Of course we should accept the Manhattan Institutes views on crime and what does and doesn't constitute racial profiling as gospel, afterall they (Manhattan Institute) recently released a study that stated teachers in large urban areas are overpaid and paid better than other professionals. Of course they are, that's why there is no shortage of high quality candidates flocking to the teaching profession in cities like NY, Boston and Philly.

Btw, crime started declining under Dinkins as crack use declined and programs like Safe streets Safe cities were enacted under Dinkins and Vallone. That Rudy is somehow responsible for the falling crime rate is a half truth and the FBI stats that are so often quoted by this mayor and Rudy are always issued with a disclaimer from the FBI, that their numbers, FBI, are raw data and should be considered as such.

It's never profiling when you're not the one being profilied.I wonder how many minorities subscribe to the Manhattan Institutes viewpoints.

Part of the problem may be that when a victim describes an assailant as "dark skinned", the police may assume black when such a description could easily mean hispanic/latino.  Or even a white guy who is italian or who has a good tan.  Why else are blacks stopped more than hispanics/latinos or dark skinned white europeans? 

I think Sharpton has a right to be upset over these numbers.  It seems like there is racial profiling going on.  I have talked to people who have had their bag searched numerous occasions over the last 2-3 years going into the subway near where I live in Brooklyn.  I live in a majority minority neighborhood.  Most of the people who say they had their bags searched are black.  A few are hispanic.  I am white.  I have not had mine searched once. I have also not met or talked to a single white person who had their bags searched. Is that a coincidence?  It sure does not seem like it.

I don't think either commenter read my full remarks, which are here. If they did, they missed the point.

I'll recap: The data—which does raise several of the questions Daniel Millstone asks about the increase in (or increased reporting of) stop and frisks, though it does not support his speculative answers—does not support the claims now emerging of widespread profiling (I'll leave the general question of such profiling is appropriate for another post). It does show the following:

1) 55.2 percent of those stopped were black, while 68.5 percent of reported crimes involved suspects described as black. The Times got around to mentioning that in the 23 paragraph of a 27 graf front page story.

2) Arrest rates, which are indeed gross aggregates, show Whites accounted for ten per cent of searches and 12 per cent of arrests, Hispanics for 29 per cent of searches and 30 per cent of arrests, and blacks for 55 per cent of searches and 51 per cent of arrests. All groups, that is, had very similar percentages of stops result in arrests. (These numbers the Times didn't bother noting at all). Again conceding that this is aggregate data, that hardly supports a claim of racial bias or animus. 

Nothing I've seen thus has been commensurate with claims of racial profiling. If there's data I haven't seen, or I'm misinterpreting the data I have, show me how.

Thus far, though, it seems to me that the paper of record is using a news story to  editorialize against the policing of black neighborhoods, even though the facts in that story don't match the conclusions the reader is encouraged to draw. 

I wonder if the paper's editors noticed the irony of the story's jump running next to a dispatch entitled "Mothers Harness Grief to Try to Save Lives" about mothers in Harlem who have lost children to gun violence, and are now working with the police to get guns off the street.

Finally, i take these numbers only a little more seriously than, say, CCRB complaints. Every year, as CCRB complaints go up or down, advocates on the "winning" side of the issue use them to claim that brutality is up or down based on the numbers. That these numbers bear a very limited relationship to office conduct goes unremarked. 

Given the NYPD's selective stop and frisk reporting (where are the 03-06 numbers?), the immense pressure on precinct commanders to keep crime numbers down, and the vagueness of what's been released so far, the conclusions being drawn bear little resemblance to the facts at hand, and offer far more questions—why the 500% increase in stops? what is the breakdown of the crimes in the arrests they've lead to? how successful have prosecutions based on these arrests been? what controls are there on the data? and so on—than answers.

Sorry about the double post of the comment before; not sure how to get rid of it. 

I do want to respond to Rock — Getting stopped by the police for no good reason you can tell (or for no good reason at all) is at best infuriating. Having to wonder if it's because of your race is literally dehumanizing. I have no doubt that there are racist cops, and that I have the luxury of never having to deal with them. I also agree—and wrote in my original post and now my comment above—that this data isn't worth much. 

But there's nothing in it showing that cops are systemically harassing black people. Does that mean they're not, or it's not a large problem? I wouldn't know based on this data, and if it was all I had to go on, wouldn't have reason to assume so. And that says a lot about the data, and not much one way or the other about the police. And it says a lot about the Times that they'd send a hack to the PJs to generate anecdotal complaints that don't match the data that's ostensibly the occasion for the story.  

I'd love to talk about what the data might mean—especially the 500% increase in stop and frisks, and whether or not that's real, and what if anything it has to do with crime rates (which also get fudged, some). But pretending the data proves profiling is a bad idea. Pretending the Times story is anything more than agitprop is a bad idea. 

Those are bad ideas even if racism is a major problem on the police force (which I think is a stretch). But even assuming that's so, why rely on what we all seem to agree are almost meaningless numbers, or on a patently dishonest newspaper story to make the case? Nothing discredits truth like wilfully using bad data and dishonest accounts to advance the cause. 

That you would call 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement the dept.'s usual "race baiters" speaks volumes about you, Manhattan Institute and the articles you've edited and your take on racial profiling. Lee never used the term race baiters, you did. You've taken a lot of liberties in your interpretation of Lee's article which seems to take a position oppposite of yours. Did you miss the opening paragraph? 

This is the extreme end of the racist nannie state in which momma bloomberg knows what's best for all of us, but doesn't want to speak about it publicly. Just more evidence of the cluelessness and prejudice in the Bloomberg administration which he attempts to head off by bribing certain community leaders for their silence.

Btw, racism in govt. in the time of this mayor has gotten worse, it's become more covert and met with a smile and slap on the back.

Just to follow up on Cities for a second -- I think the point he makes is a narrower one than that which the "profiling/racism exists" posters wish to convey. 

In short, Cities raises a longstanding and vexing problem with the Times's coverage of Metro issues, and particularly of racial issues in the metro area.  As Cities asks, why bury an important (no matter which way you ultimately come down on the issue) statistic in para 24 of 27; why fail to mention the searches/arrest data at all; and why (as Tom and others point out) not at least mention that these data are raw numbers? 

In my opinion, this goes beyond a mere ombudsman's problem, but rather is one example of systematic slanting and intellectual laziness and dishonesty on the part of the Gray Lady.