New York police stopped, questioned and sometimes frisked people 150,000 times in the first three months of the year, about 12.5% fewer times than the same period last year, according to data released by the New York Police Department.

From Jan. 1 to March 31, the police stopped 149,753 people who matched the description of a suspect or were doing something officers deemed suspicious, police said. Last year during the first quarter, historically the time of year when the most stops are made, NYPD officers recorded an all-time high of 171,094 stops. They ended 2009 with a record 575,304.

The racial breakdowns of those stopped remained about constant. New York Civil Liberties Union associate legal director Chris Dunn said the group continues to be concerned with the “wide racial disparities” between blacks and whites. This year, almost 80,000 of the people stopped were black, more than half the total; blacks make up about a quarter of the city’s population. About 9% of the stops were whites, who comprise 44% of the city.

“If the NYPD made stops proportionately based on census data, over half of the subjects of our stops should be women,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne, responding to concerns. “The fact is police are more heavily concentrated in neighborhoods experiencing violent crimes. Suspicious activity is more likely to be observed there than in low-crime neighborhoods” because more police are stationed there.

Mr. Browne said 1,929 weapons, including 186 guns, were taken off the streets due to stop and frisks in the first quarter of the year.

Brooklyn’s East New York neighborhood, traditionally the city’s most crime-prone, had the most stops with 5,048. Jackson Heights, Queens, had the second most stops of any police precinct with 3,645, followed by Staten Island’s North Shore with 3,532 stops.

Mr. Dunn said his organization is also concerned that the data show that only 12.7%, or under 20,000, of the stops resulted in someone being arrested or summonsed.

City Councilman Peter Vallone, a Democrat who represents Queens, called the stop and frisk practice “the main reason we’ve been able to keep crime low despite having less cops than we did in past years.”

(Source: WSJ)