scholarly journals Categorical and Vague Claims that Criminal Activity is Afoot

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-580
Author(s):  
Andrew Dammann
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
City Councils ◽  
Stop And Frisk ◽  
Reasonable Suspicion ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
The Law ◽  
High Crime ◽  
Police Commissioner

In Illinois v. Wardlow, the Supreme Court announced that mere presence in a high-crime area is a constitutionally significant factor for deciding if there is the necessary reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot in order to justify a stop and frisk. Relying in part on the constitutional significance Wardlow attached to the vague term high-crime area, New York instituted an aggressive stop-and-frisk policy to combat crime and make New York a safer city. New York was sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in Floyd v. City of New York. New York’s appeal was dropped when new mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to the remedies outlined in the Floyd opinion. At the press conference where Mayor de Blasio announced the settlement that dropped the appeal, Police Commissioner William Bratton said, “[W]e will not break the law to enforce the law.” This Article asserts that enforcing the law without breaking it becomes impossibly problematic when the law is as uncertain as it is with high-crime areas. This Article begins with a critique of the uncertainty created by attaching constitutional significance to high-crime areas without defining or describing what a high-crime area is. The Article urges city councils and other appropriate legislatures to designate which areas are high-crime areas. It argues that such a designation would foreclose the difficult problem of municipal liability that Judge Scheindlin grappled with in Floyd, that legislative designations of high-crime areas square with Fourth Amendment principles, and that legislatures, not executive auxiliaries like police departments, are the proper governmental bodies to make that designation.

Stop-and-Frisk Policing

Criminology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Action ◽  
Deterrent Effect ◽  
Stop And Frisk ◽  
Reasonable Suspicion

Stop and frisk is a proactive policing strategy that is widely used by police departments across the globe. In the United States, the origins of stop and frisk are rooted in the English practice of allowing night watchmen to stop and question individuals who were deemed suspicious. This ability to stop and question suspicious individuals serves two primary purposes. First, it gives law enforcement officers the ability to identify individuals who are looking to engage in criminal activity, stop those individuals, and prevent them from committing a criminal offense. Second, it may have a deterrent effect if potential offenders refrain from criminal offending because they do not want to risk being stopped. By the early 20th century, the implementation of stop and frisk in the United States varied by state. The Uniform Arrest Act, proposed in 1942, sought to standardize the practice. While several states adopted the Uniform Crime Act, which stipulated the circumstances under which a stop and frisk could occur, most states failed to do so. The practice of stop and frisk also faced constitutional challenges, with plaintiffs alleging violations of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. In 1968, the US Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of stop and frisk. When law enforcement officers can establish reasonable suspicion, they can stop and question an individual. If there is reasonable suspicion to believe that a stopped individual possesses a weapon or poses a threat, law enforcement officers can also conduct a frisk. Stop and frisk has faced significant criticism and has been the subject of several class-action lawsuits, particularly in New York City. First, there is significant concern that nonwhite pedestrians are more likely than white pedestrians to be stopped, frisked, and subjected to the use of force. Next, stop and frisk may reduce perceptions of legitimacy and trust in law enforcement. The practice may also have adverse health consequences for those who are subjected to it or are in fear of being subjected to it. Finally, it is unclear whether stop and frisk prevents crime. It is also important to note that stop and frisk faces these same criticisms in other nations. The literature cited in this article summarizes key pieces on stop and frisk.

„Rzymski” Żyd – nieznana twórczość Romana Brandstaettera

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Dariusz Konrad Sikorski
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Role Model ◽  
The Self ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Law

Summary After 1946, ie. after embracing Christianity, Roman Brandstaetter would often point to the Biblical Jonah as a role model for both his life and his artistic endeavour. In the interwar period, when he was a columnist of Nowy Głos, a New York Polish-Jewish periodical, he used the penname Romanus. The ‘Roman’ Jew appears to have treated his columns as a form of an artistic and civic ‘investigation’ into scandalous cases of breaking the law, destruction of cultural values and violation of social norms. Although it his was hardly ‘a new voice’ with the potential to change the course of history, he did become an intransigent defender of free speech. Brought up on the Bible and the best traditions of Polish literature and culture, Brandstaetter, the self-appointed disciple of Adam Mickiewicz, could not but stand up to the challenge of anti-Semitic aggression.

Neoliberalism, Law and its Discontents: Three Recent Interventions

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi Malhotra
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
The Law

Honor Brabazon, ed. Neoliberal Legality: Understanding the Role of law in the neoliberal project (New York: Routledge, 2017). 214pp. Paperback.$49.95 Katharina Pistor. The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). 297 pp. Hardcover.$29.95 Astra Taylor. Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone (New York: Metropolitan Books--Macmillan, 2019). Hardcover$27.00

The Common Law in Colonial America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
American Law ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
The Law ◽  
Substantive Law ◽  
The Revolution

This volume begins where volumes 2 and 3 ended. The main theme of the four-volume project is that the law of America’s thirteen colonies differed profoundly when they first were founded, but had developed into a common American law by the time of the Revolution. This fourth volume focuses on what was common to the law of Britain’s thirteen North American colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, although it also takes important differences into account. The first five chapters examine procedural and substantive law in colonies and conclude that, except in North Carolina and northern New York, the legal system functioned effectively in the interests both of Great Britain and of colonial localities. The next three chapters examine changes in law and the constitution beginning with the Zenger case in 1735—changes that ultimately culminated in independence. These chapters show how lawyers became leading figures in what gradually became a revolutionary movement. It also shows how lawyers used legal and constitutional ideology in the interests, sometimes of an economic character, of their clients. The book thereby engages prior scholarship, especially that of Bernard Bailyn and John Phillip Reid, to show how ideas and constitutional values possessed independent causal significance in leading up to the Revolution but also served to protect institutional structures and socioeconomic interests that likewise possessed causal significance.

scholarly journals Police Stop and Frisk and the Impact of Race: A Focal Concerns Theory Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 230
Author(s):  
Anthony Vito ◽  
George Higgins ◽  
Gennaro Vito
Keyword(s):  
Racial Differences ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Stop And Frisk ◽  
Focal Concerns ◽  
Police Decision Making ◽  
Reasonable Suspicion ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Verbal Threat ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Focal Concerns Theory

The findings of this study outline the racial differences in stop and frisk decisions by Illinois officers in consent searches and those based upon reasonable suspicion within the context of the elements of focal concerns theory. The analysis for this study was performed using propensity score matching (PSM) and allowed the researchers to create a quasi-experimental design to examine the race of the citizen and police decision making. According to our analysis of official Illinois law enforcement data, Black citizens, particularly males, were less likely to give their consent to a stop and frisk search. Black male citizens were also more likely to be stopped and searched due to an assessment of reasonable suspicion by the officer. Elements of focal concerns theory were also factors in pedestrian stops under conditions of consent and reasonable suspicion. Citizens judged as blameworthy were more likely to be stopped and frisked under conditions of consent and reasonable suspicion. The effect of a verbal threat and the officer’s prior knowledge about the citizen had even more significant impacts.

Nearly Got Shot Dead, and He Didn’t Get His Little Check Yet: Workers, Crime, and Law and Order in New York City, 1962-1970

2021 ◽  
pp. 009614422199964
Author(s):  
Glenn Dyer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
York City ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Management Conflicts ◽  
High Crime ◽  
New Yorkers

Historians have conducted important research on the rise of law-and-order politics in New York City, where anxieties over women’s freedoms, political battles over police oversight, and crime impacts in poor communities contributed to its rise. The numerous walkouts, negotiations, and worker-management conflicts around high-crime areas in New York City suggest that the question of law and order was a salient workplace issue as well for the members of Communication Workers of America Local 1101. In their case, such concerns predate the rhetorical rise of law and order and help us better understand why such politics found fertile ground among working-class New Yorkers, white and black. Repeated incidences, largely in the city’s black ghettoes, prompted workers with a strong class consciousness and commitment to solidarity to transform the problems and experiences of individual workers into a shared question to be addressed via collective action.

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