Putting Race in Place: Examining Neighborhood Effects on Race-Specific Stops by the NYPD

• In Event: Police Stop and Frisk Encounters with Citizens

Abstract

Research on patterns of NYPD’s ‘Stop and Frisk’ policy have established that persons of colors are disproportionately more likely to be stopped, frisked, questioned, and arrested than their white counterparts. The NYPD has openly defended the racial disparities on two counts: first, minorities commit more crimes than Whites. Second, patrol strategies, and ultimately stop patterns, are based on Broken Window’s theory’s emphasis on physical and social disorder. Subsequently, this logic has led the NYPD to concentrate its efforts on minority neighborhoods plagued with poverty and a number of social and economic ills. Following the same logic, we ask the following question: is race a significant predictor of number of stops once the level of crime, physical and social disorder have been accounted for in the model? To answer this question, we look at stops made by the NYPD in year 2012. Using a multi-level model, we estimate the effect of demographic, social-economic, disorder and physical characteristics on neighborhoods on race-specific stops. We find that race is a significant predictor of stops once we account for neighborhood characteristics. A closer examination of the spatial heterogeneity of the effect of race reveals interesting insights that inform policy recommendations.

Authors

• Joel Alfredo Capellan, CUNY Graduate Center

• Jeremy Reed Porter, CUNY Graduate Center