This policy was implemented by our progressive mayor, Mike Nutter:
In 2009, police stopped 253,333 pedestrians, 72 percent of whom were African American, the suit said. Only 8 percent of the stops led to an arrest, often for "criminal conduct that was entirely independent from the supposed reason for the stop," according to the suit.
The population of Philly is about equally black and white, so do the math. The ACLU and local civil rights attorney David Rudovsky have brought a class-action lawsuit. One of the named plaintiffs is a African-American lawyer who has been frisked four times since 2008.
Nutter and police commissioner Ramsey credit stop-and-frisk for reducing violent crime in Philly. But crime rates across all categories in the U.S. have fallen since 2007, so color me unconvinced.
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