New York Police Still Struggle to Follow Street-Stop Rules, Report Finds – NYT

“Since Mayor de Blasio took office in New York, the number of recorded street stops has continued to decline, to about 24,000 last year from 45,787 in 2014, according to Mr. Zimroth’s letter. Those tallies represent a small fraction of the stop-and-frisk activity logged during the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a political independent, when recorded stops reached a height of 685,000 in 2011, and fell to about 192,000 in 2013, which was Mr. Bloomberg’s last year in office.

Even with recorded stops receding, broad swaths of officers are yet unable to articulate a rationale for the ones they carry out, or for the frisks that often follow, Mr. Zimroth’s report said. The report — citing a departmental audit of nearly 600 stop reports that officers filled out over 90 days last summer, as part of a pilot program — said documentation for the stops, and frisks, was lacking in nearly 30 percent of cases. Similar findings were included in a broader internal audit of officers’ stop reports and logbook entries for encounters in November and December.

More striking is that sergeants given the task of reviewing stop-report forms in many cases failed to note the officers’ deficiencies, or take steps to correct them, the report said, citing the internal audit of the pilot program.”

From: New York Police Still Struggle to Follow Street-Stop Rules, Report Finds – The New York Times