Any encounter between police and civilians has the potential to go awry (SN: 11/17/21). Stop and frisk, where police pat down pedestrians suspected of carrying contraband, can be particularly fraught, leading to some efforts to limit the practice.
“This is a really dramatic shift in police activity,” says political scientist Dorothy Kronick of the University of California, Berkeley.
The analysis doesn’t prove that the change in pedestrian stops caused the subsequent spike in traffic stops; nor does it delve into the implications of the change. The Chicago Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
But the data do suggest that studying a single change might not tell the whole story about police tactics, the researchers say. “We want to … think about the way that police agencies or other government agencies are going to respond strategically to these changes,” says Kronick, who coauthored the study with Berkeley immigration and criminal law expert David Hausman.
2023-09-29 13:00:00
Post from www.sciencenews.org
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