Stop drop.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Frisky police business

THE NUMBER of stop-and-frisk encounters reported by the New York Police Department (NYPD), which septupled during the first 10 years of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration, fell precipitously this year, apparently in response to criticism of the tactic.

Last year the NYPD made a record 684,330 street stops, which involve detaining, questioning, and (usually) frisking supposedly suspicious people, overwhelmingly blacks and Latinos, in the name of detecting and preventing crime. But in the second quarter of this year, the number of stops fell by 25 percent compared to the same period in 2011.

Citing unnamed police sources, The New York Times reported in August that sergeants conducting roll calls were no longer pushing officers to make street stops. "Cops are nervous, and supervisors are nervous," a supervisor told the Times.

One source of anxiety: Last May a federal judge certified a class action lawsuit arguing that the NYPD routinely violates the Fourth Amendment because its stops and searches are not justified by reasonable suspicion and that the program is racially biased, violating the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. In allowing the lawsuit to proceed, U.S. District Judge...