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Chicago’s stop and frisk policy worse than New York’s – ACLU
The department, which has reported a significant drop in crime around the city, has made it clear that the cards are a key component of its crime fighting strategy, saying they help track gang members and help officers make arrests.
Late last year, prosecutors said information from contact cards showed that two days before the 2013 shooting death of a high school honor student, Hadiya Pendleton, the two suspects were in the white Nissan that served as the getaway car.
But that effort to reduce crime has emerged as a key issue in next month’s mayoral election. While the mayor has been able to use the statistics to underline his point that he is taking steps to make the city safer, the ACLU report comes as he is trying to regain much of the black community’s support, which has slipped since he was first elected in 2011.
Grossman said he’s not surprised that the department relies so heavily on the stop and frisk policy. The superintendent spent the bulk of his career in the NYPD and he was the police chief in Newark, New Jersey, before coming to Chicago in 2011.
The policy has come under fire in both cities.
In New York, a federal judge determined the NYPD policy was sometimes discriminating against minorities. And in Newark, the department was placed under a federal monitor after the U.S. Department of Justice found that during a period that included McCarthy’s time running the department, 75 percent of pedestrian stops were made without constitutionally adequate reasons and in the city where blacks make up 54 percent of the population, they accounted for 85 percent of those stops.
“There is no question the superintendent endorses stop and frisk. It is part of the fabric of McCarthy’s policing,” Grossman said.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press
