Where Guns Are Actually Found During Stop & Frisks

Of all the blocks in our area where incidents of stop and frisk are highest, most of the guns found during discovered were not found in those areas. WNYC created this map that’s much like the one from the New York World, but in addition to showing how many stop and frisks occurred on each block, their map notes where guns were found last year. From WNYC:

So what does this pattern mean? Well, that depends on whom you ask.

Police critics say the map proves cops don’t know where to look for guns and are making excessive suspicion-less stops.

But commanding officers within the NYPD tell WNYC the police concentrate their stop-and-frisk activity where violent crimes have been reported. Violent crimes, not past gun recoveries, determine where police officers are sent, they say.

The block that had the most stops in our area according to this map is around the Church Avenue subway station–the block bordered by Church and Caton, and E 17th and E 18th–with 702 stops. The nearest place to there where a gun was found was around the Parkside Ave subway station, on January 18. All told, there were only about a half-dozen guns found during stop-and-frisks in our area, and aside from that one at Parkside, the rest were all on blocks with low numbers of stops.

Still, Mayor Bloomberg continues to insist stop and frisk is a worthwhile practice. During one of his recent radio shows, Capital New York noted that he was frustrated by the outrage against stop and frisk instead of against an increase in crime.

“[In] the end, if the kid is on the street with a gun, we’ve got to get that gun out of his hands, and we’ve got to make the kids believe that the likelihood of being stopped is so great that they shouldn’t carry a gun,” Bloomberg said.