Michael, you left out the part of the linked article noting that "the reporting period (2011-1015) involved fewer violent crimes. Property crimes also decreased throughout the period."

Expanding on Doug's point. You would expect arrests to be down as crime goes down. Moreover, given that the vast majority of "Police-initiated contacts" don't result in an arrest, and are thus stops of innocent people and that the people stopped are disproportionately racial minorities, despite the fact that stops of whites result in more arrests, this seems like a very good thing.

Fuzzyone (having trouble with my regular login)

Douglas, it was a four page report so I left out quite a bit. The article did note the crime drop during that period, but in raw numbers, that drop amounted to just over 1 million fewer crimes over the study period. The other 7 million fewer police stops must have been caused by something else. I believe that other factors not specifically included in the report such as the Ferguson riots, the birth of "Black Lives Matter," the Baltimore riots, the President, Attorney General and most of the national media accusing police of being racists, and several intentional shootings of police officers, might have influenced police behavior. What do you think?

I concur that lots of complicated factors are in play here. And I am not even sure how to decided whether to celebrate or curse having government agents in the form of police much less involved in citizen activity. Generally speaking, I tend to view less government as a good thing.