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There were fewer gripes about the NYPD’s hotly debated stop-and-frisk program last year, even as the number of stops increased, according to data released yesterday.
The watchdog Civilian Complaint Review Board reported that there were 1,716 complaints filed about the practice in 2011, down 10 percent from the 1,884 in 2010. At the same time, the number of people stopped jumped 14 percent to 685,724 last year, it said.
Officials said that while only 9 percent of those stopped were searched, those individuals accounted for the majority of the complaints, or 1,014.
As critics assail the program as biased against minorities, the CCRB numbers show that only 1 out of 400 of those stopped was upset enough to lodge a complaint. That was down from 1 in 184 just four years earlier. In 2010, it was 1 in 319.
The CCRB described that as a “dramatic” change.
It was also the second year in a row that stops increased while complaints decreased.
The downward trend held for overall complaints covering all police interaction with the public, with 5,966 total complaints to the CCRB, down 8 percent from 2010 and the lowest number since 2003.
To counter the critics, the NYPD made changes in its stop-and-frisk strategy that reduced the number of stops by a startling 34 percent in the second quarter of 2012.
Mayor Bloomberg said it was too early to tell what impact that would have on crime. But as the program saw fewer stop-and-frisks, crime shot up by 12.4 percent.
Bloomberg noted that there are always seasonal variations and that a comparison between April through June of this year and the same period last year showed a lesser increase of 3.9 percent.
The mayor vowed to do whatever it takes — including increasing stop-and-frisks — to keep crime in check.
“We’re not going to walk away from what we think is one of the most important methods to keep you and your family safe, no matter what you write about,” he lectured one reporter.
Bloomberg said further that added training was bound to have an impact, since it’s rookie cops who are the ones usually assigned to stop-and-frisk duty.
“Young police officers don’t have the experience to judge in advance,” he said. “So you would expect them to be a little more aggressive, because they don’t know whether that person is a danger to you and your life, and you want them to err on that side.”