Oh yes, lets look to Bloomberg to show us how to run a city. Shitty rent controls, banning all sorts of things, cops stopping people in the streets for security checks. Brilliant.
Stop and frisk is a huge boon for making cities safer. Every major city does it.
Can you to cite a source for both of those claims? AFAIK, NYC is the only city that does stop and frisk, and it has been proven to be a program to 1) be heavily skewed towards frisking minorities, and 2) resulting in a 1.9% "success rate" in finding a weapon after having frisked the entire African American population once over in NYC (source: http://occupydesign.org/uncategorized/stop-frisk-infographic... )
It's also unconstitutional, but as long as you aren't the one being frisked, it's no problem, right?
5.4% of stops between 2004 and 2009 resulted in arrests. That's actually a really high number, contrary to the characterization of the article. That's tens of thousands of instances of actual wrongdoing being caught.
Stop and frisk does skew towards stopping minorities. That is not in and of itself necessarily problematic. Race, socioeconomic status, and crime are deeply correlated in the big cities. The unfortunate fact is that most crime in New York, Chicago, and LA are committed by blacks and hispanics, and in fact usually both the victims and the perpetrators are minorities. See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/nypd-report-details....
Stop and frisk is not unconstitutional. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_v._Ohio. Playing armchair Supreme Court Justice when it comes to the 4th amendment is fraught with peril, for the simple reason that the founders explicitly left it open to judicial interpretation by using the wiggle word "unreasonable."
Frisks are enabled by Terry for the exclusive purpose of detecting weapons that would endanger officers, and are confined to explorations of the outer layers of clothing (ie, to places where weapons can easily be both detected and accessed suddenly by an assailant).
But NYC is accused of going far past the Terry authorization; the NYPD has been sued for demanding that people turn out their pockets, and for arresting people for drug possession.
If you read the general orders for a large police department (I've read Chicago's, but not NYC's), they're clear on this point: you can't reach into someone's pockets without having either consent or an arrest.
Consider that "Stop & Frisk" may be marketed as a systematic application of Terry v Ohio, but might instead be emblematic of something broader.
(It's also worth remembering that NYPD statistics are controversial; look up "CompStat". I read some Chicago police blogs and get the sense that NYPD's statistic accountability is basically loathed outside of NYC --- which doesn't make the Chicago police right!)
Fairly low weapon-finding rates are about what I would expect, whether the program was working or not. Crime is disproportionately committed by a small fraction of the population. (Victimhood is also highly skewed, in case you were wondering.)
Has stop and frisk helped Oakland? The city is ranked 4th most dangerous in the US.
Maybe tighter gun control makes cities safer? It's supposed to be rare for a SF resident to successfully obtain a concealed carry permit, and a local ordinance requiring weapons at home to be locked up was upheld just a few days ago. (http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/crime-law/federal-judge-uphold...)
Having a police force larger than many standing armies is a huge boon for making cities safer. Stop and frisk probably doesn't have much to do with it.
I don't know about that. Russia and Singapore have roughly the same number of police (~750) per 100,000 inh. One is way safer than the other. (The US is middling with 233 per 100k.)
Also, as a city, Caracas comes to mind. A city with heavy police presence but intolerable crime statistics.
