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Annette John-Hall: Time to stop and think about Philly's stop-and-frisk policy

Michael Nutter made a lot of folks go "hmm" when the newly sworn-in mayor vowed he'd enforce more aggressive stop-and-frisk policing to get illegal guns off the streets.

Michael Nutter made a lot of folks go "hmm" when the newly sworn-in mayor vowed he'd enforce more aggressive stop-and-frisk policing to get illegal guns off the streets.

Sure, all that tough talk from Nutter - "You have a constitutional right not to get shot" - sounded good after a raging homicide epidemic under former Mayor John Street. But I still couldn't reconcile how stop-and-frisk could work without violating a disproportionate number of people's civil rights.

Well, after nearly three years and a lawsuit filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union, it's about time we ask the mayor: How's that stop-and-frisk working for you?

"It's part of a much larger strategy," Nutter explained last week. The purpose of stop-and-frisk, he added, "is to think a second or third time about carrying a gun."

What about sacrificing a lot of innocent people - 72 percent of them African American, according to the suit - and subjecting them to humiliating stops and searches in the process?

"I'm not trying to sacrifice anything," replied the mayor.

While he agreed that there has to be a balance, "my job is to make this city safer," he said. "People can complain all they want, but fighting crime is not playing checkers."

But the thing is, stop-and-frisk is hardly making the city safer.

Of the astounding 253,333 stops police officers made last year, only 8 percent led to an arrest, which, according to the suit, usually had nothing to do with the reason the person had been stopped.

Nobody knows how many guns - if any - were confiscated in those arrests. Those data aren't readily available, according to the Mayor's Office.

But you figure Philly's number is minuscule if, of the 600,000 stops in New York last year, only 0.15 percent resulted in the recovery of a gun.

"You could conduct random searches and possibly have a better outcome," says Dave Rudovsky, one of the civil rights attorneys involved in the suit.

Heck, I'd rather stake my success on the Guns for Groceries program, which has netted 5,000 guns in the last two years.

"No questions asked, no shakedowns," says Ray Jones, executive director of Philadelphia Safety Net, an antiviolence program that focuses on gun reduction.

Police officers can learn a thing or two from Jones' program about how to create a culture of trust with the communities it polices.

I'm not saying they have to offer folks a $100 gift card in exchange for guns, as ShopRite does.

But how about getting to know the people in the neighborhood, rather than stopping a black man based on a "reasonable suspicion" when he goes into a corner store or drives in a dangerous neighborhood at night?

Racial profiling does play a part. Yes, you can argue that African Americans commit proportionately more crime than other groups, or that more police patrol black neighborhoods than others.

But Rudovsky says that in the records examined from 2003 to 2005, "it turned out that whites who were stopped were more likely to have contraband than blacks."

Which means, he says, that "police are using a lower level of suspicion to stop blacks than whites."

Well, now. That's just wrong. And not surprising to anyone who has ever been pulled over for DWB.

Look, I believe Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey is a good guy. Judging from the community forums he's held and the corruption he's already rooted out, Ramsey seems to care about citizens and wants his cops to police the right way.

So I'm hoping he'll give them the training they need to tell the difference between, say, a garden-variety thug and the future mayor.

Did I mention Nutter was stopped for no cause as a young man in West Philadelphia?

He told me he had felt "inconvenienced" by the experience.

But he insisted that stop-and-frisk worked when done correctly.

Well, what would you rather have, Mr. Mayor? An ineffective enforcement tactic that hurts more than it helps?

Or the collateral damage of a mistrustful community?