Is There A Problem Officer?

In 2009, "490,000 blacks and Latinos were stopped by the police on the streets, compared with 53,000 whites." 6% of those stops resulted in arrests. In Brownsville, "Men between 15 and 34 in the area were stopped an average of five times"—that means that "the police made over 52,000 stops between 2006 and 2010 in one eight-block neighborhood with a total population of only 14,000."

All those stops have previously gone into "The '250 Database,' so called after the UF-250 form that officers use to file stop-and-frisk reports," which is effectively "a record of the names and addresses of most working-class youth in the largest American city." Last year, outgoing Governor Paterson signed a law that made keeping those records illegal. But that hasn't stopped the practice of illegal searches that begin as stop-and-frisks, which result in hundreds of arrests of people carrying marijuana.
What does this all mean in the day-to-day? Well, with widespread stop-and-frisk, things happen like what happened to the Almonor family.

[Source]

If you ever wonder why folks aren't fans of the cops, exhibit A.