Police Stop-and-Frisk Practices: An Examination of Factors That Affect Officers' Decisions to Initiate a Stop-and-Frisk Police Procedure

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine the factors that affect an officer's decision to initiate a stop-and-frisk procedure. The primary objective of this study is to rank-order the typical reasons that were reported by police officers and that were deterministic on initiating a police stop procedure. The second objective of this research is to test whether there is empirical evidence suggesting racialised policing. The analyses are based on data that were originally collected and archived by the New York Police Department on stop-and-frisk police practices in 2006. The analyses in this study show that the top five highest rank-ordered reasons for initiating a police stop were high-crime area, time of day fits the crime incident, fugitive movements by the suspects, casing a victim or location, and proximity to a crime scene. Factors that influenced an officer's decision to frisk the suspect after the initial stop were suspect's gender, followed by suspect's physical proximity to the crime scene, suspect's evasive responses to questions and race.