Stop and Frisk Without Suspicion

Stop-and-frisk encounters are among the most contested and racialized police practices in the United States. Studies in cities including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have documented that Black and Latino residents are stopped and frisked at rates far exceeding their share of the population, and overwhelmingly in circumstances where no criminal activity is ultimately found. These encounters — though they may last only minutes — carry lasting psychological harm, reinforce fear of police, and cause young people to avoid public spaces in their own neighborhoods. The law governing these encounters comes from the Supreme Court's 1968 decision in Terry v. Ohio, which permitted police to briefly stop and pat down a person's outer clothing for weapons — but only on the basis of reasonable articulable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot and that the person may be armed and dangerous. 'Reasonable suspicion' is a legal standard: it requires specific, objective facts — not hunches, not the person's race, not the neighborhood they are in — that would lead a trained officer to believe crime was occurring. Race alone has never been, and can never lawfully be, the basis for a Terry stop. When police say 'we can stop anyone we want,' they are stating a legal falsehood. The Fourth Amendment requires justification for stops. The erosion of this standard in practice is a serious civil rights issue, and documentation of unlawful stops — names of officers, badge numbers, times, locations, and what was said — is essential for accountability. Note: State law may provide additional protections beyond the federal baseline described here — some states have enacted stop-and-frisk reporting requirements and stronger suspicion standards.