Sherman responds to "stop and frisk" fight

Penn professor Dr. Lawrence Sherman checked in from England by e-mail this morning to defend the idea of stop and frisk. Sherman's work has been cited by both Michael Nutter and Chaka Fattah.

Says Sherman:
1. Gun detection patrols that include a "stop and frisk" based solely on evidence supporting reasonable suspicion of illegal gun carrying has been repeatedly upheld as constitutional in a series of US Supreme Court rulings over the past 40 years.

2. Well trained police officers using stop and frisk tactics in five independent tests in Kansas City, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh have substantially reduced gun violence. (See Dr. Ludwig's US Senate testimony at http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=754&wit_id=2066 ). These results have been peer-reviewed by either the US Department of Justice or the Brookings Institution.

3. There is no evidence in this work, or in any other research I know, showing that these life-saving patrols have ever led to racial profling. Most have been conducted in single-race neighborhoods, in which suspects are selected based solely on behavior, not race.

4. Gun patrols remain the single strategy for which evidence exists of an immediate short-term, neighborhood-focused reduction in gun violence.

Comments

[rubylegs]

So what are the odds that any reporter at the Daily News or Inquirer writes an article that exposes the fact that in Fattah's crime plan, he supports the exact same methods he labeled as "racial profiling"?