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Analysis of Racial Disparities in the New York Police Department's Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices
In 2006, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) stopped a half-million pedestrians for suspected criminal involvement. Raw statistics for these encounters suggest large racial disparities — 89 percent of the stops involved nonwhites. Do these statistics point to racial bias in police officers’ decisions to stop particular pedestrians? Do they indicate that officers are particularly intrusive when stopping nonwhites? The NYPD asked the RAND Center on Quality Policing (CQP) to help it understand this issue and identify recommendations for addressing potential problems. CQP researchers analyzed data on all street encounters between NYPD officers and pedestrians in 2006. They compared the racial distribution of stops to external benchmarks, attempts to construct what the racial distribution of the stopped pedestrians would have been if officers’ stop decisions had been racially unbiased. Then they compared each officer’s stopping patterns with an internal benchmark constructed from stops in similar circumstances made by other officers. Finally, they examined stop outcomes, assessing whether stopped white and nonwhite suspects have different rates of frisk, search, use of force, and arrest. They found small racial differences in these rates and make communication, recordkeeping, and training recommendations to the NYPD for improving police-pedestrian interactions.
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Contents
Chapter One:
Introduction: Review of the New York City Police Department’s Stop, Question, and Frisk Policy and Practices
Chapter Two:
Description of the 2006 Stop, Question, and Frisk Data
Chapter Three:
External Benchmarking for the Decision to Stop
Chapter Four:
Internal Benchmarking for the Decision to Stop
Chapter Five:
Analysis of Post-Stop Outcomes
Chapter Six:
Conclusions and Recommendations
Appendix A:
Details of Statistical Models Used in the External-Benchmark Analysis
Appendix B:
Details of Propensity-Score Weighting
Appendix C:
Estimating False Discovery Rates
Appendix D:
Unified Form 250: Stop, Question, and Frisk Report Worksheet
The research described in this report was supported by the New York City Police Foundation and was conducted under the auspices of the Center on Quality Policing (CQP), part of the Safety and Justice Program within RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment (ISE).
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