Report: Blacks still main targets of stop-and-frisk initiative

Philadelphia police are still more likely to frisk black men and women than any other ethnic group, but city officials contend they are not more likely to be stopped, according to new reports filed Tuesday.

The conclusions were made public Tuesday in competing reports filed in federal court by city officials and a group of civil rights attorneys.

According to a news release from the ACLU, "people of color are still stopped far more often than whites."

City officials, however, contended that there are no differences between "non-Hispanic white and black pedestrians in the likelihood that a pedestrian stop would be sufficiently premised on reasonable suspicion."

When it came to frisks, however, the city acknowledged that blacks "were more likely to be frisked than non-Hispanic whites."

The filings come on the heels of a recent report that the Philadelphia Police Department recorded 35 percent fewer pedestrian stops in 2016 than a year earlier, and a greater proportion of those stops were made with reasonable suspicion, as required by law.

Six years ago, the city agreed to submit to monitoring of the Police Department's stop-and-frisk practices, and both the city and the attorneys' group, which included the ACLU, periodically release reports on the review.

The city has contended that high rates of frisking and pedestrian stops for blacks coincide with a heavier police presence in poverty-stricken areas. The civil rights group said its experts concluded otherwise.

"The reasons the [Philadelphia Police Department] has given for the racial disparities do not provide a nonracial justification, and many of these stops would not occur – even when the officer has given a legal reason for the stop – if the pedestrian were white instead of black," according to a news release.