About this item

No policing tactic has been more controversial than stop and frisk, whereby police officers stop, question and frisk ordinary citizens, who they may view as potential suspects, on the streets. As Michael White and Hank Fradella show in Stop and Frisk, the first authoritative history and analysis of this tactic, there is a disconnect between our everyday understanding and the historical and legal foundations for this policing strategy. First ruled constitutional in 1968, stop and frisk would go on to become a central tactic of modern day policing, particularly by the New York City Police Department. By 2011 the NYPD recorded 685, 000 stop-question-and-frisk interactions with citizens; yet, in 2013, a landmark decision ruled that the police had over- and mis-used this tactic.