Stop And Frisk Essay

Words: 505
Pages: 3

(Ajayi2016) The phrase “stop and frisk” has gradually gained the attention of the majority of American populace due to its excessive use in the sphere of the criminal justice system. It is a legal term which denotes “A brief, non-intrusive, police stop of a suspect.” But this apparently simple and legitimate judicial process has come under the fire of much criticism due to its illegitimate use at the hands of a myriad of law enforcement officers in recent times. (Ajayi2016) It can be quite agonizing to learn that “stop and frisk” despite being a part of the criminal justice process has been used by many law enforcement officers for appeasing their personal objectives, and in innumerable cases, it has been found that the practice has been deliberately linked with the menace of racial profiling (Trachtenberg2007).
Today, “stop and frisk” has become an embodiment of the racial discrimination and such transformation of a legal process into an illegal one owes to the dilemmas from which still the country and its criminal justice system and society is suffering
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In the article, “What Do We Know About NYC’s Stop and Frisk Program?: A Spatial and Statistical Analysis,” Evans, Maragh, and Porter have pointed out how since its inception the process has often been wrongly used by law enforcement officers, and how such wrong usage has resulted in the breach of civil rights leading to racial profiling. (Trachtenberg2007) Though the advocates of the stop and frisk program always argue that it is a legal process that is thoroughly meant for protecting civilians from potential criminals, research has found that many of the stops and frisks had been the result of racial discrimination indulged by a good number of police officers in the New York City and some other locations of the