A 30-year study finds stop-and-frisk reforms cut stops but not racial bias, warning new surveillance tools extend the same logic.
We’re proud to spotlight the doctoral work of Saybrook alumnus Shawn D. Walton, Ph.D., whose recently completed dissertation reflects the university’s commitment to rigorous scholarship in service of transformative social change.
For three decades, the City of New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy has shaped the daily lives of millions of New Yorkers, overwhelmingly Black/African American, Afro-Caribbean and Hispanic/Latino residents in working-class communities. Dr. Shawn D. Walton’s dissertation, completed through Saybrook University’s Ph.D. in Transformative Social Change program, provides the most comprehensive longitudinal case study of this practice to date, tracing its evolution across four mayoral administrations and exposing the structural mechanisms that allow racialized policing to survive even landmark legal reform.
Dr. Walton’s research reveals a striking pattern: Despite a 90% reduction in documented stops following the landmark Floyd v. City of New York (2013) ruling that declared NYPD practices unconstitutional, the underlying logic of racialized social control persists. From a peak of 685,724 stops in 2011, 88% of which resulted in no arrest or summons, and 83% of which targeted Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino individuals, the NYPD appeared to reform. Yet qualitative data from 15 semi-structured interviews with community members, NYPD officers, and stakeholders, alongside analysis of more than 150 media sources, federal monitor reports, and legislative transcripts, exposed a continued sense of siege in specific precincts, where undocumented stops remained routine.
Under the Eric L. Adams administration, the study documented a resurgence. Newly deployed Neighborhood Safety Teams showed that more than 30% of documented frisks and searches violated constitutional standards, while racial disparities remained virtually unchanged: Over 80% of those stopped continued to be Black/African American or Hispanic/Latino residents. The dissertation demonstrates that stop-and-frisk’s resilience stems from its flexibility as a tool of order maintenance that adapts to shifting political mandates without altering its target demographic.
The study’s recommendations are structural rather than incremental: An immediate moratorium on pretextual stops, abolition of the NYPD’s gang database, transfer of disciplinary authority to independent civilian bodies, and sustained community-led investment in housing and crisis response over punitive enforcement.
The rigor and relevance of this research reflect the exceptional guidance of Dr. Walton’s dissertation committee, whose "insistence on rigor and relevance pushed [him] to ground this research in the transformative social change ideals that our program embodies."
Joseph F. Wilson, Ph.D., provided the scholarly framework that anchored the study’s ambition. Under Dr. Wilson’s stewardship, Dr. Walton developed a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods case study design that integrated quantitative stop data with critical race theory, procedural justice frameworks, and the lived experiences of policed communities, an approach that situated statistical patterns within a framework of institutional racism and state control.
Oscar Odom III, Ed.D., J.D., a methodologist and associate professor of public safety at University of Virginia, brought both scholarly precision and practitioner insight to the project. Dr. Odom’s own doctoral research on NYPD stop-question-and-frisk practices, conducted from an insider perspective, directly informed Dr. Walton’s methodological approach, bridging academic analysis with on-the-ground knowledge of policing culture. His earlier findings, which underscored the need for constitutional police training and documented the pressure officers felt to meet unwritten quotas, provided crucial grounding for the study’s triangulated analysis of NYPD data, court records, and community testimony.
Laura Turner-Essel, Ph.D., adjunct faculty in Transformative Social Change at Saybrook, shaped the study’s commitment to centering community voices as primary evidence. Her influence ensured that the dissertation foregrounded the experiences of those most affected: the families navigating “The Talk” about surviving police encounters, the young men who alter daily routines to avoid stops, and the community advocates who testified before the New York City Council’s Public Safety Committee in December 2024. This approach aligns with the transformative justice principle at Saybrook’s core: those who endure injustices are key to understanding and solving them.
Dr. Walton’s findings carry urgent implications beyond New York City. The same logic of racialized surveillance documented in his study is now being replicated at the federal level through emerging facial recognition technologies. Since mid-2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have deployed a smartphone application called Mobile Fortify, which allows officers to scan the face of anyone in public and compare it against government biometric databases containing more than 1.2 billion images. The app has been used more than 100,000 times, targeting immigrants and confirmed U.S. citizens alike, including bystanders at protests. Reports indicate that agents have informed citizens their images are being added to federal databases without consent, where biometric data can be stored for up to 15 years.
The technology carries well-documented racial bias. A landmark National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study found that facial recognition algorithms misidentify Black faces 10 to 100 times more frequently than white faces, with Black women suffering the highest false positive rates. Multiple wrongful arrests of Black Americans, including Robert Williams in Detroit, have resulted directly from faulty facial recognition matches. Nine Democratic senators warned that the technology is “frequently biased and inaccurate, particularly against people of color,” and that its deployment threatens privacy and free speech rights.
This represents an unprecedented expansion of the surveillance apparatus Dr. Walton’s dissertation documents. Never before have law enforcement agencies placed real-time facial recognition technology on the phones of officers operating in communities, granting them unchecked power to stop individuals and scan their faces on the spot. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) dismantled its own privacy safeguards to fast-track the deployment of Mobile Fortify, removing the directive that prohibited “indiscriminate, wide-scale surveillance or tracking” and the requirement that facial recognition not be used to “target or discriminate individuals for exercising their constitutional rights.”
Dr. Walton’s commitment to service extends far beyond the classroom. An AmeriCorps alumnus inspired by President Barack Obama’s call to service, he was recognized with the 2023 President’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his decade of public service. His civic leadership has earned a citation from the New York State Assembly in 2024; certificates of recognition from the New York State Senate (2024) and New York City Mayor Eric L. Adams (2023); and, in February 2026 for the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, recognition from Black Doctorates Matter (BDM), a movement dedicated to celebrating and supporting historically marginalized scholars in doctoral education.
Dr. Walton’s journey exemplifies the Saybrook University mission: turning rigorous scholarship into transformative action. His dissertation research presents both a cautionary tale and a roadmap, a reminder that reforms achieved on paper must be sustained on the streets and that the voices of those most affected must remain at the center of the conversation.
Dr. Shawn D. Walton earned his Ph.D. in Transformative Social Change from Saybrook University in May 2025. His dissertation is available through Saybrook University.
