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Here’s some good news.

We’re not sure if it’s the scrutiny the program has been facing in the past year or a change of heart in the department, but police are reportedly backing off of the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk policy and using the controversial measure less than ever before.

The number of street stops under the program has plummeted 80 percent in recent months, compared with the same time last year. Police are also reporting that officers are recovering fewer weapons.

Officers recovered 99 firearms, down from 198 last year, and 463 knives, down from 1,016, according to the quarterly data provided to the City Council.

But the number of stops, no matter how sharply they declined, are still very much alarming.

There were slightly more than 21,000 stops for July, August and September, after police changed training methods. There were 106,000 stops during the same months last year.

Yikes. But don’t be quick to attribute the racially-profiling tactic to the low number of weapons or stops just yet.

The head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Donna Lieberman, said the precipitous drop in stops is good news and proves the city, which is on track to have a record low number of murders this year, can stay safe without excessively stopping and frisking people.

“Even as (Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s) administration doggedly defends its stop-and-frisk program in court and in the public, these numbers are tacit recognition that it’s misguided and not necessary for the public safety,” she said.

The numbers had risen since Bloomberg took office in January 2002, hitting a peak of more than 685,000 in 2011. Mostly black and Hispanic men are stopped, even though they don’t make up most of the city’s population, and about 10 percent of them are arrested.

And these new numbers come on the heels of a federal judge ruling that the NYPD’s policy of stopping and questioning people based on suspicions a crime is about to occur has unfairly targeted minorities.

Which very well could be the reason the number of stops is so low this year. But the drop in crime? Well, let’s just give that one to the good people of NYC.

Sorry NYPD, you can’t take this win.

SOURCE: Huffington Post | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty