A secret audio recording of a stop-and-frisk in action sheds unprecedented light on a practice that has put the city’s young people of color in the NYPD’s crosshairs.

More about the Stop and Frisk program

The New York City stop-question-and-frisk program is a practice of the New York City Police Department by which a police officer who reasonably suspects a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a felony or a penal law misdemeanor, stops and questions that person, and, if the officer reasonably suspects he or she is in danger of physical injury, frisks the person stopped for weapons. The rules for stop, question and frisk are found in New York State Criminal Procedure Law section 140.50, and are based on the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Terry v. Ohio^[1][2] About 684,000 people were stopped in 2011.^[1][3][4] The vast majority of these people were African-American or Latino.^[1][3][4] New York City residents have questioned whether these stops are based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.^[5] According to NYPD statistics from 2002 through 2012, an average of one in eight people stopped were accused of a crime.^[3]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and-frisk_program