An Aug. 31, 2011, story by New York Times columnist Al Baker covers a federal judge's ruling that a case challenging the New York Police Department's, NYPD, "stop and frisk" policy can go forward.
The suit was brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, CCR, and alleges that the NYPD's policy is based "not on reasonable suspicion of individuals but on racial profiling."
The New York Times' story then repeats statistics offered by the CCR's Assistant Legal Director, Christopher Dunn. "In 2010, city officers made more street stops -- 601,055 -- than in any previous 12-month period." The story editorializes: "As a practical matter, the stops display a measurable racial disparity: black and Hispanic people generally represent more than 85 percent of those stopped by the police, though their combined populations make up a small share of the city's racial composition."
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly's position is that "The racial breakdown of the stops correlates to the racial breakdown of crime suspects."
If you skip from the NY Times to City Journal, they provide the percentage of those groups who commit violent crimes. According to City Journal's Heather MacDonald:
"Blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009 (though they were only 55 percent of all stops and only 23 percent of the city's population). Blacks committed 80 percent of all shootings in the first half of 2009. Together, blacks and Hispanics committed 98 percent of all shootings. Blacks committed nearly 70 percent of all robberies. Whites, by contrast, committed 5 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009, though they are 35 percent of the city's population (and were 10 percent of all stops). They committed 1.8 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies."
According to The New York Times and the CCR, police should respond to crimes only in proportion to population statistics. They should deploy as many officers to Central Park South as to Bedford/Stuyvesant. And they should stop and frisk only a percentage of minority suspects.
Since 1994, the NYPD has aggressively deployed officers to high crime districts and kept careful tabs on patterns of criminal activity. Crime has dropped 77 percent, to levels not seen since the early 1960s. In its reply brief, the NYPD pointed out that it deploys resources based upon crime statistics, witnesses and citizen complaints -- the successful CompStat program. What it could have added is that most of those complaints come from law-abiding blacks and Hispanics.
The New York Times is fixated on the idea of racial profiling. No doubt they missed the news that about half of the members of the NYPD are members of minority groups themselves.
Either way, no matter what side of this story you believe, how should a cop look for a concealed weapon?
Former NYPD officer Dan Mahoney started a writing career in 1994. His first book, Detective First Grade, opened with a little dissertation on police officer's observations of other people.
Specifically, how to spot a concealed weapon.
Robert T. Gallagher, a former dectitive of the NYPD Anti-robbery Tactical Unit, has taken it once step further, and has come up with a complete diagram [see picture].
Notice that the diagram covers only body positions, and clothing, and how clothes settle around a weapon. You might want to study the diagram closely, and use some situational awareness to check them out.
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