Some New York City minority communities that used to witness several stop-and-frisk incidents a day now see none on a given day, says Police Commissioner Bill Bratton. The New York Daily News says the city's new top cop also noted a dramatic drop overall in the controversial practice took place in the waning days of his predecessor Raymond Kelly's service. “The problem has been more or less solved,” Bratton, who has been on the job two weeks, told the Local Initiatives Support Corporation at a symposium on how safe streets build strong communities.
About 194,000 stop-and-frisk reports were filed citywide in 2013. That was a major reduction from the 694,000 stop-and-frisk reports logged in 2011 — which Bratton called the “peak” of the practice — and the 532,911 that occurred in 2012, as reported by the New York Civil Liberties Union. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin blasted New York’s use of stop-and-frisk as unconstitutional last year and said a federal monitor should oversee the program.