claim: “When we discovered, I discovered, that we were doing many, many, too many stop and frisks, we cut 95% of it out.”
evidence: Shootings are on the rise this year in New York City, and the trends are raising questions about whether Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to cut down on stop-and-frisk tactics has made it easier to carry guns in New York. The best data available on stop-and-frisk makes it clear that the search tactic turned up relatively few guns in terms of number of stops conducted. [...] That figure casts doubt on whether stop-and-frisks are useful in finding weapons and taking them off the street, but it is also the least generous way of judging the NYPD’s program. Officers might stop passers-by for a variety of reasons (matching the description of someone involved in a crime, appearing to be involved in a drug deal, etc.), and, in many of these cases, the goal is not to find weapons. [...] De Blasio claims that pulling cops off of stop-and-frisk work will allow them to focus more on community policing, building ties that will pay off in the long term in reducing crime. His critics, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, argue that the mere possibility of being searched is a psychological deterrent to carrying a gun in the city. The numbers available aren’t convincing enough to win the argument for either side.