By Rocco Rarascandola
Newsday
NEW YORK — The New York Police Department has reversed course and agreed to release the raw data that comprise its stop and frisk reports - but it won’t reveal when and where the stops happened.
That refusal will likely add fuel to an ongoing controversy.
The New York Civil Liberties Union says holding back that data makes it difficult to assess how minorities and whites are stopped, particularly in neighborhoods where the demographics change dramatically after working hours.
The database of officers’ recordings of the stops - 508,540 in 2006 - has been electronically transferred to the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, a database maintained by the University of Michigan, authorities said.
The data will be released on the Internet by next week, authorities said, but won’t include locations and times of stops.
The city contends in court papers that such information would allow criminals to pinpoint where stops occur and endanger cops’ lives.
But Christopher Dunn, NYCLU’s executive legal director, argued, “These are not preplanned events but instead are supposed to be prompted by police officers spontaneously observing suspicious activity. Because of this, it is impossible to predict the time and place of future stops, no matter how much information one has about past stops.”
The controversy over stop and frisks has been raging since early 2007. That’s when numbers released for 2006 showed that more than five times as many people had been stopped and questioned as in 2002, when Police Commissioner Ray Kelly took over.
Police have said the surge was due to more aggressive policing and greater attention being paid to filling out the UF-250s, the forms on which officers must explain why someone was stopped, questioned, and sometimes frisked.
Critics have said the increase unfairly targets minorities, and that they are often stopped for no legitimate reason. The NYPD ignored requests last year by the City Council to provide the raw data, instead giving it to the Rand Corp., which issued a report concluding there was no evidence of racial profiling. Critics derided the report as a cover-up.
The NYCLU filed a lawsuit in November seeking the same database given to Rand.
Yesterday, Dunn asked city lawyers for he same database now at the University of Michigan. Dunn says it may continue its suit unless the NYPD provides times and locations.
But Jesse Levine, a city lawyer in the case said, “We will continue to litigate on that basis so long as NYCLU insists on receiving data as originally requested.”
Marq Claxton, a co-founder for 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, criticized the department’s decision to hold back data. It was “ridiculous” to think criminals will map out where the stops take place and target officers, he said.
Copyright 2008 Newsday