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NYPD Tactics Raise Concern of Return to ‘Stop and Frisk’

A 61% jump in pedestrian stops in 2022 has advocates worried that the police department is reviving a controversial tactic. 

NYPD Budget Deadline Nears As Council Demands 'Fundamental Reform'
Photographer: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg
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New York City police officers made more than 673,000 traffic stops last year, the majority involving Black and Latino motorists. Only 2% of those stops led to arrests, raising the specter of the stop-and-frisk tactics that were ruled unconstitutional a decade ago, civil liberties advocates say. 

New York Police Department officers also stopped nearly 15,000 pedestrians — most Black or Latino — in 2022, the highest number in any year since 2015, according to an analysis of police department data by the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. Most were released without any arrest or citation issued.