132
Opinion of Stevens, J.
Among some citizens, particularly minorities and those residing in high crime areas, there is also the possibility that the fleeing person is entirely innocent, but, with or without justification, believes that contact with the police can itself be dangerous, apart from any criminal activity associated with the officer's sudden presence.7 For such a person,
lets and "Mushrooms": Random Shootings of Bystanders in Four Cities, 1977-1988, 5 J. of Quantitative Criminology 297, 303 (1989). Nonetheless, that study, culling data from newspaper reports in four large cities over an 11-year period, found "substantial increases in reported bystander killings and woundings in all four cities." Id., at 306. From 1986 to 1988, for example, the study identified 250 people who were killed or wounded in bystander shootings in the four survey cities. Id., at 306-311. Most significantly for the purposes of the present case, the study found that such incidents "rank at the top of public outrage." Id., at 299. The saliency of this phenomenon, in turn, "violate[s] the routine assumptions" of day-to-day affairs, and, "[w]ith enough frequency . . . it shapes the conduct of daily life." Ibid.
7 See Johnson, Americans' Views on Crime and Law Enforcement: Survey Findings, Nat. Institute of Justice J. 13 (Sept. 1997) (reporting study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in April 1996, which found that 43% of African-Americans consider "police brutality and harassment of African-Americans a serious problem" in their own community); President's Comm'n on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: The Police 183-184 (1967) (documenting the belief, held by many minorities, that field interrogations are conducted "indiscriminately" and "in an abusive . . . manner," and labeling this phenomenon a "principal problem" causing "friction" between minorities and the police) (cited in Terry, 392 U. S., at 14, n. 11); see also Casimir, Minority Men: We Are Frisk Targets, N. Y. Daily News, Mar. 26, 1999, p. 34 (informal survey of 100 young black and Hispanic men living in New York City; 81 reported having been stopped and frisked by police at least once; none of the 81 stops resulted in arrests); Brief for NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund as Amicus Curiae 17-19 (reporting figures on disproportionate street stops of minority residents in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and St. Petersburg, Florida); U. S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, S. Smith, Criminal Victimization and Perceptions of Community Safety in 12 Cities 25 (June 1998) (African-American residents in 12 cities are more than twice as likely to be dissatisfied with police practices than white residents in same community).
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