Fmr. DoJ Official: Stop and Frisk Doesn’t Work; Makes Communities Less Safe

‘When people trust law enforcement, when people feel that they’re not going to be shaken down on the street by a cop merely for walking down street, they trust law enforcement more’

EXCERPT:

WILLIAMS: “Let’s be clear. We spent a lot of time looking at this very stop and frisk issue when I was there, and stop and frisk as a law enforcement tactic does not work. When New York City dropped the number of stops and frisk by a magnitude of hundreds of thousands in the course of a year, the crime rate actually plummeted to its lower rate ever. Now why is that? When people trust law enforcement, when people feel that they’re not going to be shaken down on the street by a cop merely for walking down street, they trust law enforcement more. And they’re less likely — they’re more likely to cooperate. They’re more likely to talk to police officers, and everybody is safer. But this idea you need to just stop people randomly on the street without due process and shake them down leads to profiling and makes communities much less safe."

Video files
Full
Compact
Audio files
Full
Compact