New York police, banned from stop-and-frisk, warn of 12 percent drop in gun seizures

In the three months that the New York Police Department has been prevented by court order from pursuing stop-and-frisk operations, the city has seen a 12 percent drop in gun confiscations.

Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled in mid-August that stop-and-frisk was unconstitutional. Since — and while the city appeals — police have significantly dropped their seizures of illegal weapons, the New York Post reported. By the numbers, it appears that in the weeks between Aug. 19 and Nov. 3, police confiscated 634 firearms — far fewer than the 723 they seized during a similar time period in 2012.

At the same time, gun-related violence in the city has increased.

The New York Post reported that shootings increased in that three-month time span by 2.3 percent, to 312, compared with 305 in the similar period in 2012. Meanwhile, there was a 3.4 percent increase in the number of victims of gun-related crime, the New York Post reported. Between August and November of this year, 367 individuals were shot. Last year, during that three-month period, 355 were hit by gunfire.

Police see the increases as firmly rooted in the federal judge’s ruling.

“Of course [the judge’s] ruling is responsible for this,” one unnamed police source said in the New York Post. “There’s a definite cause and effect here. Her ruling has made a lot of officers gun-shy about getting guns off the street. They don’t want to get sued.”

At the same time, other violent crime statistics are dramatically lower this year when compared with similar time periods in 2012. Murders, in fact, have hit historic lows this year — at 248, the New York Post said. Meanwhile, the number of shootings to date has fallen by 22 percent, compared with the August-November period last year.