Stop-and-frisk bill imperils N.Y.: Ray Kelly says database helps NYPD protect young black men

By Raymond W. Kelly

Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 4:00 AM

With fewer officers, a larger population to police and new counterterrorism responsibilities, the NYPD has used proactive tactics to reduce crime and save lives over the last 81/2 years, most dramatically in New York's poorest neighborhoods.

These tactics include Operation Impact, in which police officers are concentrated in areas experiencing spikes in violent crime, and so-called "250 stops," in which police officers stop individuals who act suspiciously - sometimes resulting in an arrest or summons, but more often in only a written record (a "250 form") of the fact they were stopped.

The database of these stops has become an important crimefighting tool for the NYPD, enabling it to later identify violent felons even when no arrest was made or summons issued in their prior stops.

The state Legislature recently passed legislation prohibiting police from keeping those identities in the database. If signed into law, the NYPD would be required to purge the names from the system.

It's a bad bill, and Gov. Paterson should veto it.

To address the concerns of those who supported the measure, the NYPD would immediately eliminate from the database all but one year of the most recent stops in which there was neither an arrest nor a summons. While the NYPD would lose the potential investigative yield of those older records, one year's worth of the most recent stops would provide a fruitful time frame to identify suspects in serious crimes. We think this a practical compromise that the governor should embrace.

Our critics - who suggest the police stop and frisk far too many New Yorkers, especially minorities, and are abusing the information kept in the database - have it wrong.

Considering the fact that the police made and issued more than 900,000 arrests and summonses combined last year on the higher standard of probable cause, it is not surprising or unreasonable that the same Police Department would make 575,000 stops on the lower legal requirement of reasonable suspicion.

The RAND Corp., in its exhaustive study of NYPD stops, found no racial profiling, and studies by NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service found that both Operation Impact and the stops were effective crimefighting strategies. Crimes are inevitably interrupted when police stop to question individuals who are carrying weapons, or casing locations to burglarize them, or loitering near or following potential robbery victims.

A law passed by the City Council in 2001, effective in 2002, required the NYPD to keep data about whom the police stopped and to report that information to the Council every quarter. In computerizing the data to comply with those requirements, the NYPD found the new database could also be used as an effective investigative tool. While none of the information about stops become part of anyone's official records, the information on the "250 forms" is used by detectives in investigating crimes, much like license plate information and other data.

The database has been instrumental in solving violent crimes - including a recent spate of brutal bias attacks - by identifying suspects who had been previously stopped but neither arrested nor given a summons as a result of the stops.

The value of the data can be measured in a number of other ways, including:

  • The taking of thousands of weapons off the streets each year.
  • Achieving the lowest murder rate since reliable comparisons could first be made beginning 48 years ago.
  • The commission of 2,738 fewer murders in the first eight years of the Bloomberg administration compared with the previous eight of the last administration.
  • The continued reduction of overall crime year after year.

There were 2,245 murders in New York City in 1990, and 471 last year. It is estimated that nearly 80% of the 2,738 lives saved in the first eight years of this administration, compared with the eight years of the previous one, were minority youth.

The NYPD is saving lives - mainly those of young men of color - while beating the odds that crime would increase in the face of a bigger city population and fewer officers.

Limiting our ability now to solve crime makes no sense. The NYPD database should be preserved as an investigative tool. One year is a sensible time frame, one in which new leads are most likely to be developed. After that, those names would be erased from the database.

It's a reasonable concession by the Police Department, which currently holds such information indefinitely. It also preserves one of the NYPD's important crimefighting tools.

The governor literally holds the answer in his hand - the one holding his veto pen.

Kelly is commissioner of the New York City Police Department.