Stop and Frisk in San Francisco: Another Name for Racial Profiling

Mayor Ed Lee shocked the city when he suggested bringing New York's failed stop-and-frisk policy to San Francisco. The ACLU of Northern California sent a letter to Mayor Lee yesterday explaining why it's such a bad policy.

We're not sure what Mayor Lee was thinking, but stop-and-frisk is a bad idea all around. Not only is it a civil liberties nightmare and toxic for police-community relations, it raises serious concerns about racial profiling.

Police already have the legal authority to stop individuals based on reasonable suspicion that they are involved in criminal activity, and to pat them down if there are reasonable grounds to believe the person is armed.

Make no mistake: New York style stop-and-frisk is code for racial profiling. Our ACLU colleagues in New York have seen first-hand just how discriminatory the policy has been since its implementation there. The NYCLU found that while young black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 comprise only 4.7% of the population of the city, they accounted for a whopping 41.6% of stops.

Want more numbers? 90% of the people stopped were completely innocent (no arrest or citation resulted from the stop) - and no gun was retrieved in 99.9% of those stops.

So, why is Mayor Lee trying to bring this to San Francisco? There has already been huge community outcry. San Francisco has a mixed record when it comes to racial disparities in arrests. A 2006 San Francisco Chronicle article revealed that San Francisco's African American population suffers disproportionate arrest levels greater than African Americans elsewhere in California. Since then, the department has taken steps to rectify the situation. Just last year San Francisco reaffirmed its strong and clear commitment to unbiased policing, with a policy that explicitly prohibits the police from using race "to any extent or degree" in determining whether to initiate any law enforcement action. Stop-and-frisk would stop that progress in its tracks and make the problem far worse.

Mayor Lee should reconsider the idea. A New York style stop-and-frisk won't lead to a safer San Francisco. It will result in young men of color being targeted by police simply because of what they look like. That's racial profiling. It's illegal, it's wrong, and it's precisely what San Francisco doesn't need.

Alan Schlosser is the Legal Director at the ACLU of Northern California.