The New York Police Department’s stop and frisk tactics had increased 21 percent over the past year, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights. The findings are from a departmental quarterly report that was released to Congress on Tuesday, and also show that a stunning 88 percent of those stopped were black and Latino.

The CCR expects a more comprehensive report soon, courtesy of a class action suit they filed with several other organizations that challenged the NYPD’s racial-profiling techniques. As a result, the courts ordered all police department data on stop and frisk to be handed over, and legislation shortly followed prohibiting data-banking of those stopped and frisked but not charged.

As ColorLines reported earlier this month, this controversial police strategy overwhelmingly impacts young black men and has been so heavily employed in parts of Brooklyn that it has become a routine part of life for many.

Despite public and political pressure for the NYPD to use more discretion when using stop-and-frisk, the spike in recent months indicates that the police department still believes the practice is an effective crime-fighting tool. For example, just hours after Gov. David Paterson signed a law to delete electronically stored data on those stopped but not arrested, the NYPD defiantly sent an internal memo suggesting officers instead store the data on paper.