“I thought, you know, a good way to cut down stops, just film everybody instead.”
Planet Money · Money & Markets · October 2026
A former NYPD officer recalls his thinking in the early 2000s, when the department was under fire for stop-and-frisk. More cameras looked like a way to cut down on stopping people.
Transcript
You know, at the time, I didn't think we were doing a good job in the NYPD.
The NYPD was being heavily criticized for what was known as stop and frisk, where police officers were stopping mostly young people of color and searching them based on some vague notion of suspicion. So
I thought, you know, a good way to cut down stops, just film everybody instead.
That is what you thought?
That was my thought, you know, non-physical policing.
So, right, in the early days of more camera surveillance, that was seen as a fix for something. Yes,
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