BALTIMORE (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union is questioning the use of stop-and-frisk tactics by Baltimore police after obtaining records that show only nine guns were recovered last year.
The ACLU requested statistics on the use of stop-and-frisk in the city, which has one of the nation's highest per capita murder rates. Police informed the group that they stopped 123,000 people in 2012 but searched only 494 of them. Of those, only nine were carrying guns. Ten had drugs and one had a knife.
The ACLU says police aren't keeping adequate records of the searches. Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said Wednesday that he agrees with the concerns raised by the group about record-keeping and data collection. But he says the stops themselves "are reflective of the overall effort to reduce violent crime."
