By Police1 Staff
NEW YORK — The NYPD has released an internal memo in response to last week’s ban against the controversial stop-and-frisk database. The message: Just because the law bans the database does not mean cops are barred from gathering information and keeping records. They just have to do so the old-fashioned way, with a pen and paper.
Gov. David Paterson signed the legislation last week, saying the policy was “not a practice for a democracy.” The mayor of New York City and the police commissioner disagreed, saying the city was losing a key crime-fighting tool.
The memo reads:
“The law does not affect an officer’s ability to collect identification information at the scene of a street encounter, and does not affect the preparation, copying or filing of stop, question and frisk report worksheets.”
“Commanding officers shall ensure that copies of stop, question and frisk report worksheets are maintained in a precinct file.”
Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who was against the database, did not contest the memo, telling the New York Daily News that “the paper records do not pose the same degree of threat to civil liberties as the electronic database.”