What is stop-and-frisk?

You are walking down the street, minding your own business, when an officer orders you to stop, pats you down, and pulls out whatever is in your pockets. Is that legal?

In this TalksOnLaw Brief, Daniel Capra, the Philip D. Reed Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and a nationally recognized expert on criminal procedure, explains the legal framework behind stop-and-frisk, a question he notes is raised especially often by people of color. Opening with a presidential-debate exchange over whether stop-and-frisk had been ruled unconstitutional, he argues that the term is often used loosely, and he separates the constitutional doctrine from the way one city's program was carried out.

Terry v. Ohio and Reasonable Suspicion

Professor Capra explains that stop-and-frisk is an established legal practice when certain conditions are met, a rule that comes from the Supreme Court's decision in Terry v. Ohio. The Court reasoned that if officers needed probable cause, the standard required for an arrest, before investigating on the street, a great deal of crime would go undetected and the public would be put at risk. So the Court recognized a lower standard, reasonable suspicion, that allows an officer to stop a person's movement for a limited time to ask where they are going and what they are doing, and to run identification and warrant checks. That is not an arrest; it is a stop.

The Frisk

The frisk, Professor Capra explains, is attached to the stop and exists for officer self-protection. It requires reasonable suspicion that the person is not just armed but armed and dangerous. When that standard is met, an officer may search for weapons on the person and in what the person is carrying, and, under later case law, in the passenger compartment of a car when the stop occurs in a vehicle. In short, a stop is legal on reasonable suspicion of crime, and a frisk is legal on reasonable suspicion of danger.

The New York City Lawsuit

Stop-and-frisk can still be carried out illegally, and Professor Capra points to the major lawsuit against the New York City Police Department. In Floyd v. City of New York, the judge found that the program was being used selectively, raising an equal protection problem because it targeted minorities, particularly young African-American men. She also found that many stops occurred without reasonable suspicion, for example simply because a young man was near a housing project at a particular time. Professor Capra emphasizes that it was the NYPD's program as applied, not the idea of stop-and-frisk, that the court held unconstitutional.

What to Know Now

The Terry framework Professor Capra describes remains the law. In District of Columbia v. R.W. (2026), the Supreme Court summarily reversed a lower court that had found no reasonable suspicion, reaffirming that courts must weigh the totality of the circumstances rather than discount factors one by one; Justice Jackson dissented. In New York, the court-ordered remedies from Floyd are still in place. A federal monitor, now reporting to Judge Analisa Torres, continues to review NYPD stops, and the monitor's 2026 reports have flagged stops that went unreported and stops lacking legal justification, including by specialized units. Reported stops are far below their peak of a decade and a half ago. Supporters of stop-and-frisk see lawful stops as an important crime-fighting tool, while critics view the long-running monitorship as evidence that constitutional limits are hard to enforce on the street. Both sides agree on Professor Capra's core point: the legality of any stop turns on reasonable suspicion.