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Suspicionless Witness Stops: The New Racial Profiling, Michael Gentithes

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

Young men of color in high-crime neighborhoods are surrounded by poverty and crime, yet distrustful of the police who frequently stop, frisk, and arrest them and their friends. Every encounter with the police carries the potential for a new arrest or worse, fostering a culture of fear and distrust of law enforcement. That culture exacerbates the problems facing the officers patrolling these neighborhoods as more crimes go unsolved because witnesses are unwilling to come forward.

In the past several decades, officers have responded by using a stop-and-frisk technique of dubious constitutionality to control crime. Despite its disastrous implications for the …