USE OF FORCE ON TRAFFIC STOPS

BY BENJAMIN LESSER and GREG B. SMITH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Saturday, June 14th 2008, 1:45 PM
About 20% of all stops made by the NYPD involved 'use of force' in
2006, the only year for which statistics are available. Listort for News

About 20% of all stops made by the NYPD involved 'use of force' in
2006, the only year for which statistics are available.

One in five New Yorkers stopped by police in 2006 encountered some use
of force, from simple restraint to facing a drawn service weapon, a
Daily News analysis of new data found.

In 102,000 of the more than 500,000 police stops - about 20% - cops
did things such as restrained people, threw them to the ground or
against a wall or pointed a gun at them, the newly released data show.

The NYPD has refused to release use-of-force data in previous and
subsequent years.

In nine out of 10 police stops involving use of force in 2006, the
suspects were not arrested.

"Force is liberally defined to include such things as placing the
individual on a wall for a pat down, or on a car, or on the ground or
handcuffing whether an arrest is made [or] not," NYPD spokesman Paul
Browne said.

The data make clear that cops appear to pull their weapons fairly
frequently without making arrests, The News found.

About 2,700 police stops wound up with an officer pulling his weapon
on a suspect, records show. Of those stops, only 553 ended with an
arrest. That means in four out of five stops where a weapon was drawn,
no arrest was made.

Until now, the NYPD has released only limited information on why,
where and how its officers stop and question citizens suspected of
unlawful activity. Use-of-force details have never been made public.

They surfaced in internal data the NYPD turned over to researchers at
the University of Michigan. In recent days, researchers posted much of
the information on the Web.

The use-of-force statistics offer a more detailed picture of the
NYPD's increased use of police stops to combat crime. Civil liberties
groups concerned about illegal police stops have sued to obtain all
the data.

"The data confirms our worst fears," said Donna Lieberman, executive
director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "The NYPD is stopping,
interrogating and searching hundreds of thousands of innocent New
Yorkers."

In all police stops, the officer must have what's called "probable
cause" to legally stop and question a person. That usually means the
cops have information about a subject, are investigating a crime
nearby or witness suspicious behavior.

The data reveal a wide variety of reasons to justify a stop, ranging
from suspected terrorism to rent gouging.

Terrorism was the reason given for stopping and questioning citizens
in 301 cases in 2006. Only one of the "terrorism" stops resulted in an
arrest.

The actual charge in that case remains a mystery - all arrest details
were erased from the data.

The most common reason for stopping and questioning a citizen in 2006
was suspicion the person was carrying a weapon. That was the
justification 114,000 times.

Other reasons were more unusual. Twice, for instance, "adultery" was
offered as justification for a police stop. Once it was "rent gouging."

The data also revealed that more than 2,000 senior citizens were stopped.

blesser@nydailynews .com

ARRESTING STATISTICS

The "use of force" data break down like this (in many cases more than
one type of force was used):

- 506,491 police stops

- 102,454 police stops involving "use of force"

- 2,736 stops in which police drew their weapons. In most of those
stops - 1,889 - cops pointed their weapon at the suspect.

- 16,667 stops where cops threw a suspect to the ground.

- 2,034 stops where cops threw a suspect against a wall.

- 86,293 stops in which officers used their hands to physically
restrain a suspect.

Source: NYPD internal data, 2006