By Rudi Anna
The Field Investigation/Observation program, known as FIO for short, is a stop and frisk procedure conducted by the Boston Police Department (BPD). But various instances in recent years have revealed patterns of blatant racial profiling, particularly toward African-Americans, within the program’s field conduct.
According to the FIO data released by the BPD in 2014, as many as 66,691 stop and frisks were conducted between 2013 to 2014. Out of those incidents, 19,900 of them were done on black civilians, which makes up 60 percent of that year’s FIOs.
The disparity is notable, considering only about 22 percent of Boston’s population is African-American.
What is more interesting is that only 2.5 percent of stop and frisks conducted on black civilians have resulted in actual seizures or arrests, while that number is double among white civilians who are arrested at a rate of 4.6 percent.
