A Queens Neighborhood Has The Most Stop-And-Frisks In NYC: Report

OZONE PARK, QUEENS — A Queens police precinct leads the city in stop-and-frisks, a new report from the New York Civil Liberties Union found.

The NYPD's 106th precinct, which covers Ozone Park and Howard Beach, had the most reported stop-and-frisks of New York City's 77 total police precincts, according to the report released Thursday.

The Queens precinct led the city with 5,184 reported stops and 3,058 reported frisks from 2014 to 2017, the data show. That precinct also stopped the most innocent people. Officers stopped 4,672 people — 90 percent of the precinct's reported stops — whom they didn't summons or arrest.

The number of reported police stops has fallen to a record-low since Mayor Bill de Blasio entered office in 2014, but the NYCLU's data show that police still disproportionately stop and frisk black and Latino men.

"While we welcome the dramatic decline in reported stops, we remain concerned that the number of actual stops is far larger because officers are failing to document many stops," Christopher Dunn, NYCLU's legal director and a co-author of the report, said. "In addition, our report shows that racial disparities continue to be a stubborn problem, that most stops are of innocent people, and that the police routinely and improperly are frisking New Yorkers."

An NYPD spokesperson emphasized that reported stop-and-frisks have dramatically decreased, according to the data, but did not address the finding that the 106th Precinct leads the city in stop-and-frisks.

"The NYPD has overwhelmingly reduced the use of stop-question-and-frisk, going from a high of 688,000 in 2011 to just 12,000 reported stops in 2018," the spokesperson said. "This decrease reflects the deliberate shift in NYPD strategic focus over the past several years to precise, surgical targeting of crime and criminals."

The NYPD has introduced a one-day training course on stop-and-frisk policy for police officers and supervisors, the spokesperson said, and the department has enhanced data auditing to ensure accurate reporting.

"These changes not only make New York City the safest big city in America, but also one with dramatically fewer confrontational encounters between police and the people we serve," the spokesperson said.