Picture it: After a tough week at school, you leave your dorm and head to the Don Taft University Center to grab some dinner, work out at the Recreational Complex or play some pool at the Flight Deck. But before you can even get to the UC, you’re stopped by a police officer. He questions you about your activities and doesn’t seem to trust any of your answers. Then he pats you down to make sure you’re not carrying any weapons, drugs or illegal items. After about 15 minutes, he finally sends you on your way. Now, what if I told you that this happens to more than 700,000 people every year? Outrageous, isn’t it?
This process, called the Stop-Question-and-Frisk program, was a method by which New York City police officers were allowed to stop and frisk any law-abiding citizen, with no reason other than pure suspicion. The New York Police Department’s only defense for this practice was the decrease in murders over the past 10 years. But many of the thousands of people stopped weren’t actually carrying any weapons.
Luckily, on August 12, a U.S. district court judge struck down the policy, ruling that it violated constitutional rights. But Floridians have no such luck. Statute 901.151, otherwise known as the “Florida Stop and Frisk Law,” states that any law officer can hold any citizen who is displaying suspicious behavior. Additionally, if the officer chooses, he or she can arrest that person. It can happen anywhere, even on a college campus.
The truly upsetting part of all of this is that a vast majority of the people “stopped and frisked” are African American or Latino. In 2011, the number of times young African American adolescents were stopped in NYC actually exceeded the total number of African American men
living in the city. This clearly indicates the unfair and illegal practice of racial profiling.
Often, police officers will stop people in the street to make conversation or simply make their presence known. But these so-called “consensual encounters” are anything but; it’s more likely that the officer has a preconceived notion of who you are and what you’re up to, based solely on your clothes, skin color, speech or demeanor. This type of racial profiling should not be allowed in America. In our country, we are free to express ourselves and be proud of our race. We should not have this taken from us by the fear of being stopped by police officers acting upon their personal biases.
This blatant display of stereotyping is terrible. It severely invades a citizen’s right to privacy. Despite whatever good it may do, it discomforts many more than it helps. We are under constant profiling and scrutiny every day, especially in urban areas or places frequented by young people.
I’d hate to see a fellow classmate stopped, questioned and patted down just because they fit into an officer’s personal definition of a troublemaker. I am against these stop-and-frisk tactics and I hope that one day, the Florida statute will meet the same fate as the New York policy, so we can live without these invasions of privacy and infringements on our freedoms.
