Origins
The concept of a Terry stop originated in the 1968 Supreme Court case ''Elements
The United States Supreme Court held that where: (1) a police officer observes unusual conduct by a subject; (2) the subject's conduct leads the Officer reasonably to conclude that criminal activity may be afoot, and that the subject may be armed and presently dangerous; (3) the officer identifies himself as a policeman; (4) the officer makes reasonable inquiries; and (5) nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel the officer's reasonable fear for safety, the officer may conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of the subject in an attempt to discover weapons, and that such a search is a reasonable search under the Fourteenth Amendment, so that any weapons seized may properly be introduced in evidence.Expansion through case law
Reasonable suspicion
To have reasonable suspicion that would justify a stop, police must have "specific and articulable facts" that indicate the person to be stopped is or is about to be engaged in criminal activity. Because officers usually do not have supervision when they encounter civilians, they have discretion who to stop. Reasonable suspicion depends on the " totality of the circumstances". Reasonable suspicion is a vague term and the Supreme Court concluded it should be decided on a case-by-case basis. Often it is built out of a combination of facts, each of which would, in itself, not be enough justification for the stop. The suspicion must be of an individual person. Police officers primarily use situational factors based on criminal behavior to determine if a stop is needed. In essence, when they witness a person behaving suspiciously or violating the law, they will stop them. Other factors influencing decision include personal attitudes and the decision-making model where the officer works. Racial profiling can be systemic. The three types of primary sources that the Court accepts to determine suspiciousness are information obtained from third parties, information based on the suspect’s appearance and behavior, and the time and place of the suspected offense. Officers can define what they believe is normal, and if and how the suspect deviates from this. Reasonable suspicion has been used for actions like standing in the wrong place, nervousness, exceptional calmness, or walking quickly in another direction. Officers' experience may make them suspicious of behavior that is usually innocuous. For instance, a social interaction such as a hug or a handshake can be perceived as a drug deal. Suspecting people because they fit into a broad category, such as being in a particular location, being of a particular race or ethnicity, or fitting a profile, are insufficient for reasonable suspicion. However, stop-and-frisk has been validated on the basis of furtive movements; inappropriate attire; carrying objects such as a television or a pillowcase (in English law, "Search
A frisk, also known as a pat-down, of the surface of a suspect's garments is permitted during a ''Terry'' stop, but must be limited to what is necessary to discover weapons, and must be based on a reasonable suspicion the individual may be armed. However, pursuant to the plain feel doctrine (similar to the plain view doctrine), police may seize contraband discovered in the course of a frisk, but only if the contraband's identity is immediately apparent. The Supreme Court has placed very liberal requirements on what is "immediately apparent" regarding contraband. For example, in conducting a pat-down search, an officer feels a hard pack of cigarettes; the officer removes the pack and examines the inside, discovering drugs. He can be allowed to do this because he has prior knowledge, based on experience, that a small switchblade or tiny gun could be hidden in such a box. Subsequent court cases have expanded the definition of what constitutes a frisk, and what is considered asConsensual search
Based on the Supreme Court decision in '' Schneckloth v. Bustamonte'' (1972), a person waives Fourth Amendment protections when giving voluntary consent to a search. Police are not required to inform a person of their right to decline the search. Justice Marshall, in his dissent in the case, said it is a "''curious result'' that one can choose to relinquish a constitutional right—the right to be free from unreasonable searches—without knowing that he has the alternative of refusing to accede to a police request". Several cities and states require police to inform citizens of their right to deny a search.Traffic stops
For practical purposes, a traffic stop is essentially the same as a ''Terry'' stop; for the duration of a stop, driver and passengers are "seized" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court has held that drivers and passengers may be ordered out of the vehicle without violating the Fourth Amendment's proscription of unreasonable searches and seizures. Drivers and passengers may be frisked for weapons upon reasonable suspicion they are armed and dangerous. If police reasonably suspect the driver or any of the occupants may be dangerous and that the vehicle may contain a weapon to which an occupant may gain access, police may perform a protective search of the passenger compartment. Otherwise, lacking a warrant or the driver's consent, police may not search the vehicle, but under the plain view doctrine may seize and use as evidence weapons or contraband that are visible from outside the vehicle. As decided in '' Ohio v. Robinette'' (1996), once an officer returns the driver's identification, there is no requirement that the officer inform the driver they are free to go; therefore, although the encounter has been turned into a consensual encounter, questioning can continue, including a request to search the vehicle.Pretextual stops
Pretextual stops are a subset of traffic stops deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court in '' Whren v. United States'' (1996). They occur when a police officer wishes to investigate a motorist on other suspicions, generally related to drug possession, and uses a minor traffic infringement as a ''pretext'' to stop the driver. In the case of ''Whren'', the defense used a "would have" rule: asking if a reasonable police officer would have made the stop without the suspicion of other criminal behavior. Some consider that pretextual stops can allow for racial profiling to occur. There are numerous petty violations a driver may make and the officer can be selective about whom to pull over to investigate. Sixteen states ban pretextual stops based solely upon racial profiling or other factors:Racial disparities
Police officers may develop schemas after continuously being exposed to certain environments, like high crime minority neighborhoods, which can lead to their association of crime with race instead of suspicious behavior. Officers who have been in the police force for longer are more likely to have suspicions based on non-behavioral reasons. Even forms of American culture that perpetuate negative stereotypes such as blacks being violent can cause those who consume them to associate black people with these stereotypes, even if they do not believe them, making implicit bias a possible factor in arrests. Black and Hispanic people are more likely to be targeted, and are more likely to be stopped than their population and relative crime rates suggest. Terry stop regulations vary per area. Areas with high crime, like public housing, require less evidence for someone to be stopped. Because more black and Hispanic people tend to live there, they will be stopped more often. In areas that are perceived to have high crimes, more police are deployed, which results in higher arrest rates, which are then used to justify more policing. When controlling for location based stops, Goel found that white people were more likely to have a weapon than black or Hispanic people. Grogger and Ridgeway found that the same proportion of racial groups were stopped during the day and at night, suggesting that stop decisions were not based on the physical appearance of the driver. However, when it came to the post stop outcomes, black people were more likely to be held longer. With regards to marijuana, white people were 50% more likely to be dismissed on the charge, in comparison to black people. The National Research Council states that “more research is needed on the complex interplay of race, ethnicity, and other social factors in police-citizen interactions.” Kramer and Remster found that there is a 27% increase in likelihood of black civilians experiencing force at a stop compared to a white person, and a 28% increase in likelihood that the officer would draw their gun. Even when the police did not stop the civilians on account of criminal behavior, black civilians are still 29% more likely to experience force compared to their white counterparts. Young civilians are also more likely to experience force compared to older civilians. In New York City between 1996 and 2000, there was a disproportionate number of complaints by blacks about officers'Effects
Usage of force
The experience of minority citizens, who are both more likely to be stopped by police and more likely to experience the use of force by the police after being stopped, has been characterized as a racial or ethnic "double jeopardy". Acts of police force cause injury, death, civil litigation, public outrage, civil disorder, and a distrust towards the police. Eric Garner and NYPD, Freddie Gray and the Baltimore police, and Michael Brown and the Ferguson police are notable examples of police force at ''Terry'' stops that ended tragically. Although racial disparities in the frequency of ''Terry'' stops are well known, less is known about the nature, prevalence, and factors predictive of use of force during ''Terry'' stops. Morrow et al. studied NYPD's SQF (stop, question, and frisk) records in 2010 to determine the frequency of force used at stops and whether the citizen's race/ethnicity was a factor in the decision to use force. SQF tactics were found to disproportionately target minorities, regardless of control over variables like social and economic factors, precinct crime rates, and neighborhood racial or ethnic composition. SQF tactics did not seem to actually address crime either, as only 6% of stops yielded an arrest and only 0.15% of stops yielded a gun. In 2013, 44% of young minority New Yorkers had been stopped by NYPD nine or more times. Using the US Census Bureau's data from 2012, Morrow et al. analyzed racial/ethnic disparities in the use of force among NYPD. Force was classified as hands, suspect on ground, suspect against wall, weapon drawn, weapon pointed, baton, handcuffs, pepper spray, and other; these were then categorized as no force, physical/non-weapon force, and weapon force. They found that non-weapon force occurred in 14.1% of SQF. However, when this was further separated by racial categories, while for whites, only 0.9% experienced non-weapon force, 7.6% blacks and 5.0% Hispanics experienced non-weapon force, eight to nine times more likely than whites. There is a possibility that these results are due to implicit biases of police officers, which could be shaped by previous experiences in the workforce.Psychological and emotional harm
A stop and frisk can be damaging to communities. Kwate and Threadcraft argue that stop and frisk is a public health problem and works to "produce bodies that are harassed, stressed and resource deprived, if not altogether dead". Stop and frisk creates an environment of fear that alters the behaviors of a community's inhabitants and limits their freedom of action. The police conduct pat-downs that intrude upon the privacy of the individual, and can result in escalation through physical or sexual violence. During this process, officers sometimes use profanity and discriminatory slurs. Because of this, residents often have anger, fear, or distrust towards the police. For those with mental disorders and disabilities, pat-downs can be traumatic, especially for those with sensory disorders. Those who have suffered through sexual trauma, which is prevalent among men with criminal justice histories and black people in poorer urban areas, can relive their trauma through the invasive procedure, resulting in stress, depression, and anxiety. This practice also increases the possibility of sexual exploitation or assault, especially in communities that are more vulnerable, like black and poor sex workers and sex trafficking victims. Because ways of transporting drugs have evolved, some police officers utilize methods such as stripping the civilian and searching their body for drugs, which can be traumatizing for both users and nonusers of drugs. Civilians have also reported that police officers often wait until their quota is filled up to bring the arrested civilians back to stations. Civilians must stay in the back of the van, which often was missing seats, for hours on end and packed with 15 or 16 people, without access to the bathroom. In a study conducted by Cooper et al., young men who do not use drugs stated that they feel uncomfortable when stopped by a police officer because they were afraid that "unnecessary violence or life disruption was imminent during every police stop". Those who have been stopped more often develop moreSolutions
Many police departments all over the country have adapted courtesy policing as a response to criticism of racial profiling and police violence. Courtesy policing is when the police build rapport with the community through respect and friendliness. Legitimacy policing is a method used by police officers to interact with the community, where, in order to achieve a desired outcome, police officers utilize both punitive and courtesy strategies. While courtesy policing is used to gain trust and collect information, the punitive approach is used whenever it appears that the stopped people did not comply, making the police more aggressive; these approaches are adapted on a shifting continuum to the actions of the people they stop. People of color are more likely to see this community policing as degrading. Cooper believes that in order to address hypermasculinity, which increases physical aggression in the police force, officers should be taught to not use command presence (where they use an authoritative tone of voice or even become physically violent) in situations where it is not needed. It should still be used when the officer is in a dangerous situation, but not when a situation does not require force. Instead of the officer punishing the harm doer, the officer should instead make it a goal to have a full understanding of the situation. Police training culture should not emphasize aggressive approaches and instead advocate for a more patient approach. An emphasis should be put on how to communicate with civilians who challenge their authority. Officers should also be made aware of any potential biases they may have. Terry was originally created to prevent imminent armed robberies. However, 90% of individuals who are stop-and-frisked in New York City were free to leave afterwards. This demonstrates that they were not about to do serious criminal activity, which goes against Terry’s purpose of preventing serious crime. Hutchins wishes to narrow the scope of Terry, and prevent certain police encounters from happening in the first place, and proposes to limit the reach of Terry stops so that officers may not stop someone based on a possessory offense under nothing more than reasonable suspicion. Goel calls for the optimization of stop relating to criminal possession of a weapon (CPW). Because having a lower threshold of evidence to stop someone disproportionately affects black and Hispanic people, optimization would result in less racial disparities for terry stops. Goel examines NYPD’s three million stops for cases where the stop yielded an individual involved with criminal possession of a weapon. In approximately 43% of these stops, there was less than 1% of a chance that the suspect had a weapon. Goel found that five stop circumstances are more likely to increase the likelihood of recovering a weapon for a stop: suspicious weapon, sights and sounds of criminal activity, suspicious bulge, witness report, and ongoing investigation. Kwate and Threadcraft advocate for three ways to address Stop and Frisk, as a public health issue. First, they believe the health department’s city wide health surveys should include Stop and Frisk encounters, so that the data can be used to investigate health outcomes of a Stop and Frisk. Second, within 24 hours, reports of traumatic stops should be received by the city. Third, a registry should be created in which communities can report police encounters. Torres calls for more comprehensive data in stop and frisk reports. Specifically, since Latinos can also be white and black, current data is not as accurate.Data collection
The following states require stop-and-frisk data collection: Using public record requests, the Stanford Open Policing project amassed 60 million state traffic stops in 20 states over the period 2011 through 2015. North Carolina was the first state in the country to require the release of all traffic stop data starting in 2000. Researchers have analysed 20 million traffic stops from this data finding that African Americans as a share of the population were twice as likely to be pulled over than whites and four times as likely to be searched. Hispanics were not more likely to be pulled over, but had a higher likelihood of being searched. There is a push to release more open police data nationwide. In 2015, the White House launched the Police Data Initiative which, , has 130 participating police departments, some of which provide data sets on stop-and-frisk. The 130 departments cover 15% of the population.See also
* Consent search case law *Notes
References
Further reading
* * *External links
* United States Supreme Court