The New York City Police Department is currently employing a shameful rights-violating policy called "Stop, Question, Frisk," in which police arbitrarily stop and question hundreds of thousands of pedestrians annually and frisk them for both guns and drugs. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, some five million New Yorkers have been stopped since its inception in 2002. According to the same report, roughly 90 percent of those five million are completely innocent, devoid of any guns or drugs. Furthermore, 90 percent of those stopped are blacks and Latinos, making minorities the overwhelming majority of this policy's innocent victims.

Proponents falsely claim that it's necessary to prevent crime and keep people safe, and point to NYC's 29 percent violent crime drop from 2001 to 2010. Yet correlation is not causation, and there is no conclusive evidence that "Stop and Frisk" is responsible. Indeed, most crime experts attribute the drop to "hot-spot policing," where police concentrate in high-crime areas rather than spread themselves out.

Moreover, according to the FBI's Crime Statistics, other large cities experienced larger crime declines without relying on stop and frisk abuses: 59 percent in Los Angeles, 56 percent in New Orleans, 49 percent in Dallas and 37 percent in Baltimore. Most notably "Stop and Frisk" has not reduced the number of shooting victims in New York City. In 2002, there were 1,892 victims of gunfire and 97,296 stops; in 2011, there were still 1,821 victims of gunfire but a record 685,724 stops.

Even if it were true that "Stop and Frisk" reduces crime, it doesn't justify violating people's rights. Those who think there's a trade-off between rights and security ought to heed Benjamin Franklin: "They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." It's far more preferable to live in a free country with some crime than a totalitarian country with less crime.

"Stop and Frisk" is intrusive, ineffective, potentially racist and produces tremendous hostility and distrust towards police, which diminishes confidence in the rule of law. "Stop and Frisk" doesn't reduce crime and protect individual rights. Rather, it allows police officers free reign to violate the rights of anyone they deem "suspicious." Many New York Police Department officers abuse minorities with this power, seemingly preferring to bully and intimidate over "to protect and serve."

Until racism is rejected, racial bias in law enforcement will continue in the form of racial profiling: the use of an individual's race by law enforcement as a key factor in determining suspicious criminal activity. A person's skin color has as much to do with the propensity to engage in criminal behavior as does a person's weight, height, hair color, eye color and shoe size-absolutely nothing. Proponents of racial profiling often point to statistics that show how most crime in NYC is committed by individuals of color. While this may be true, these statistics do not prove causation: an individual who happens to be of the same race as a criminal is no more likely to commit a crime by mere virtue of skin pigment. Nevertheless, the NYPD continues to use these statistics to justify their own racial biases, as seen in several YouTube videos of police verbally abusing several "Stop and Frisk" victims with racial epithets.

While the NYPD is legally barred from racial profiling, a bad Supreme Court ruling, Terry vs. Ohio (1968), has created a toxic legal atmosphere for police to act on their racial biases. It's unconstitutional for police to detain and search citizens, a violation of liberty and privacy, unless there is a rational, objective justification for doing so according to an objective legal standard. This legal standard is commonly referred to as "probable cause." Probable cause requires police to judge suspicious behavior in a strictly objective way: when there are obvious signs that criminal activity is in progress or about to take place.

The NYPD, however, does not determine suspicious behavior according to the standard of probable cause but rather on a much weaker, more subjective legal standard known as "reasonable suspicion." Reasonable suspicion was introduced in Terry vs. Ohio to reduce both the quantity and the quality of information needed by police to objectively prove suspicious behavior.

In turn, the NYPD has exploited "reasonable suspicion" to create 10 vague and highly subjective criteria of suspicious behaviors that allow them to stop virtually anybody for any arbitrary reason-and only one of which is necessary. These include the notoriously abused "furtive movements," cited in 50 percent of cases-as well as "suspicious bulge or object," and "wearing clothes/disguises commonly used in commission of crimes." The subjectivity of these criteria allows the NYPD to get away with racial profiling.

Opponents of "Stop and Frisk," are calling for "reforms" like police cameras to document pat-downs, a new police commissioner and an inspector general. This includes the Federal judge who ruled "Stop and Frisk" to be discriminatory and constitutionally illegal. While superficial "reforms" are helpful, they treat the symptoms, not the disease. Ineffective and unconstitutional government policies such as "Stop and Frisk" need to be banned, not "reformed."