minority communities. Young men and women of color are disproportionately affected by police stops, and therefore these men and women are under greater pressure and scrutiny due to the frequent stops they endure. In 2013, Black people were 3.5 times more likely to be stopped by police than white people in Ferguson, Missouri. In these stops, Black people were stopped for investigative reasons while white people were stopped for moving violations. Though Black people constitute a small number of large cities’ populations, Black people are subject to the most stop-and-frisks in those areas. Additionally, police officers’ implicit bias impacts the number of people of color targeted by police. In active shooter experiments, subjects identify and shoot armed individuals or not shoot unarmed individuals. Denver police officers shot more armed Black individuals than armed white individuals. These types of experiments uncover the implicit racism that plagues police officers which influences who the officers target and harass. Implicit bias fuels police judgment of reasonable suspicion and conveys the immense subjectivity of reasonable suspicion.

Fur thering the idea that reasonable suspicion is subjective and expands police power, in some cases, police dismiss reasonable suspicion and just racially profile minority groups through stop-andfrisk policing. Stop-and-frisk policing is infamous in New York, as the New York Police Department has engaged in this practice for many years. In an effort to revisit the landmark Terry v. Ohio (1968) case, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a class action lawsuit against the New York Police Department in 2013 for the NYPD’s use of racially-motivated stop-and-frisks. This case focuses on the lack of reasonable suspicion cops provided when making these stops. Floyd, et al v. City of New York, et al, a historic ruling, found the NYPD’s stop-and-frisks to be unconstitutional. Though unconstitutional, the stops never ended. During the COVID-19 pandemic, New York’s number of reported stops were lower than usual, however, people of color still constituted a large number of those stops. At the peak in 2011, out of 700,000 stops made by police in New York, 90% of those stops were people of color. These numbers convey the appalling racial profiling of the NYPD that harms the freedoms of minority groups. Stop-and-frisk policing in conjunction with reasonable suspicion and racial profiling allows officers to abuse their duty to “protect and serve” by targeting minority populations.

The overall ambiguity and uncertainty in phrases such as “probable cause” and “reasonable suspicion” in the law present dangerous rooms for interpretation. The law that binds law enforcement has been elucidated to justify harmful practices against the people they were created to “protect.” The expansion of police power has not been as useful in stopping crime than it has been in growing the fear and paranoia within citizens, especially citizens of color. Numerous sources of data find that minorities are racially profiled and stopped by the police more than whites. This large disparity of racial profiling does not halt crime and violence: Instead, it keeps minorities in cycles of poverty and oppression through tough policing and scrutiny which hinders these communities from their right to a peaceful life without prejudice and harassment.

References

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 436 (1966)

Stop and frisk, WEX, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stop_and_frisk (last visited May 16, 2022).

Reasonable Suspicion, WEX, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/reasonable_suspicion#:~:text=Reasonable%20suspicion%20is%20used%20in,a%20reasonable%20suspicion%20to%20search (last visited May 16, 2022).

Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, (1968)

Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 58 (1968) (Douglas, W., dissenting).

David A. Harris, Factors for Reasonable Suspicion: When Black and Poor Means Stopped and Frisked, 69 Ind. L.J. 659, 671 (1994).

Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Black Lives Matter: Eliminating Racial Inequity in the Criminal Justice System, https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/black-lives-matter-eliminating-racial-inequity-in-the-criminal-justice-system/#B.%20Four%20key%20sources%20of%20unwarranted%20racial%20 disparities%20in%20criminal%20justice%20outcomes (last visited May 16, 2022).

Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al., 959 F. Supp. 2d 540, 544 (2d Cir. 2014).

Floyd, et al., 959 F. Supp. 2d at 550.

Alice Speri, The NYPD Is Still Stopping And Frisking Black People At Disproportionate Rates, The Intercept, https://theintercept.com/2021/06/10/stop-and-frisk-new-york-police-racial-disparity/ (2021).