This article discusses the issues surrounding New York's controversial "stop-and-frisk" program, particularly the removal of a judge from the case. In August of 2013, federal judge Shira Sheidindlin ruled this program a violation of the constitutional rights of New Yorkers because, "while African-American and Latino New Yorkers comprise only 54% of the general population, they constituted 84% of all stops in 2012, and 88.8% of the people stopped were not charged." However, because she seemed to be very biased against the program and spoke a lot to the media regarding her view on "stop-and-frisk", she was disqualified from the case, and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is now declaring her ruling invalid.
The main purpose of this article was to inform readers about the highly controversial "stop-and-frisk" program by focusing mainly on the recent disqualification of a judge. The audience is probably mainly New Yorkers, given that the magazine is called The New Yorker, so this would be an issue important to them. The author begins with a pun, saying "stop me if you've heard this one". This is funny because under the program, police have the right to randomly stop cars if they are suspicious of activity going on. The author also employs a type of chronological organization that makes the story easier to follow, starting with Sheidindlin's ruling and progressing to the current state of affairs regarding the law.
Overall, I believe that the author did achieve his purpose, given the audience he was aiming at. New Yorkers would probably be at least somewhat familiar with the "stop-and-frisk" law so the author never goes into detail about what it is. The article was informative as to the issues surrounding the program and was focused on the contribution of one judge to this law.
Jeffrey Toobin is currently a legal analyst and commentator for CNN and writes for The New Yorker.
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