New York City Sees Drop in Both Gun Violence, Stop & Frisks

NYPD credits decline to targeted deployment, critics debunk efficiency of searches.

After two consecutive years of increasing gun violence in New York City, there has been a drop in shootings and murders this year, along with a steep decline in the number of stop-and-frisks conducted by the NYPD. While the number of stops dropped 30 percent during the last two quarters, there’s been an 8.4 percent decline in gun violence in the city; murder is down 20 percent through Dec. 16. The NYPD attributes the statistics to “the use of cops and Impact Zones, targeted deployment and building cases against” groups prone to use weapons, one police officer told the Huffington Post.

Critics of the stop-and-frisk policy saw the decline differently. Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union said, “These figures make clear that the police department has been flat out wrong in claiming that huge increases in street stops over the last 10 years have been needed to keep down gun violence.” Since New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002, stop and frisks rose 600 percent to nearly 700,000, raising civil-rights concern as the majority of stop-and-frisks took place in black and brown communities. (Huffington Post)

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