Intruder alert: stop-and-frisk restrictions.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Citings - Trespass Affidavit Program - Brief article

ONE EVENING in August 2011 when Jaenean Ligon was making chicken and French fries for dinner, she sent her 17-year-old son out to buy ketchup. On his way back to their apartment building in the Bronx, he was intercepted by several police officers, who questioned him, frisked him, and would not let him go until his mother came down to confirm that he lived there.

In January, a federal judge concluded that such demeaning encounters seem to be part of a pattern. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ordered the New York Police Department to stop routinely detaining and frisking people outside buildings in the Bronx under the so-called Trespass Affidavit Program (TAP). The program, conducted in cooperation with landlords, is supposedly aimed at trespassers, but Scheindlin found that police frequently harass tenants and visitors who have a right to be where they are.

"While it may be difficult to say where, precisely, to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional police encounters, such a line exists, and the NYPD has systematically...