Policing

Driving While Black

If there’s one issue that won Bill de Blasio the New York Democratic mayoral primary in September, on his way to a crushing 74 percent to 24 percent victory in the November general election, it was his full-throated opposition to “stop and frisk.” Under this policy, police officers stop, question, and frisk people they deem suspicious, usually with zero evidence that they’ve committed a crime. De Blasio’s predecessor Michael Bloomberg and his GOP election opponent Joe Lhota strongly defended stop and frisk, arguing that it helps reduce the crime rate. But the voters of New York had clearly had enough of a policy that, in practice, overwhelmingly targets minorities, especially young blacks, only a tiny fraction of whom are ever found to be carrying drugs, or a gun, or indeed to have done anything wrong at all.