Wasted Resources: The failures of stop-and-frisk in Philadelphia

By Mary Catherine Roper and Solomon Furious Worlds

The purpose of this policy paper is to document how the city of Philadelphia has evolved its policies regarding the use of stop-and-frisk by city police since the 2011 settlement agreement in Bailey v. City of Philadelphia. Stop-and-frisk (also known as a Terry stop) is a tactic used by police with the stated intention of finding dangerous weapons and preventing violent crime. According to Fourth Amendment law, if an officer has reasonable suspicion to believe that a particular person might have committed a crime or is about to commit a crime, the officer can “stop” them. Similarly, if an officer has reasonable suspicion that that particular person has a weapon after they are stopped, the officer can “frisk” them or conduct a pat-down search on the outside of their clothes without having to obtain a warrant from a judge. In 2010, the ACLU of Pennsylvania, a professor from Penn Law School, and Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin, LLP, a civil rights law firm, filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of Plaintiffs (a number of Black and Latine Philadelphians) against the city for Philadelphia Police Department’s (“PPD”) officers’ illegal and racially disproportionate use of stop-and-frisk. Less than a year later, the city and the Plaintiffs reached a settlement agreement. Under that agreement, the city and PPD agreed to reduce the number of unlawful stops and frisks to, eventually, comply with the standard set by Fourth Amendment law. The city and PPD also agreed that they would not allow officers to target people on the basis of race with stop-and-frisk and would, eventually, comply with the Fourteenth Amendment’s mandate for equal treatment under the law. The fact that the court is still monitoring the Consent Decree means that the city, PPD, and their officers are still using stop-and-frisk without having reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or that the person is armed and dangerous, and it means that PPD’s officers are still stopping Black and Latino people at disproportionately high rates that cannot be explained by factors other than race. In reality, stop-and-frisk very rarely leads to the discovery of a weapon. At the height of PPD’s use of stop-and-frisk, in the first half of 2011, guns were recovered in less than 0.1 percent of the stops. Additionally, in the same time period, more than half of stops and more than half of frisks conducted were illegal, meaning police did not have reasonable suspicion to support their stops or frisks. With the policy and training changes required by the consent decree, the percentage of illegal stops and frisks dropped dramatically to 12.8% and 17.8%, respectively, by 2023. Still, the rate at which PPD recovered guns remained low with only about 6% of stops and 8.6% of frisks resulting in officers finding guns (and both percentages include illegal stops and frisks). In addition to being ineffective, stop-and-frisk was spawned from the same racist history as our criminal legal system and so it is plagued by the same race-related issues. Black and Latine people are stopped at a much higher rate than white people. This can lead to unnecessary and dangerous interactions with police that have the potential to quickly spiral into a violent confrontation. By 2020, the overall number of stops recorded by police had dropped significantly; however, the racial disparities remained nearly unchanged. In the tenth year of litigation, data showed that Black people were over 50% more likely to be stopped without reasonable suspicion and over 40% more likely to be frisked without reasonable suspicion than white people. This led the city to finally acknowledge that these disparities could not be explained other than as racial targeting. This admission led the court to order the city to consider remedies to address the racial disparities. The city’s own expert conceded that race was the most significant factor to determine whether someone is likely to be stopped. Because of this, the court ordered the city to implement something bold: the Quality of Life Pilot Program (“program”). Under this new program, PPD officers are supposed to instruct someone engaged in a number of minor offenses (called “quality of life offenses”) to stop doing the illegal activity without formally using stop-and-frisk. The program started in one police district but is now city-wide. That means PPD officers are supposed to verbally warn someone to stop doing whatever the minor offense1 is before using stop-and-frisk. The hope was that by reducing officers’ use of stop-and frisk on people engaged in non-violent, low-level unlawful conduct, officers would reduce the number of illegal uses of stop-and-frisk and lessen the racial disparity in their use of stop-and-frisk. As PPD officers have reduced the overall number of stops as a result of the program, the percentage of illegal stops has dropped and the percentage of stops that uncover a dangerous weapon has increased. This is a success both in cutting down on unnecessary police interactions with the public and in improving the impact that legal stops have had on increasing public safety. It is clear that reducing the instances of police using stop-and-frisk for minor offenses allows 1 Those minor “quality of life” offenses include: sounds from residential properties, sounds created on public right of way, spitting, al coholic beverages (open containers), public urination or defecation, aggressive conduct on sidewalk (panhandling), gambling, disorder ly conduct, obstructing the highway or other passageway, defiant trespass, litter in public places, litter in parks, smoking marijuana in a public space, sound production devices (loud music from cars), and prostitution. officers to focus on more serious crime and significantly increases the percentage of stops that recover dangerous weapons. More stops decreases the impact that police have on improving public safety. In 2024, with the inauguration of Mayor Cherelle Parker and a change of leadership at PPD, there has been a clear shift in the rhetoric city leadership uses when talking about the use of stop-and-frisk. To them, it seems more stops-and frisks means more effective policing. But research and Philadelphia-specific experience shows that is not true. Of course, PPD under the Parker Administration could increase the use of stop-and frisk without violating Bailey court orders. But doing so would be a mistake. Increasing even legal stops goes against the clear lessons learned from the changes made to stop-and-frisk in recent years and will make Philadelphia less safe, and policing in Philadelphia more racist. This policy paper will serve as a starting point for a renewed conversation with the Parker Administration and PPD leadership about stop-and-frisk.. The program that reduced the use of stop-and-frisk for minor offenses improves public safety while continuing to reduce unjustified stops. Critically, it also monitors and seeks to address the persistent racial disparities in pedestrian stops and frisks. 

Philadelphia: ACLU Pennsylvania, 2024. 22p.