Kenney taking a more nuanced stand on ending stop and frisk
During the spring mayoral campaign, Jim Kenney seemed anything but equivocal about stop-and-frisk searches. "If [I'm] mayor, stop and frisk will end in Philadelphia, no question," Kenney said last April.
During the spring mayoral campaign, Jim Kenney seemed anything but equivocal about stop-and-frisk searches.
"If [I'm] mayor, stop and frisk will end in Philadelphia, no question," Kenney said last April.
This week, after the release of a transition report that recommended reforming the use of stop and frisk, his administration gave a more nuanced explanation.
Kenney said pedestrian stops must continue but less aggressively than under the Nutter administration and with more attention to legal constraints.
"My position on stop and frisk hasn't changed," Kenney said in a statement Wednesday. "Pedestrian stops were going on long before Mayor Nutter placed an emphasis on 'stop and frisk' as a crime-fighting strategy. What we're doing now is building upon and continuing to strengthen the Police Department's efforts to ensure that all pedestrian stops are constitutional and applied as fairly as possible across demographic groups."
As Philadelphia's murder rate climbed in 2008, Mayor Michael Nutter declared a "crime emergency," and, along with then-Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, emphasized the use of stop and frisk as a tool to curb violent crime.
Violent crime did drop, but pedestrian stops, particularly of African American men, more than doubled, and in most cases didn't result in an arrest.
The spike led to a federal lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union accusing the department of "a history of racially biased policing in Philadelphia."
The city settled the suit in 2011 and now shares all police reports on pedestrian stops with the ACLU, which compiles annual reports.
Kenney said he would employ a larger community policing strategy "that will address some of the friction that may have developed in the past from bad stops."
He could also direct police to be more discerning on when to use stop and frisk.
But the rules on the books stay the same.
A Supreme Court case, Terry v. Ohio, found that a police officer can legally stop a pedestrian as long as there is a "reasonable suspicion" of illegal activity. Frisking requires reasonable suspicion that the person is armed and dangerous.
The Philadelphia Police Department has a directive that details protocols police need to follow when they do a stop and frisk, including what they need to write down about the stop.
When it comes to political rhetoric, Kenney wasn't the first to say he would end stop and frisk. All six Democratic candidates for mayor pledged to stop it. New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio said the policy would cease there, but it has actually been dramatically dialed back.
"At the risk of sounding flip, there's no city that has the authority to end stop and frisk," said Police Commissioner Richard Ross. "The best you could do as a city is decide you want to have a precipitous drop - the only danger in that is, it's kind of a reverse quota, it suggests you had to have [a quota] in the first place."
It's an issue of quality stops over quantity, Ross said. Moreover, you wouldn't want to take the tool away from police, said Ross, who recounted an analogy he gave to students at Central High School.
"If someone in a yellow Big Bird suit robbed your mother and the police see someone in a yellow Big Bird suit, would you not want them to stop that person?" he asked.
The answer is obvious, Ross said, but there should also be an expectation about how Big Bird is treated, he said.
"It's all about constitutional stops - stops done fairly, not biased, and people being treated with respect," he said.
Philadelphia doesn't have the best track record in that department.
The most recent figures released from the ACLU in 2014 found 39 percent of stops in Philadelphia were conducted without reasonable suspicion.
A sixth report is due in the coming weeks, said David Rudovsky, one of the attorneys who sued in the case.
Rudovsky said the practice continues to be abused, but he said he would never argue that an officer's ability to stop someone be revoked.
"I don't think anybody is calling for the end of stop and frisk," he said. "I think most people would say that it's a legitimate law enforcement power but has been grossly abused over the years, and that's what we want to address."
Ross noted that in Philadelphia, if police stop someone, the officer must file a report explaining the reason. The reports are read by a supervisor, a captain, and then randomly audited by division inspectors. Then everything gets sent to the ACLU.
"I'm not suggesting we have this to perfection," Ross said. "We're constantly building new things and new systems, but we have the best oversight we can have. If you look around you will see we rival just about any police department with regard to how much oversight we do."
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