Addicted to Wardlow

• In Event: Legal Considerations for Police Accountability

Abstract

In Illinois v. Wardlow, the Supreme Court held that a suspect’s presence in a “high-crime area” (HCA) is relevant in determining whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to conduct a stop. Over fifteen years have passed since the Supreme Court issued Wardlow, and yet we still have no idea how and when officers exercise this relatively newfound discretion. This paper conducts the first empirical analysis of Wardlow by examining how New York Police Department officers invoke HCA as a basis of reasonable suspicion to justify stop-and-frisk stops. Our preliminary results suggest that local crime rates are poor predictors of whether officers invoke HCA in individual stops. Our preliminary results also suggest that, controlling for officer and area, HCA is more likely to be invoked as a basis of reasonable suspicion against young, black, males in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Authors

• Ben Grunwald, Duke Law School

• Jeffrey Fagan, Columbia University